Do you believe in life after death?

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Re: Do you believe in life after death?

Postby 52xMax » Sat Jun 13, 2015 2:42 am

Anglerphobe wrote:Longer of life, but not immortal. Our paltry handful of decades is so little that we can't even grasp what immortality would really mean. If machines could sustain your consciousness, they couldn't do so indefinitely. You may get centuries, even millennia with good maintenance, but even ten, twenty or a hundred human lifespans back to back are the blink of an eye in the grander scheme of things. The notion of living on with no conceivable end is frankly beyond ridiculous. Stars die.
Come nano-machines or magical elixirs, you will certainly die.


Even if it was a given that we can't grasp what eternity is, I fail to see why it would be impossible for machines to sustain human consciousness indefinitely, provided they could do so in the first place. What would stop us from building a different machine to transfer our consciousness into once the life cycle of the original vessel was close to an end, and to do so again every time we needed to ad infinitum?
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Re: Do you believe in life after death?

Postby Learned Nand » Sat Jun 13, 2015 2:47 am

52xMax wrote:What would stop us from building a different machine to transfer our consciousness into once the life cycle of the original vessel was close to an end, and to do so again every time we needed to ad infinitum?

The second law of thermodynamics.
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Re: Do you believe in life after death?

Postby 52xMax » Sat Jun 13, 2015 7:47 am

Obviously, things like the death of the universe would get in the way... but you know what I meant. Technically, nothing is eternal if it begins to exist after time began, but for practical purposes, I would say that if someone is born today and never dies until the big crunch (or whatever it is that ends existence as we know it in this universe) still counts as living forever.
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Re: Do you believe in life after death?

Postby DoglovingJim » Sat Jun 13, 2015 9:01 am

aviel wrote:
52xMax wrote:What would stop us from building a different machine to transfer our consciousness into once the life cycle of the original vessel was close to an end, and to do so again every time we needed to ad infinitum?

The second law of thermodynamics.


I failed in science class (Instead I taught myself how to do the Five-Finger-Fillet flawlessly until that "incident").

So anyway, what is the second law of thermodynamics in layman's terms?
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Re: Do you believe in life after death?

Postby Learned Nand » Sat Jun 13, 2015 9:14 am

DoglovingJim wrote:So anyway, what is the second law of thermodynamics in layman's terms?

Entropy in a closed system tends to increase. Finding an intuitive definition of "entropy" is difficult. Technically speaking it refers to the number of possible states a thing can be in. It's often described as "disorder", which I guess works as a definition. Anyway, over time, everything in the universe will decay, from stars to planets to black holes to the nuclei of atoms. Presuming nothing happens that causes the end of the universe, this means that eventually everything will be an evenly distributed mess of elementary particles.
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Terry Pratchett wrote:The trouble with having an open mind, of course, is that people will insist on coming along and trying to put things in it.

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OrangeEyebrows wrote:There once was a guy, Aviel,
whose arguments no one could quell.
He tested with Turing,
his circuits fried during,
and now we'll have peace for a spell.
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Re: Do you believe in life after death?

Postby ToixStory » Sun Jun 21, 2015 4:25 am

My views can best be expressed as:

Que sera, sera
Whatever will be, will be
The future's not ours to see
Que sera, sera
What will be, will be
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Re: Do you believe in life after death?

Postby DamianaRaven » Thu Dec 28, 2017 8:07 am

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Re: Do you believe in life after death?

Postby Ladki96 » Thu Dec 28, 2017 5:28 pm

After we go, whether bad or good, we will all get together and have a fun time with the rest of our friends/family who are also gone, and welcome more pals who arrive in the future ^^ you guys watch out for me, I will wear a green or purple scarf and have my hair tied in a plait probably :P

and if that is not what happens, oh well *shrug* =) but it's nice to believe anyhow, it combats any occasional fears of death, and lessens the pain of grief, so what's the harm?
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Re: Do you believe in life after death?

Postby DamianaRaven » Thu Dec 28, 2017 8:06 pm

Ladki96 wrote:I will wear a green or purple scarf and have my hair tied in a plait probably :P


I really loved that part of your post, Ladki. It's was straight-up fucking adorable and should be called out as such!
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Re: Do you believe in life after death?

Postby Grimstone » Fri Dec 29, 2017 6:52 am

Ladki96 wrote:and if that is not what happens, oh well *shrug* =) but it's nice to believe anyhow, it combats any occasional fears of death, and lessens the pain of grief, so what's the harm?


Haha yeah, these are just silly harmless beliefs people have for funsies and not at all serious closely held convictions that shape the way they view and treat others.
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