I know this is verging on not /sci/ material, but I think I'll ask anyway.
My whole life I think I have understood that post-death is a void in the same way pre-birth was a void. My problem is this: if death takes you to the same state as before you were born, then isn't it logical to say death isn't final? Because something took you from pre-birth state to alive state, and death takes you back to dead/pre-birth state. Where am I going wrong?
You are assuming there is an abstract thing called "you" that is continuous.
>>8018448
But functionally isn't it the same thing? As in, if something happened once, why is it reasonable to say it can only happen once?
>>8018456
You are the sum of your experiences. When the experiences cease, so do you.
>>8018464
If I'm entirely the sum of my experiences then I was literally a different person when I was 5? I know these are babby's first existential questions but I am just trying to get an accurate picture
The point of death is the point at which the subject about which we can structure any kind of ontology, evaporates. You're just simply undefined at that point. Dying is the subjective act of dividing yourself by zero. Whereof one cannot speak one must remain silent.
>>8018469
Pretty much. You don't have any experiental access to the past. Memories are always experienced in the present; the fact that they are shaped by past experience is irrelevant just as the experiences of a stranger are to your own.
>>8018476
Cool. So "you" kind of dies many times throughout life?
>>8018482
Diff anon here, but think amnesia.
You wake up with no memory of your past, and you really are a different person mentally.
>>8018482
By his logic, you just died an infinite amount of times just while this thread was up.
>>8018444
>post-death is a void
It is not.
>>8018456
Your mind (which, for all intents and purposes, seems to be the same as your "soul", even though spiritualists may believe otherwise) is essentially a logical structure which resides in your physical brain. That structure has been forming for all your life, but it makes no sense to consider its "state" before you were alive. It would be like contemplating the state of the Eiffel Tower before it was built.
Once we die, the mind becomes somewhat like a computer system which was shut down and then decays in one way or another. The logical structure of the mind becomes irreversibly lost during that process. Considering a post-death state is like contemplating the state of the Eiffel Tower after it has fallen apart or been demolished.
You may say that even if the Eiffel Tower ceases to exist, an almost exact copy could be rebuilt - while it's true, a human's mind is not only hugely more complex, but also, there is no information left behind which would make it possible to reconstruct a mind.
Even if it were possible, most likely the result of a reconstruction would be a "swampman", i.e. just a clone - no continuity of identity would be to be expected between the original mind and the clone. A rebuilt Eiffel Tower wouldn't be the same building either, but just another like it. These are assumptions which are not certain, because the matter of identity of sentience is not really understood so far. Yet, even if a perfect copy of your mind was planted in another body (if that's possible at all without e.g having to replicate physical neuron structures), there would be no guarantee that you would wake up again as "you" - the original "you" might be irreversibly dead, and instead a "swampman" clone would wake up, being an exact copy of you except for sentient identity.
>>8018474
>Dying is the subjective act of dividing yourself by zero
I'd rather say, when you die, your sentient identity becomes an element of the empty set (which is as good as a black hole - you can't retrieve any usable objects from there, because none exist).
>>8018456
I think what OP is trying to ask here is, why does he experience his own brain and not that of someone else?
Won't his experience continue as someone or something else, as surely he experienced his own brain out of nothing?
>>8018605
Yeah, that's what I meant. Thank you anon
>>8018444
Death doesn't take "you" anywhere, because there is no "you" anymore.
>>8018605
I can only think of two things, but they literally border religiosity.
1. Our consciousness reincarnates and our memory resets.
2. Our consciousness goes through various dimensions with other collective consciousnesses.
>>8018526
>a reconstruction would be a "swampman", i.e. just a clone
How so? If your brain is only a pattern of matter with causing a subjective experience, why wouldn't the exact same pattern produce the exact same experience? Unless the mind were something separate from the structure of the brain.
Technically you in the future will just be a clone of you in the present, yet you're both going feel like the same experiencer, because you're both having a similar experience, caused by a similar brain.
>>8018881
Read this, homeboy.
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/is-consciousness-universal/
>>8018444
> tfw it took 14 billion of years for you to become an intelligent being
> tfw we will all die
> tfw we will probably never become a human again
> tfw we will probably become stupid bacteria or non-living stuff for all eternity
wew lads, it was fun tbqh.
You will become a conscious entity again right after you die but you will have no memory of your previous life.
>>8019948
> You will become a conscious entity again right after you die
[citation required]
>>8018526
[Citation required]
If the universe began there is no reason why another one can't. If another universe begins then there is no reason why this won't keep happening to infinity. If the amount of universes approaches infinity then at some point one with the exact same conditions as this one atom for atom will begin again. So basically you will be reborn an infinite amount of times.
>>8019999
> implying expansion won't keep forever
> implying we aren't trapped in infinite entropy
>>8019999
Shiiiiiieeeeet quads confirm
>>8018605
Sauce on that painting of the sleeping girl?
>>8019948
wow that just hit me, stripping away the spiritual connotations it's literally true
the stuff you're made out of will eventually recombine into a living entity, but obviously no memory as the physical structures keeping track of 'you' have disintegrated, the memory being 'lost'. it makes quite a bit of sense actually.
>>8019838
Why the desperate attachment to the completely unfounded idea that a being's conciousness muss be preserved somehow and transferred to another being later? Do you think that that God is like a desktop PC technician who keeps dumping images of PCs' harddrives and reimagining new PCs with those images after the old ones die or fall out of use?
People are so unwilling to accept the finality of death, they keep clinging on to hopeful, but entirely irrational ideas and myths which there isn't (and most likely won't ever be) any evidence for.
>>8019948
If any continuity of self-awareness and identity is lost, then there is no "you" anymore.
>>8018444
Read Phaedo.
