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chapotraphouse @hexbear.net cosecantphi [he/him, they/them] @hexbear.net

If the universe exists for an infinite amount of time, is death still truly oblivion and eternal?

From where I'm sitting, it looks like death should not be the end in that case.

You can't perceive the passage of time when you are dead, so you're just going to experience dying and then immediate rebirth after the countless eons pass for that rare moment where entropy spontaneously reverses to form your mind again.

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  • i think these questions are really uninteresting if you're gonna insist on being purely rational materialist about it, but i think it gets more interesting when you're willing to play with what reality might be a little more. There are religious motifs that repeat in many cultures about the eternal reocurrence. This idea that earth is made and destroyed in countless infinite, repeating cycles.

    What if you and I have been going at this for a while?

    But if you want the answers science can give right now, probably not

    • What if you and I have been going at this for a while?

      Well if none of your memories carry over it's certainly not you anymore.

      • You don’t lose memories as you live this life? Is someone with dementia or amnesia a different person than they were before? Memories cannot be the basis of self, they are not permenant, and are not always referenced, and each new reference creates a new slightly altered version. There is nothing that can be truly called a self in the colloquial sense, just a vague collection of things artificially stabilized. From this basis it is fair to imagine you could experience another life with the same consciousness without many remnants from the past lives.

      • Do you think so? I think what we are internally isn't fully dependent on memory and reference, there is some element of us that just is, for at least as long as we're alive. Behind your eyes and resting within your interior is a spark of something that has existed continuously since you were born, that little "I" of awareness may never change.

        It's always you imo. You can go through mk ultra style brainwashing, lose your sense of identity, find yourself under a new name and with new interests, but between who you were and who you are, are enough commonalities that I would dispute the notion we're just electrical signals in wet gooey meat endlessly referencing the past to navigate the present and anticipate the future - but that's me.

  • I don't think given an infinite amount of time the universe would produce an identical me. That's such a specific combination of matter and chemical processes it just feels silly to assume it would happen. Even if I agreed that it would inevitably happen, I think there's an implication that a very large number of almost but not quite mes would also come into existence (because if I understand the premise, it's basically "on a long enough timescale every possible thing will happen") and frankly that's more disturbing than ceasing to exist (which, to be clear, is very disturbing to me).

    I'll also say that a clone of me with my memories is still not me. Such a thing could exist simultaneously with me and it wouldn't reduce my desire to personally remain alive even slightly, it's a different guy, but with a lot in common with me.

  • Infinity =/= everything

    Even if the universe has an infinite lifespan (unknown) that does not in any way imply any possible outcome will occur. So there is absolutely no reason to expect a body like yours will be recreated. Even if it was, it still wouldn't be you it would be your clone.

  • What is this "rebirth"? There'll be many births, perhaps many similar to previous ones, but what makes "re"? Right now, everyday on earth (perhaps on other worlds) there are many births of people who are quite similar to you already, why do they constitute any less a rebirth than someone a thousand billion years from now?

    My lot isn't with "me" and me being eternal or me reborn. I'm part of the totality.

  • When you die you turn into a turtle in this guy in new jerseys aquarium hes a really cool dude and takes great care of you don't worry it'll be a blast. He's gonna name you Phil.

  • if you can prove that entropy will reverse please go collect your nobels and so on. i'll watch angela collier's video on it.

  • We tend to define physical objects in a way that have spatial and temporal boundaries. That means if I point to a particular physical object, you can usually draw a rough border around it, as well as talk about when it came into existence and when it goes away. The boundaries are never really solid and there's usually some ambiguity to them, but it's hard to even know what is being talked about without these fuzzy boundaries.

    For example, if I point to a cat and say "that's a cat," you generally understand the rough shape of a cat and thus have a rough outline, and this helps you look for where it's located. If there is a water bowl next to the cat, you immediately know the bowl is not the cat and is not what I'm talking about because it's not within those borders. These borders are, again, a bit fuzzy, if you zoom up on a microscopic scale it becomes less clear where the cat begins and where it ends, but these fuzzy borders are still important because without them, if I said "look at that cat over there" you could never figure out what I'm talking about because you would have no concept of the border of the cat at all, which is necessary to locate it.

    It is also necessary to our understanding that these boundaries evolve continuously. If a building was demolished, and then a century later someone inspired by it builds another with the same plans, even if it's in the same location, we would typically not think of it as literally the same building, because they did not exist at the same times, i.e. their temporal boundaries do not overlap as there is a discontinuous gap between them. If a cat is located at one position and then later at another, its boundaries have moved, but this movement is continuous, it's not as if the cat teleportation from one point to the next.

    But this is precisely why people find the teletransportation paradox difficult to grapple with. What if the cat did teleport from one location to the next such that the original cat is destroyed and its information is used to reconstruct it elsewhere? Is it still the same cat? How we define objects is ultimately arbitrary so you can say either yes or no, but personally I think it's more consistent to say no.

    Consider if the teleporter succeeded in reconstructing the cat, but due to a malfunction, it failed to destroy the original cat. Now you have two. It seems rather obvious to me that, if this were to occur, what you have is a clone and not the original cat. They are obviously different beings with different perspectives of the world as they would each see out of their own eyes separately. If I cloned myself, I would not see out of my clone's eyes, so it is clearly not the same object as myself.

    I would be inclined to thus say the person who exists "countless eons" after you died would at best be considered a clone of yourself and not actually yourself. Your temporal boundaries do not overlap, there is no continuous transition from the "you" of the past and the "you" eons later, so they are not the same objects. They are different people.

    Sure, if we assume the universe can exist eternally (a big assumption, but let's go with it), then if enough time passes, a perfect clone of yourself would be certain to exist. Yet, if we're assuming the universe can exist for that long, why not also assume the universe is spatially infinite as well? We have no reason to suspect that if you kept traveling in one direction long enough, that you would somehow stop discovering new galaxies. As far as we know, they go on forever.

    Hence, if you kept traveling in one direction far enough, you would also eventually find a perfect clone of yourself, which would actually exist at the same time as you right now. If we were to accept that the clone of yourself in the far future is the same object as you, wouldn't you not also have to conclude that the clone at a far distance from you is the same object as you? I find this to be rather strange because, again, you do not see out of your clone's eyes, it's clearly a different person. I would thus be inclined to say neither are "you." One does not spatially overlap you (exists in the same time but a different location) and the other does not temporally overlap you (could possibly even exist in the same location, but definitely not at the same time).

    It thus seems more consistent to me to say both are merely clones and thus not the same object. It would be a different person who just so happens to look like you but is not you.

    • Simultaneity is actually not something that exists for objects separated by vast distances in spacetime according to general relativity. That's why I wasn't considering a spatial infinity, our observable reality is situated inside a very much spatially finite event horizon.

      We know so little about how consciousness actually works that I'm personally content to say a mere clone of me existing somewhere with my memories is actually me. Shit, even if it doesn't have my memories! As long as it is close enough to being my mind. Who says the fundamental of subjective experience can't exist in superpositions just like everything else can.

      I know consciousness can be interrupted without being permanently extinguished because I've been under general anaesthesia before.

      • Simultaneity does exist in general relativity, it's just relative. If your clone doesn't exist because they lie beyond the observable horizon, well, you can't observe things in the future either, so what's the point? My point was that there's not an obvious reason to say a clone existing at the same time as you is indeed a clone but a clone existing at a different time is actually "you." To me, it makes more sense to say in both cases they are clones. But you seem to be saying that they are actually both "you"? Even if they exist at the same time? What about in similar locations as well, such as standing next to each other?

        Also, I do not believe in "subjective experience" nor do I believe in "consciousness." It's not true that "we know so little about consciousness" because there is nothing to know about "consciousness" as it's largely a mystical buzzword. There are plenty of things we don't understand about the human brain, like intelligence, but we are gradually making progress in these fields. "Consciousness" is largely meaningless, though, and so it cannot be studied as there is nothing to even know about it, as it doesn't refer to anything real.

        I have no idea why you are bringing superposition into this despite it having no relevance here.

  • i feel like whats missing in this discussion is the effect of quantum mechanics on consciousness. there is some research that shows that randomness introduced by quantum particles can affect synapses, and theoretically consciousness. and I think that even on infinite scales you can't really get the same exact quantum patterns, they will never repeat, or else it wouldn't really be random.

  • Real question is if a Boltzmann brain can really even exist or if it's just an antiquated mechanical materialist view on consciousness inconsistent with dialectical materialism.

    • I wasn't even thinking about the Boltzmann brain scenario, I was just considering the chance that literally everything could reform like this as we take time out to infinity, all slightly different permutations too

    • There's no physical reason why they can't, but there are good reasons to think that the punchline of the original thought experiment--that they are overwhelmingly more likely than "regular" brains--isn't right.

  • I've actually thought of this exact scenario before and for selfish reasons I hope it's true, there are many parts of my life I loved and parts that were horribly heartbreaking but I'd do it all again if I could. But that's just me now, will have to see how I feel later!

  • possibly disturbing existentialism

    when that distant mind forms, eons from now, will you experience it? or will it be a clone with your memories?

    what if two identical minds form at the same time, both of which have your memories and thoughts? Which set of eyes will you look out of?

    continuity of consciousness is a strange thing

    in fact, the "two identical minds" example proves nothing, you could be both of them. A consciousness can be split: for example, if you separate the lobes of a person's brain, put each lobe in a new body, then regrow the missing lobes, you get two people who each can claim they are the original. That person's life seamlessly branched into two lives without interruption.

    and what about interruption? does it matter? if you delete a person's atoms for a nanosecond, then restore them, do you have the original or a clone? I doubt we'll ever know. If consciousness can survive a total interruption, if the same life resumes afterward, then I start to wonder if we are all packets of a single consciousness. On the other hand, if consciousness can't survive an interruption, then I start to wonder if we are constantly dying from one instant to the next, a series of clones like frames of a film.

    • A consciousness can be split: for example, if you separate the lobes of a person's brain, put each lobe in a new body, then regrow the missing lobes, you get two people who each can claim they are the original.

      Don't even need to separate the lobes, let alone create separate bodies for this.

      On the other hand, if consciousness can't survive an interruption, then I start to wonder if we are constantly dying from one instant to the next, a series of clones like frames of a film.

      Meh, in real life it's experimentally and experientially identical to consciousness surviving an interruption. This is just like solipsism circle jerking. Use diamat

      • Agreed with the use diamat. Everything is constantly changing, constantly dying. Hypothetical idealist arguments are silly, it’s understood by quantum physics.

      • Don't even need to separate the lobes, let alone create separate bodies for this.

        What do you mean by this?

        If you don’t separate the lobes, then you still have a single connected network of neurons, which probably forms a single mass of experience. It’s cool and interesting if you want to question that, I can see some possible lines of argument, but none are obvious enough that you can just gesture at them and people know what you mean.

        Meh, in real life it's experimentally and experientially identical to consciousness surviving an interruption.

        Experimentally yes, but not experientially. You either experience the next instant or you don’t.

        We’ll probably never know, so there’s no reason to worry about it—although that won’t always stop someone in a bad headspace, hence the spoiler—but if you like thinking about how consciousness works, then the idea inevitably comes up and needs to be acknowledged.

        circle jerking.

        Unfalsifiable does not mean stupid to think about.

        For starters, it’s intrinsically worthwhile to map out the space of possibilities, even if you might never be able to narrow things down within that space. But also, it’s a necessary step if you want to really convince yourself that it is unfalsifiable. You have to actually consider the relevant thought experiments and their ramifications.

        This is just like solipsism circle jerking.

        Unlike solipsism, continuity of consciousness is a question you can actually reason about. You can study the brain, the neurons, the synapses, to see if any physical process looks continuous for the whole brain over time and space. Roger Penrose, for quantum mechanical reasons, thinks experiential consciousness resides in the microtubules, which are cytoskeletal filaments inside the cells of the brain. Others argue pretty strongly that there is nothing special about microtubules. But there’s an actual discussion! Even if it turns out to be unfalsifiable, the discussion itself will have been fruitful because it helped us determine that.

        use diamat — @iridaniotter@hexbear.net

        Agreed with the use diamat. Everything is constantly changing, constantly dying. Hypothetical idealist arguments are silly, it’s understood by quantum physics. — @QueerCommie@hexbear.net

        Materialism tells you why things happen, it tells you where thoughts come from, why the brain does what it does, which is great, but continuity of consciousness is a more elusive question, because it has no effect on a person’s brain activity or behavior. A perfect clone with the same memories is indistinguishable from the original, unless you actually track the whereabouts of the original and the clone to prove which one zapped into existence 30 minutes ago.

        Maybe you feel that’s worthless to think about, but we’re already in a thread where OP is thinking about it.

        OP imagines their subjective experience continuing after a prolonged interruption of existence. Dialectical materialism and quantum physics do not readily tell you if that can happen.

  • Somewhere between now and the end of time my pants will be shid

  • Why does the universe have to exist for an infinite amount of time? Or is that part of the thought experiment sorry I'm tired

  • Nothing will cause a new "you" with your current memories and personality to be recreated, but new blank slate subjects are being created all the time, which we all started as.

    https://www.naturalism.org/philosophy/death/death-nothingness-and-subjectivity

  • The thing that's helped me understand this argument is that there are different forms and sizes of infinity. let's say you add 1 infinitesimal (1/infinity) every given time interval. Even if time is infinitely long, you will never surpass 1. So you will never produce 100 or 1000, or any arbitrary number greater than 1.

    Similarly there are so much variables required to form your conciousness that even in an infinite amount of time it can never be reformed spontaneously. The size of infinities involved in producing a given person's conciousness is orders of magnitude greater than the infinity of time.

    • Similarly there are so much variables required to form your conciousness that even in an infinite amount of time it can never be reformed spontaneously. The size of infinities involved in producing a given person's conciousness is orders of magnitude greater than the infinity of time.

      Why? It's a finite system. There's a finite number of particles. Why would it take a "larger infinity" than a countably infinite amount of time for, after the heat death of the universe, enough space dust to come together again and spontaneously cause another big bang? If the universe keeps going infinitely, what's to stop it from happening again, and again, and again, until the big bang and all subsequent events are exactly the same as the universe we know? Or at least arbitrarily close if you want to think of it as a continuous system.

      To counter your argument about adding up 1/infinity an infinite number of times: it's not 1/infinity. The chance that a bunch of hydrogen particles fuse together to form the necessary elements, then happen to react to form the necessary chemicals, to form a human brain in the vacuum of space, is clearly very unlikely. It might be 1 / 10^10^1\0^10^10^10... or whatever. The denominator in that fraction is a number that is freakishly large and impossible to conceptualize. But it's definitely finite. There's a world of difference between that number and infinity, and there's no reason at all for it to be infinite.

      Edit: also, small nitpick, infinity * 1/infinity actually can surpass 1. Or it can equal 0. It's an indeterminate form. If you get it as the result of taking shortcuts while solving a limit e.g. lim x -> inf x^2 / 4x^2 which you could substitute the x by infinity and get infinity / infinity, it just means you have to do more work. In this case, you can factor out the 1/4 and get x^2 / x^2, which simplifies to 1, and the limit is equal to 1/4. So even if the probability was actually 1/infinity, it wouldn't be sufficient to say that over an infinite period of time it would never add up to anything. Maybe your point would be better illustrated with a geometric series? Like when you add 1 + 1/2 + 1/4 + 1/8.... you'll tend towards 2 but never above it.

    • Yeah, the idea that space dust could randomly form a brain for a moment is pretty odd. We are products of infinite causal factors including millions of years of stable life, and I’d have to guess are consciousnesses reformation would occur under vaguely similar circumstances. “This happened once so within infinity it will happen again” is a little absurd if you think it will happen again in totally different circumstances.

  • If this were meaningfully true, I think we’d remember that having happened already. If the universe has just as much infinite time before now as after now, I’d already have lived, died, and been born again. If this has happened, and I don’t remember it, what is the use of saying that that person and I are the same?

    • I agree it’s absurd if there’s an assumption memories are maintained. But it’s more plausible if you just forget everything and have a whole new life in the samsaric fashion.

  • i like to think so

  • What case do you have that the universe will exist for an infinite amount of time?

    Personally, my mindset on the matter is asking yourself if you remember what it is like before you were born. That's what it will be like after you die. There is no material evidence to perceiving anything after death or a rebirth at all. Oblivion.

  • this just tripped me out real hard, my tiny brain can't comprehend

  • Pure materialist response:

    'You', your consciousness, is not a thing, but a process, produced by mainly your brain, along with your sensory organs and nervous system.

    Because it is a process, it is always changing, sometimes subtly, sometimes drastically, and is never really exactly the same same as it was 10 years ago, or even 5 minutes ago.

    Death is when this ongoing process of being conscious ceases, permenantly, totally, due to the failure of the biological systems and processes that produce your consciousness.

    It is a total termination of the process of 'you', of your consciousness.

    Even if some set of conditions somehow allowed for your exact body, brain, nervous system, exact electro chemical state of all of them that would give rise to the exact same memories, whatever, even if all of that was to somehow reconstitute themselves, that would not suddenly be an awakening, a continuation of your previous consciousness.

    It would be an independent copy, which, depending on whether or not it had somehow been constructed in sufficient detail as to share all your memories up until your death, still would not be you.

    It may believe it is you, but it isn't.

    'You' died.

    ...

    The teleporter in Star Trek kills you and makes a reconstructed clone of you, with your memories, when you use it.

    Even if your pattern is capable of being stuck in the frame buffer and saved or lost, if it is saved, the thing that walks out is a very convincing and very convinced copy of you, despite this way of thinking being largely, but not entirely, stigmatized in the societies of the show.

    The actual 'you' was obliterated upon being energized, but the illusion of this not being the case is socially normalized... somewhat comparable to how individual car ownership and usage is extremely normalized in the US, despite the well understood dangers and costs of this.

    Everything 'just works' if you go along with it, and if you don't, it kind of demands a reformation of much of society, and makes people think about a lot of things that they would rather not.

    ...

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