Re:How Doctors Die (2013)
by skissane on Sunday April 04, 2021 @05:29AM
(#26688039)
> I'm pretty sure we're just meat sacks and when my heart stops beating that'll be the end of all that I am, and that scares the shit out of me.
Should one be "pretty sure"? I take it you are assuming that materialism is true, that the mind is ultimately dependent on a functioning physical brain for its existence, such that if the brain permanently ceases to function, the associated mind will permanently cease to exist.
But, what if some day, in the infinite future, random processes cause atoms to spontaneously reassemble into a working brain, and not just any working brain, but a proper continuation of your individual particular brain, in proper continuity with your last conscious moment before death? Would that not be a genuine personal afterlife? You can say the probability of such an event is unimaginably small, but can we say that it is absolutely zero? And if it is not absolutely zero, then given an infinite future, any event with non-zero probability will almost surely eventually occur, including that one. Following this line of thought, you can arrive at the conclusion that an afterlife is possible, maybe even likely, maybe even highly likely. But unlike religious conceptions of the afterlife, we cannot be confident that it will make any sense – it is just as likely (even more likely) to be the absurd hell of a solitary hallucinating Boltzmann brain [0] floating through the cold blackness of space, as the final triumph of the just and the good which the Abrahamic religions promise.
In an infinite universe, how certain can you really be that anything is ever permanent, including the cessation of one's existence? Faced with the potential infinity of the future, being certain, even just being "pretty sure", that any end is permanent seems to me to be having far more confidence than one rationally ought to have.
If the choice is between a religious afterlife which makes sense, and a non-religious afterlife of infinite absurdity, maybe we ought to hope that (some) religion is true?
Should one be "pretty sure"? I take it you are assuming that materialism is true, that the mind is ultimately dependent on a functioning physical brain for its existence, such that if the brain permanently ceases to function, the associated mind will permanently cease to exist.
But, what if some day, in the infinite future, random processes cause atoms to spontaneously reassemble into a working brain, and not just any working brain, but a proper continuation of your individual particular brain, in proper continuity with your last conscious moment before death? Would that not be a genuine personal afterlife? You can say the probability of such an event is unimaginably small, but can we say that it is absolutely zero? And if it is not absolutely zero, then given an infinite future, any event with non-zero probability will almost surely eventually occur, including that one. Following this line of thought, you can arrive at the conclusion that an afterlife is possible, maybe even likely, maybe even highly likely. But unlike religious conceptions of the afterlife, we cannot be confident that it will make any sense – it is just as likely (even more likely) to be the absurd hell of a solitary hallucinating Boltzmann brain [0] floating through the cold blackness of space, as the final triumph of the just and the good which the Abrahamic religions promise.
In an infinite universe, how certain can you really be that anything is ever permanent, including the cessation of one's existence? Faced with the potential infinity of the future, being certain, even just being "pretty sure", that any end is permanent seems to me to be having far more confidence than one rationally ought to have.
If the choice is between a religious afterlife which makes sense, and a non-religious afterlife of infinite absurdity, maybe we ought to hope that (some) religion is true?
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boltzmann_brain