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| Thread: if you could live forever |  This thread is pages long: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 · «PREV / NEXT» |
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ohforfsake
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posted May 08, 2010 07:22 PM |
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@Fauch
I just meant that eventhough Buddha may not have much to do with me, I saw it more as a compliment, because Buddha, I think, is often associated with something positive.
@JJ
I changed the text to 'the kind of logic you use', as I think it maybe seemed personal and that wasn't intended.
Yes there are different kinds, or maybe rather, levels, of logic. What is logic to some may not be to others and it depends on two factos, both the assumptions made, but also the imagination to not only think of those assumptions, but likewise to think about their impact and the impact of the assumptions not made as well.
You make the assumption that for something to be terrible, it must be in regard to someone. That assumption is valid when there's an observer in the first place. In this scenario however, there's no observer, therefore the kind of logic where terrible is defined in accordance to what one observe becomes meaningless.
Edit:Basicly it means that this:
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But to terrible it needs to be REGISTERED, and if you are not existing anymore you can't register it:
does not apply in my opinion. The definition of terrible you use here is insufficient for the topic in question.
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Father
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posted May 09, 2010 10:03 PM |
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I decided this morning that I was going to elaborate on my view point more. Mainly because I feel that my stance may be a bit more out of the box than most.
With the temptation of immortality placed before us, there seem to be a great many that would not do so. However, I feel a bit inclined to challenge them to only reconsider, only their reasons and if just for a brief moment. I don't mean to offend anyone by the subject matter of this post either and I will do my very best to avoid any slight comments.
So lets say your granted the chance for immortality. Immediately we start to answer if we would or not but the question by nature demands us to know the conditions of that immortality before we choose. So, for arguments sake, lets start by saying that each of our own conditions of the proposed immortality would be near to ideal for each of us. i.e. We wouldn't be old men and women bed ridden, but have healthy, youthful appearances etc etc. Now there would be some conditions we couldn't get around (such as family not being able to join you etc) but for all intents and purposes, the offer would be a genuine and tempting one to each of us.
Based on that model, how many of us would really refuse? The religious among us tend to refuse based on spiritual beliefs. The logical ones (not to separate them from the religious ones) argue their case based on what they truly think are sound foundations of reason. So this post here would be my sound foundation of reason. Take from it what you will, but for me it is really pretty simple.
Immortality, to "live" forever. To always be, to never die. To outlast people, plants and planets. Yes that's right, logic leads me to easily assume that this Earth will not always be here.
Universe, infinite and unending (forgive the redundant for a moment of dramatic pause, lol).
So what happens when one gets the chance to combine the two? See, it is my view point that all arguments from a religious stand point are invalid to me. Just as those that state something to the effect of us eventually growing board. Now, before you get the idea I'm offending you....read on.
Living in an infinite universe, it is childish IMHO to think that we are the only life forms. It is silly to me to think that there is one great being that we devote our lives and energies to. No I don't mean your spiritual beliefs, of course I respect your views, I just simply disagree. The Universe is too expansive, too unending for me personally to believe that there is one omniscient being that rules all of creation and time. However, logic points to something much more fathomable. That there are also infinite life forms and other beings, other words, other solar systems...UNENDING...that we, in our new immortality would be able to explore and be a part of throughout all of the eons, beyond any conception of time.
There would undoubtedly be good times and bad, maybe for hundreds of years at a time, but the reality to go beyond and further is always there. At first, maybe for a great span of time...you won't even have the ability to travel to different planets and places. But does it not stand to reason that an immortal would eventually find a way? Even if it takes thousands of years? Time is a powerful force, and when you give someone a limitless supply, suddenly, literally, everything is possible. I for one would jump at the chance and that's where my head goes when I ponder the fantasy of immortality.
Well, thats all I wanted to elaborate about that.
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Fauch
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posted May 09, 2010 11:57 PM |
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eternal youth? can I offer it to any girl I want? 
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mvassilev
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posted May 10, 2010 02:05 AM |
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Quote:
Immortality, to "live" forever. To always be, to never die. To outlast people, plants and planets.
This isn't the kind of immortality we're talking about here. What I think is being suggested at the moment is merely not dying of old age (and diseases?). You can still die from lack of energy input (whether through food or otherwise), oxygen deprivation, getting shot, etc.
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Father
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posted May 11, 2010 07:17 PM |
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Hmm, well for the most part I think I would be highly tempted by any form of my life being extended. So long as I at least had control of my own body (or whatever body I was in). You know? I just don't want to be an old bed ridden person, a vegitable or anything like that.
Unless you provide cheese of course, many vegies are just so so much better with the power of Cheese!
If you guys had conditions to this experience, which ones would they be? Which ideas of immortality would you simply need to have in order to accept the offer? For me, it is these:
 My "age" would need to be in my 20's or 30's.
There could be "weaknesses" as long as I knew what they were and how to avoid them. i.e. A vamp getting staked in the heart. This is also a nice option if you ever finally wish to opt out 
Lastly I think there would have to be some sort of fail safe clause. Like if the world blew up, my body would be transported to another safe world or something. Or perhaps given the option to "die".
My immortality would have to most certainly include some time of regeration or healing quality.
Honestly, the best idea of immortality that I have seen? The Cheerleader on Heros. I would love that.
____________
Once Bitten,
Twice shy,
Be careful,
This one has sharp teeth.
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ohforfsake
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posted May 11, 2010 07:32 PM |
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@JJ
I thought about it, and I suppose one way of showing why I find your reasoning lacking in the context from our previous conversation is that there's a difference of being an observer that observes nothing and not be an observer.
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If you guys had conditions to this experience, which ones would they be? Which ideas of immortality would you simply need to have in order to accept the offer?
For me, to accept immortality, it'd require for me to exist. I've kinda a hard time explaining it. It's not that I require I am in control or observe, but that I as the observer is there. That, and that it's applied to every consciousness who wants it applied to them.
So an example of this not being the case: Memory transfered without consciousness, just a machine doing everything I'd have done, but it's not me doing it, it's the machine. The machine could be made so well that people on Earth would not be able to tell the difference, only I would, as I'd not be observing from the point of view of the machine.
Another example: Immortality through art and legacy in general.
All those kinds of immortality is something I don't care about, because I don't care if people remember me, to me, there's no type of 'immortality' in it. Though I use those two examples because for some others it seem to be how they understand immortality.
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JollyJoker
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posted May 12, 2010 07:57 AM |
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Ohfor, I explained in my firt post tht I would CERTAINLY pick the immortality option - but that has nothing to do with the fact that Death ain't terrible. It's a consequence of Death, not of observing. As long as you CAN observe, you are not dead - death therefore is as much an illusion as being immortal. It's just the actual moment, the present, that can be observed; the past can be remembered - but strangely enough no one finds it terrible that memory stops somewehere in the past.
So. the connection death-terrible is made solely by imagination. If you are dead you are not anymore, and being truly dead is a much more comforting image than, for example, suffering eternally in hell (which is why people really feared or fear that even more than death).
Dying is, what is truly terrible, because the terrible imagination is about to come true and generally linked with suffering.
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Doomforge
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posted May 12, 2010 08:55 AM |
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To sum up what I think at the subject, I wish I could be a child forever. Not physically, but at heart. Even if "forever" was meant to end at some point, I'd still take it over eternity of an aging brain.
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blizzardboy
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posted May 12, 2010 09:42 AM |
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The young so often say that being old sucks, but depression seems to be more common among teens and young adults and less common among elderly. Being old can't be that bad. You settle down and your emotions are more controllable and you have a clearer vision of life.
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"Folks, I don't trust children. They're here to replace us."
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ohforfsake
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posted May 12, 2010 03:21 PM |
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@JJ not sure I understand your arguments.
Maybe some definitions from your side would make it easier.
First of all, am I correct in understanding that you define terrible as something that needs to be observed?
Secondly, I don't understand the point of writing this:
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As long as you CAN observe, you are not dead - death therefore is as much an illusion as being immortal.
First of all, yes you're not death as long as you can observe, you aren't dead if you can't observe as well, it's not the observation that makes you alive. I don't get why it's relevant to point out.
Likewise I don't follow how you go from that statement over to the next, that death and immortality are equal as much illusions? I don't see the relevence or how you derived it.
Isn't this about why Death is a terrible thing? Not about illusions, etc.?
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It's just the actual moment, the present, that can be observed; the past can be remembered - but strangely enough no one finds it terrible that memory stops somewehere in the past.
Sure it's just the actual moment that can be observed, and we link to the past through our memory. If the past truely existed, we'd still be observing from it (or be someone else), so I don't quite see the point there. I probably just don't get your idea of time, I suppose.
I guess that you're trying to make an analogi with the quoted text, but I just can't see it. The only way I could see this analogi to be true, currently, would be if existance was defined through memory alone, which makes no sense to me.
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So. the connection death-terrible is made solely by imagination.
I understand it as you conclude this bit through the two parts I quoted, and I don't really see the connection. Sure to talk about the word terrible, you need to exist, heck you need to actually have other functions as well, not everything exists have, but for something to be terrible, there's no need for someone to talk about it.
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JollyJoker
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posted May 12, 2010 03:38 PM |
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Question: If you ARE dead, WILL that BE terrible for you WHEN you are dead?
Answer: No. It won't be anything at all. It if will be anything to you, you cannot be dead - you think and feel something.
Question: Is it now, terrible for you that you will be dead in some unknown space of time?
Answer: If it is, then it's only terrible because of a comparison with the actual reality with an imagined future - it will be vastly different
So when you say, Death is terrible, you ACTUALLY say, IF I was dead AND KNEW I was, man that was terrible.
It's like forgetting something. Let's say ou forget a part of your life - is it terrible? Not, when you do not realize you forgot something. If you KNOW there's a big hole in your memory - THAT IS or may at least be terrible, but if you don'T know you forgot it, well, you don't know there is reason to feel terrible.
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ohforfsake
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posted May 12, 2010 03:59 PM |
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Quote:
Question: If you ARE dead, WILL that BE terrible for you WHEN you are dead?
Answer: No. It won't be anything at all. It if will be anything to you, you cannot be dead - you think and feel something.
Due to the underlined part, it is terrible.
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So when you say, Death is terrible, you ACTUALLY say, IF I was dead AND KNEW I was, man that was terrible.
No, I don't include the "AND KNEW I was", because then there'd be a 'me', which means it'd not be terrible.
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Let's say ou forget a part of your life - is it terrible? Not, when you do not realize you forgot something. If you KNOW there's a big hole in your memory - THAT IS or may at least be terrible, but if you don'T know you forgot it, well, you don't know there is reason to feel terrible.
The problem with that analogy is that you still exist, eventhough you forget something that does not mean you don't exist anymore. I can't see how it can be an analogi.
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JollyJoker
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posted May 12, 2010 04:44 PM |
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The analogy is that you won't know that you don't exist anymore. As you didn't a dozen billion years before that, a couple billion years give or take.
So what exactly IS terrible? The THOUGHT, that what is now will cease to exist sometime in the future? That YOU will cease to exist in the future?
Don't you see it's only the THOUGHT that is terrible? Not the thing as such - since you wil not KNOW non-existance.
The analogy ith forgetting holds - if you forget something, it doesn't exist anymore, a moment of your life, gone forever. Forget enough, and your whole life dissolves. Is that terrible? Not when you don't KNOW it. Terrible is only the thought, imagining it, which doesn't work cause you always DO know, so you always judge from the position of the all-knowing observer.
Maybe it helps to pinpoint why it feels so terrible: because Death means no more this and no more that, never doing this anymore, never doing that, so many things that can't be done, can't be felt, can't be this or that - but then: YOU WON'T KNOW.
So again, it's looking onto the dead and feeling sorry for them - how terrible, they are dead now. But THEY don't know - so it may be terrible for US, but not for them. Ultimately this is so, because EVERYONE must die and no one knows when.
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ohforfsake
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posted May 12, 2010 04:57 PM |
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As I see it, for the premises of something to be terrible needs to be known is only sufficient in the area of terrible things that're terrible upon observing.
It still lacks the part of no observer at all [not no observation].
If you were talking about no observation, in stead of no observer, then I'd agree, but to me, it's not the thought or imagination of no existance that's terrible, it's the actual thing.
To state that someone who does not exist can't know they don't exist, is in my opinion a meaningless statement, because it assume they do exist. It's not a question about knowing in that sense, either you know or you don't know. The question in itself I find meaningless, because there's no one to know.
About the memory analogy, having no memory at all, is in my opinion in no way terrible, eventhough for said person only the 'now' exists, that person do exist, there's an observer, eventhough every observation isn't stored, the observer is still there. For the observer, previous observation do not exist, but we're not memory, memory is only a skill we have. Therefore, as an example, it'd make no sense to say from memories perspective it doesn't exist, as memory have no perspective.
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Maybe it helps to pinpoint why it feels so terrible: because Death means no more this and no more that, never doing this anymore, never doing that, so many things that can't be done, can't be felt, can't be this or that - but then: YOU WON'T KNOW.
That's is surely the typical view. But it is in no way my view! What you describe there's what I guess I'd define as freedom, but as long as one exists, it doesn't matter much what I can or can't do. Of course I wanna try to be able to do what I want, but existance in itself is really all that matters for me. Like I said earlier, happiness to me is not derived from what life has to offer, but from being alive.
So all in all, yes it's terrible for those who're no more. At least the way I use the word terrible.
[I think it makes no sense to say they don't know it, because that's kinda implying they exist, when not existing, any feature of an existance is lost, nothing cannot know as well as it can't know, knowledge, observation, well anything, make no sense in regard to nothing].
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JollyJoker
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posted May 12, 2010 05:19 PM |
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Quote:
So all in all, yes it's terrible for those who're no more. At least the way I use the word terrible.
Three questions:
1) How can you say something true for ALL? I mean, from which perspective are yu speaking and judging?
2) WHY? WHY is it terrible FOR those who are no more? Again, from which perspective are you speaking?
3)Is there any difference in the terror of a) a potential life gone to waste or never come to pass and b) an existing life ended. Agan, from which perspective are you speaking?
Please try anwer short an concise - to concentrate on the essence.
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ohforfsake
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posted May 12, 2010 05:36 PM |
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1) In my claim, I see it from no ones perspective, because a person that's no more (under the assumption it means one truely is no more), forever, have no perspective. [I do use the assumptions and definitions of my own].
2) Under the assumption that life is all there is, then non-life will always be worse. It's thereby terrible for all those who did and could have existed, which do no more.
3) No, there's no difference in my opinion.
I'd like to make clear that of course it's not terrible from the perspective of the death and the death [eventhough it makes not much meaning saying this, as there's no perspective] won't ever find anything terrible, or good.
The problem may be that terrible is usually seen as something negative towards a current situation, which would make such a word unsufficient to describe what I'm trying to.
I guess that's what you're in principle doesn't agree with, the word used, terrible. For terrible is understood, at least by me, as something an observer would observe and find to be 'very' bad. Though such a definition makes no sense if there's no observer. In complete nothingness the idea of terrible, from the perspective of nothing, makes no sense, as nothing have no perspective.
From the perspective of everyone living, it'll of course only be the thought that's terrible, as upon death perspective dissapears and nothing can be terrible from their point of view.
However it doesn't hinder that one can evaluate the idea of nothingness for all eternity compared to existance, draw a conclusion and through that conclusion define the opposite to be terrible, yet no terror will ever be observed.
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Xerox
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posted May 12, 2010 05:42 PM |
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Edited by Xerox at 17:45, 12 May 2010.
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I do not fear death. In fact, death has been very attracting to me. Dying would mean absolute peace for me. Something good and I would not need to worry about anything since I would cease to exist (well, perhaps becoming food for the flowers if that counts) in death.
Death would be like the final resort.
I would probably not want to live forever.
I think everybody eventually will feel like the circle of life is ending, and it is time to die.
I also hate the idea that we need to exist, but in my mind I have accepted that as a fact that I can live with.
I always liked the idea of being reborn - and yet I do not find that idea likely or realistic at all.
Perhaps that is why I created a fantasy world (you know, that book I am working on).
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- John Stuart Mill
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JollyJoker
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posted May 12, 2010 07:40 PM |
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Quote:
1) In my claim, I see it from no ones perspective, because a person that's no more (under the assumption it means one truely is no more), forever, have no perspective. [I do use the assumptions and definitions of my own].
2) Under the assumption that life is all there is, then non-life will always be worse. It's thereby terrible for all those who did and could have existed, which do no more.
3) No, there's no difference in my opinion.
That's an evaluation or judgement you make there. ("worse") That IS a perspective - you must have a yardstick to say that. WHY is it always WORSE (that's the perspectove of the living)?
And, taking all your claims - aren't we living in a TERRIBLE world then? So much death? So much potential life not come to pass? What a waste of... of what exactly?
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ohforfsake
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posted May 12, 2010 07:49 PM |
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Do I think this world could be better? Surely! I don't see the point in that remark though, as it still beats death.
Also, most often measurements are relative, when you take a yardstick it's you measuring something in relation to something else.
However the everything vs. nothing is an absolute measurement. Sure not absolute in the way that everyone would agree, but absolute in the way that it does not need to relate to anything.
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JollyJoker
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posted May 12, 2010 08:00 PM |
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I think, that you are leaving the Logical Sector with that last post (insider joke for all who ever went from West to East Berlin in the Cold War).
Also, you didn't answer, WHY it is worse.
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