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| Thread: Do you believe in life after death? |  This thread is pages long: 1 2 · «PREV |
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Tsar-Ivor
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Scourge of God
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posted January 12, 2012 08:11 PM |
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How does one lose information? Or does it simply escape into thin-air  .
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"No laughs were had. There is only shame and sadness." Jenny
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Corribus
Hero of Order
The Abyss Staring Back at You
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posted January 12, 2012 08:30 PM |
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Edited by Corribus at 20:31, 12 Jan 2012.
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Information is order, in this case of a chemical nature. If we assume our sense of "self" (e.g., memories, personality, etc.) is tied to biochemical and anatomical order (genes, neurochemicals, 3D organization of neurons, and so on), then all of this information is effectively lost when a person dies because of a tendency toward chemical disorder without a reactive driving force to sustain the equilibrium. In other words, when a person dies, all his or her "self" information is lost because all his or her biomolecular order is lost - the brain literally rots and turns to goop.
So no, scientists don't have to admit that nothing was lost. Quite the contrary - a lot was lost. The actual matter is the same, but the way it is put together has changed.
It's like if you blow up a building and are left with a pile of rubble, and you say that nothing was lost because the matter is still there - isn't it still a building? Of course it isn't - all the iron and magnesium and carbon and what have you might still be there, but the chemical order was lost during the demolition. It's certainly no longer a building, because what made all that matter a building was the information contained within its structure. There's no life after death for the building, unless one expends the energy to resurrect it piece by piece, but then it's not the same building anymore, is it?
I suppose if you had a way of copying the information contained in a person, and had the means to use that information as a biological blueprint, you could build the same person (much as you could build the exact same building out of its constituent pieces), but that kind of technology is well beyond our capabilities. The amount of information contained in a person far exceeds that of a building. It'd certainly be an interesting experiment, though, wouldn't it? 
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mvassilev
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posted January 12, 2012 08:54 PM |
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Quote:
where is the poll choice "I don't know" ?
That's not an answer to the question. The topic title is asking whether you believe in life after death, not know whether there is life after death.
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Eccentric Opinion
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JollyJoker
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posted January 12, 2012 09:07 PM |
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Corribus, while you are of course right from a simple materialistic scientific point of view, it's actually the idea of information that makes the idea of life after death more viable: there might be a "safety copy" of ALL information stored "somewhere".
This might be true for all "selfs" as well, even though there are of course rather more complex aspects of this idea, but still. The information saved somewhere might be enough for a complete reconstruction.
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Tsar-Ivor
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posted January 12, 2012 09:09 PM |
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So slightly like carbon and diamonds.
Thanks for clarifying.
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"No laughs were had. There is only shame and sadness." Jenny
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Nocturnal
Promising
Supreme Hero
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posted January 12, 2012 09:28 PM |
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Just do me a favor and put "imo" in front of everything I say in your minds to avoid "speak for yourself" comments.
I find it curious that everyone is wondering about if there is life after death or not, but noone questions the existence of soul. I don't believe in soul. What they call soul is just the brain. Whatever they commit as soul's function (feelings, personality, tastes, etc.) all are brain's work, and the hormones.
I don't believe in any religion, god, hell, heaven or soul.
It is understandable that a living creature who has always only been aware of the time he "existed" embrace anything that would make him deny the time that will come when he will be "absent", cause it is terrifying.
That's why so many people easily believe heaven and hell and that all bad that has been done will be punished, all the good things done will be rewarded. Because it is a cruel thing that, no, the evil done will remain unpunished, and none of the good done will be rewarded, and all of us will be dead just the same when your body stops, and that's it. Yes, it is cruel. But unfortunately it is the truth and that's why the world is a cruel place.
And yes, because it is this cruel, a life with believing after-life and all, and feeling never alone as your creator is always watching you, and you will not experience that horrible thing called death can be a happier life, but an irrational one.
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Corribus
Hero of Order
The Abyss Staring Back at You
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posted January 12, 2012 09:47 PM |
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Quote:
Corribus, while you are of course right from a simple materialistic scientific point of view, it's actually the idea of information that makes the idea of life after death more viable: there might be a "safety copy" of ALL information stored "somewhere".
This might be true for all "selfs" as well, even though there are of course rather more complex aspects of this idea, but still. The information saved somewhere might be enough for a complete reconstruction.
Well of course, the question that kind of blows my mind to think about is whether, if my "self information" is stored, I could be rebuilt from scratch elsewhere according to the exact same specification and, in that case, whether I would be the exact same person. Would I recognize myself as me?
There's a bit of Star Trek philosophy in there - what would happen with a molecular transporter?
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JollyJoker
Honorable
Undefeatable Hero
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posted January 12, 2012 10:19 PM |
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Exactly.
And lots of SF and Horror stories about it.
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Zenofex
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Legendary Hero
Kreegan-atheist
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posted January 12, 2012 10:40 PM |
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Even if the information can be copy-pasted on 100%, it still remains to be clarified what will be copy-pasted. This "self" that most people are referring to is usually just a static summary of thousands of different "selfs" which are time and space-dependent. Even without super-technology, every human being is constantly in motion and is interacting with an environment which is also constantly in motion, so the human that you were one second ago is not exactly the same human that you are now, nor he has done/experienced something that is now a fact (for example, just a few minutes ago, this post of mine was non-existent). It's easier to notice when the time is a bit more stretched - the 10 year old is not the same person which the 20-year old is in quite many aspects and they both differ from the 40-year old, etc. This is due to physical changes of the organism and accumulated experience (stored and processed information). So which "self" will get copied after you die and why? The religions solve this easily by listing a number of rules which predetermine this and usually deal with some "summary" as mentioned above but if there are no such rules - what happens? 
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DagothGares
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No gods or kings
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posted January 12, 2012 11:22 PM |
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I am not cruel, life is cruel, eh, Nocturne.
Surprisingly materialist community we have, here.
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Fauch
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posted January 13, 2012 12:36 AM |
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let's twist the idea a bit. the information is lost? maybe if you died in a labor camp in soviet russia. otherwise, you still somehow live through the memory of people that have known you. well, all the information isn't lost anyway. you might have written a book, or made a video of yourself, and even if you died, on that video, you are still alive, in a way...
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Tsar-Ivor
Promising
Legendary Hero
Scourge of God
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posted January 13, 2012 01:23 AM |
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Or you have kids.
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"No laughs were had. There is only shame and sadness." Jenny
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Corribus
Hero of Order
The Abyss Staring Back at You
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posted January 13, 2012 01:31 AM |
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Exactly.
And lots of SF and Horror stories about it.
Actually, an even bigger mind-blow is whether someone could use that information to reconstruct another me at the same time this me still exists. Then there's two me's. What the hell happens then? Black hole formation?
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I'm sick of following my dreams. I'm just going to ask them where they're goin', and hook up with them later. -Mitch Hedberg
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Fauch
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posted January 13, 2012 01:32 AM |
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yeah, though, I was more thinking about your personality, not your adn.
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JollyJoker
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posted January 13, 2012 08:56 AM |
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Quote:
Quote:
Exactly.
And lots of SF and Horror stories about it.
Actually, an even bigger mind-blow is whether someone could use that information to reconstruct another me at the same time this me still exists. Then there's two me's. What the hell happens then? Black hole formation?
I don't think so. Leaving aside a couple of theoretical problems with the idea of safety copies as such, consider this: if you wake up from sleep or even anesthesia, why are "you" still "you"; where does the continuity of existance come from?
The answer is - continuity comes from consistency of MEMORY (which includes the memory of the self) with ACTUAL SITUATION.
That's why people who lose their memory - or at least part of it - are so... lost; there is no continuity, and they are somewhat alien to themselves.
So a "copy" could only REPLACE you at the point where memory and actual situation are consistent with each other. A copy with a different memory would be no copy anymore, but something else entirely.
I mean, if you remember going to bed last night with your wife in your home, and suddenly you wake up in a Motel in some other town, there's something wrong, obviously. If you phone your wife then and she asks you who you are because you actually are still lying in bed beside her, "you" are not "you" anymore.
However, I don't think the idea of a "safety copy" would include a "material restart" in any way - makes no sense to me.
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