The Afterlife (or lack there of)
- Thread starter NinjaGeek
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The Poona of Peshwa
Blood Glutton
Well, if time's a fourth dimension, you're just further back along in that particular direction in the overall shape of the universe.
Good point. And the reverse is true. If you live on after death, that's cool, but there's really nothing special about being alive. Some dude just made you...
Would it not instead make more sense to accept the past as a vast collection of moments now lost in the chaos of the present? It's hard for me to see nature as an efficient recycling system and to not assume the same in a more Universal sense, happening at all levels.
When a stick burns to ash for example, this observation leads the practical observer to a very Newtonian conclusion, which is to say that what has occurred was exactly a transformation from one state to another, from stick to ash and not, a complicated process of replication.
The Poona of Peshwa
Blood Glutton
Time is altered by gravity. Falling into a black hole, you'd see two seconds on your watch tick off as hundreds of thousands of years pass around you.
Time is relative. If you flew to our nearest neighboring star at 99% the speed of light, and then flew back to Earth, you'd have been gone for a thousand years even though it only felt like ten for you. Likewise, faster-than-light travel would send you back in time along that fourth dimension, where everything is always still happening.
What is practical has very little to do with the way things are on very large and very small levels.
Time is relative. If you flew to our nearest neighboring star at 99% the speed of light, and then flew back to Earth, you'd have been gone for a thousand years even though it only felt like ten for you. Likewise, faster-than-light travel would send you back in time along that fourth dimension, where everything is always still happening.
What is practical has very little to do with the way things are on very large and very small levels.
JoeVice
Member
BlackMetalWhiteGuy
Manly Man!
That seems a bit presumptuous that our sentience actually has significance on some level and that it's not just an evolutionary coincidence.
I remember hearing about this on a Science Channel special on Stephen Hawking in which he "prooved" that information could in fact be lost inside a black hole. I don't remember whether this was the theory that turned out to be his big blunder or not, but I think it was, and then he offered some alternative explanation that there could be multiple parallel universes and that only the histories of those universes in which information wasn't lost would actually matter. However, I'm no Einstein and I'm no Hawking so I don't find myself qualified to pick a side in this argument.
I think this is a point that too few people seem to realize. Many overlook this and spend their time fretting eventual death rather than admitting or even understanding how infinitely lucky they are to have ever been born at all.
* By the same physics, both scenarios are physically impossible.
* Hawking's himself completely reworked his black hole model in recent years.
* Your argument concerning black holes is thus, still subject to unfounded mathematical and physical theory.
* Most importantly, relativism does not imply time travel, only time variance in a single moment.
* Postulations regarding time travel create many unanswerable paradoxes.
* No one has yet proven time travel possible even on a quantum scale.
The Poona of Peshwa
Blood Glutton
So far as we know, the speed of light is insurmountable yes, but some variant of my travelling to the nearest star is a simple application of relativity. Soviet Astronauts who've spend long durations in space are a few seconds "younger" than they would otherwise be.
Hawking lost his bet that information could be destroyed in a black hole, this isn't breaking news. Postulations involving time travel are usually left to armchair physicists and late night bullshit sessions at the college pub. Physicists don't like to speak of it in terms of motion or application.
Unanswerable paradoxes aside, I really only meant that in a four-dimensional cosmos, it could never be like you never existed, I wasn't positing hope that time travel could somehow resurrect you or something.
Einherjar86
Active Member
Energy cannot be created or destroyed. It always exists in either a potential or kinetic form, and is always there waiting to be harnessed and used to create force. That said, I find it hard to believe that upon death the energy of a human being simply ends. I also find it hard to believe that consciousness simply ends. As logically as I can tell, it's linked with the energy of the human mind. Just because the body fails does not mean that energy and consciousness cease. They only transfer over to another vessel; but whatever that vessel may be is anybody's guess.
We're not debating the conservation of energy and although energy may not be destroyed (it's arguable it was thus ever created) information however, is always being lost, which is why I posed the question.
Einherjar86
Active Member
I was simply stating my belief as far as life after death goes; not commenting on your question.
And maggots don't consume the energy of our bodies at the moment of death. Studies have shown that electrical discharges of energy leaving the body occur at the moment of death. That's the energy I speak of; not the fuel that our bodies decompose into.
And maggots don't consume the energy of our bodies at the moment of death. Studies have shown that electrical discharges of energy leaving the body occur at the moment of death. That's the energy I speak of; not the fuel that our bodies decompose into.
The electrical charges wouldn't be gone, would be transferred to another system. Anyway this doesn't mean your mind goes to other places but doesn't mean the opposite.
Uladyne
Greg
Indeed.
Also, call me crazy, but while I'm definitely in no hurry for my life to end, there is a bit of comfort knowing that when I die, I will come the closest I possibly can to learning the answers to all the "big questions". Who knows? Maybe we're all in for pleasant surprise.
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