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University Receives $5 Million Grant To Study Immortality
Hugh Pickens writes "Humans have pondered their mortality for millennia. Now the University of California at Riverside reports that it has received a $5 million grant from the John Templeton Foundation that will fund research on aspects of immortality, including near-death experiences and the impact of belief in an afterlife on human behavior. 'People have been thinking about immortality throughout history. We have a deep human need to figure out what happens to us after death,' says John Martin Fischer, the principal investigator of The Immortality Project. 'No one has taken a comprehensive and sustained look at immortality that brings together the science, theology and philosophy.' Fischer says he going to investigate two different kinds of immortality. One is the possibility of living forever without dying. The main questions there are whether it's technologically plausible or feasible for us, either by biological enhancement such as those described by Ray Kurzweil, or by some combination of biological enhancement and uploading our minds onto computers in the future. Second would be to investigate the full range of questions about Judeo, Christian, Hindu, Buddhist, and other Asian religions' conceptions of the afterlife to see if they're theologically and philosophically consistent. 'We'll look at near death experiences both in western cultures and throughout the world and really look at what they're all about and ask the question — do they indicate something about an afterlife or are they kind of just illusions that we're hardwired into?'"
'People have been thinking about immortality throughout history. We have a deep human need to figure out what happens to us after death,' says John Martin Fischer,
Nothing, You're dead.
... nice slip of the keyboard to have "Riversdie" in an article on immortality.
"...University of California at Riversdie..."
Sorry about that.
Please do not read this sig. Thank you.
People yearning for immortality often tell themselves fictions about how they will survive death. I have started a project to record such fictions in the form of a documentary.
I'm still working on it, but here's the trailer:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-nbJcDiLLxU&feature=plcp
Paul Gillingwater
MBA, CISSP, CISM
I mean, aren't there enough bad people in the world already?
What? Oh, never mind.
Life? What do you mean life? I ain't gotta life!
Having to work for a living is the root of all evil.
I don't want to achieve immortality through my work... I want to achieve it through not dying.
Woody Allen
I predict the only thing that will really happen here is that some "scientists" with questionable ethics burn through 5M! Despite their grand claims, there is zero research need here.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
If someone would only give me a mere One million dollar grant to tell them if the religious beliefs are valid, I could have taken care of half the task and saved them a good deal of cash.
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
"including near-death experiences and the impact of belief in an afterlife on human behavior."
Those aren't "aspects of immortality". Those are aspects of religion, mythology, and in some cases -- insanity. What a waste of money.
Just imagine it, the Bush boys, Mitt Romney, Bill O'Reilly, Glenn Beck, Sara Palin, Rick Santorum... all of them immortal.
The game of life is rigged such that you can't know the answer. This is true of both atheist and religious alike. For the atheist, you can't prove the presents of nothing. For the religious (and intelligent designers), god doesn't want you to know or he would have provided a doorway to the "afterlife" that didn't require death.
'People have been thinking about immortality throughout history. We have a deep human need to figure out what happens to us after death,' says John Martin Fischer,
Nothing, You're dead.
Not necessarily. Obviously the religious fairy-tales are just that, i.e. whatever people need to hear to strengthen the meme-infection. But there is room for reincarnation without the religious connotations. Consciousness and life itself are still not understood at all, so there is room for speculation. Obviously, the body (brain) plays a part (for many the dominant part, it seems), but it is not enough to explain what is observable. Still, no need to do "immortality" research, everybody finds out sooner or later what happens. I guess these 5M just show that quite a few rich people live pathetic lives and know it.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
Good. I have suspected that a long time. Some areas of philosophy may qualify though.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
They should call George Noory from Coast to Coast AM. He talk about it quite often on the air.
Tomorrow is another day...
Are a good thing.
'People have been thinking about immortality throughout history. We have a deep human need to figure out what happens to us after death,' says John Martin Fischer,
Nothing, You're dead.
Most likely, but this sounds more or less like a grab for grant money.
Why are they funding research that's already been published?
Principal Investigator
Results and Discussion
Sex Also!
Virtually all the great geniuses of recorded history have believed in an afterlife. Some AC on slashdot confidently states otherwise. Who has more credibility - Isaac Newton or Anonymous Coward on the internet? That is indeed a tough one.
This is religious in nature. Why isn't there as much money donated to SENS or anyone else trying to understand aging?
A near-death experience is selective oxygen deprivation. It's the opposite of studying what it would take to lengthen a healthy life.
Mebbe everyone should just accept that Peggy Lee was right.
Who wouldn't want a grant like that? There's absolutely no possibility of accountability. The notions are so vague and there's so many different views, even among the same religion, about what an afterlife would be like that you can't really be proven wrong. Basically, they weaseled their way into $5 mill with no chance of being asked for results.
The Gospel according to lolcat
The headline really should specify that it is a private grant to study immortality. We're bound to get some people coming in here to bitch that the federal government is funding this (because after all even reading the summary is a lot to ask for some).
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
I am just virtually certain that if it becomes available, five million will not begin to cover the price of immortality.
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
Ernest Hemingway
I just got word from Isaac himself: There is afterbirth, but no afterlife. And everything I say is a lie.
I don't know who said it--when I heard it it was attributed to Mark Twain but that doesn't seem to be right. At any rate, someone asked a nonbeliever whether he wasn't terrified by the thought of nonexistence after death. He replied, "Not at all. I experienced nonexistence for eons before I was born, and I enjoyed every minute of it."
I wish them luck with their $5 million, but I don't think they'll be any wiser than Omar Khayyam:
With them the seed of Wisdom did I sow,
And with mine own hand wrought to make it grow;
And this was all the Harvest that I reap’d-
“I came like Water, and like Wind I go.”
Into this Universe, and Why not knowing,
Nor Whence, like Water willy-nilly flowing:
And out of it, as Wind along the Waste,
I know not Whither, willy-nilly blowing.
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
Perhaps the biggest impact on society would be if immortality could be achieved (in physical body), the only death would be from severe accident (or incurable disease, which we assume is mostly done away with also at that point). Thus, as long as we are stuck on this planet, having children would have to be severely regulated... to the point that almost nobody should be allowed to have any.
I don't think that is going to be easy for people. Plus, if you live for many hundreds of years, the chances of "accidental" birth are significant, even with birth control... to the point of sterilization being required.
... assuming the internet shares your definition of a life form.
However... forever is a long time!
So the whole concept seems kind of broken
A blog I run for the wealth
Virtually all the great geniuses of recorded history have believed in an afterlife.
In the past, atheism was even less common. God of the gaps and all that.
I don't care of these geniuses one day came to the conclusion that 1 + 1 = 3; you need actual evidence to back up your nonsense.
Cool story bro
The body (brain) is quite enough to explain what is observable. That doesn't mean we fully understand it, or that we ever will, but consciousness very obviously arises solely out of the brain.
Awesome furniture, accessories and cabinetry in Santa Rosa, CA: http://humanity-home.com/
Citation?
As far as consciousness is concerned, having a body is a prerequisite. What would you be conscious of, without sight, hearing, touch, taste, smell, proprioception or memory?
Well, maybe not; but for those with a moderately open mind, you really should -- before concluding -- examine the works of two people. Dr. Lawrence LeShan and Dr. Daryl J. Bem have done some tremendous work on the subject of ESP. LeShan, in his early years went further, working with some extraordinary people, under genuinely scientific conditions. I simply can't imagine someone reading LeShan's The Medium, the Mystic, and the Physicist and having anything negative to say.
If ESP ever does prove itself an authentic protocol, then its tendency to allow the mind to accurately observe remote locations could suggest a breach in the presumed dependency of consciousness on the form. I also recommend visiting the CIA's CREST database and searching amongst the many thousands of Remote Viewing documents that have been released. Despite rational assumption, there's more than redaction lines to look at.
This is a fascinating subject and I am not telling anyone to make any assumptions either way, but please look at quality research that's available before making conclusions.
Forward! -- Emperor Norton, 2012
Based on what evidence? I'm going to boldly assume you've never been dead before.
"Molest me not with this pocket calculator stuff."
- Deep Thought
Really now, what kind of fucking fool would donate 5 million to studying immortality? That is the dumbest thing I ever heard of.
Whoever conned out 5 million for this are prime example of a good con artist. Because thats all it is, is a con.
Not at all. The _only_ scientific connection between consciousness, intelligence and the brain is external observation. That is not even enough for a reasonable theory. You should read up on your science.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
Reality is an illusion we are hardwired into.
"Molest me not with this pocket calculator stuff."
- Deep Thought
I'm glad that we're spending this cash on immortality instead of cancer or AIDS research. Those ailments have have already been eradicated!
The key to achieving immortality is the liberation of information from the media that contains it. For this reason, genes are "practically" immortal because they survive the death of their host cell. I say "practically" immortal because I doubt whether genes would survive the big crunch or whatever comes after the heat death of the universe.
Some might argue that genes aren't anywhere near immortal because they mutate, thus producing evolution. This assumes a definition of immortality predicated on organic consistency, gods or demons that behave and even look in a consistently recognizable fashion. But why should "immutability" be considered a part of the definition, when we ourselves are NOT the same persons as the babies that were born two to four or more decades ago?
Mentally and physically the person in my baby picture is already dead. But somehow most people would insist that that baby is me!
So genes are already immortal up to the death of the universe or the explosion of the sun, where no Terran species manages to propagate itself across the galaxy. The problem then for the would-be transhumanist is to achieve the immortality of what Freud referred to as the Ego.
And this has already been partly achieved. Through books and other works of the human mind. The transmission isn't perfect, of course, but it should be possible to recreate a tiny bit of the consciousness of a diarist like Anne Frank as she lived during the Nazi domination of Europe.
Now imagine if a modern Anne Frank managed to secretly blog or tweet about her daily, even hourly experiences. A female teenage reader of her blog should be able to experience vicariously the joys and heartaches of Anne Frank, especially if that other girl lives under similar circumstances, with caring family and friends under a repressive government. Now if we extend this thought experiment with the use of wearable audiovisual recording equipment like Google Glass, we can have a practical substitute for the sensory input that produces memory. A person can effectively brainwash herself, or even himself, into becoming Anne Frank.
As memory and perception tends to be selective, we don't need to wear our Google Glasses to the toilet or in bed to record the essential experiences of another person, and to vicariously live that person's life. Omitting the repetitious bedtime/breakfast business should eliminate over half the data storage requirements of a life blog, leaving perhaps only sex as the great unknown.
But there is room for reincarnation without the religious connotations.
No, there isn't. Without a mechanism to transfer information outside of the dying brain, it is simply destroyed, and anything else is merely wishful thinking.
Obviously, the body (brain) plays a part (for many the dominant part, it seems), but it is not enough to explain what is observable.
We already know that brain is a biological computer with multiple chemical and electrochemical interfaces to the rest of the body. This is understood very well, and was understood even before people had computers and therefore could not yet compress this explanation into such a short statement. The only things unknown about it are the structure and mechanisms, and it's extremely foolish to claim that it breaks the laws of nature known through Physics and Chemistry.
Any alternative to the above is LESS LIKELY TO BE TRUE than "we are all in The Matrix" or "We are in a dream of a sleeping God" hypotheses, what means that it can not be a part of any realistic philosophy and should be relegated to the realm of fiction. All support for this nonsense comes from superstition and nowhere else.
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
Anyone else read it as immorality and thought it was a study about Congressman?
Virtually all the great geniuses of recorded history have believed in an afterlife. Some AC on slashdot confidently states otherwise. Who has more credibility - Isaac Newton or Anonymous Coward on the internet? That is indeed a tough one.
You miss the point. He's doing some grandiose posturing to show how well-conformed he is to this subculture by loudly rejecting a culture he thinks the group is opposed to. Many Scots show how Scottish they are by competing on how much they hate the English. He thinks he's part of a culture that competes on how much it hates religion. He's just trying to show, in his own misguided way, what a good little conformist he is.
... or he/she has thought about what the observable reality of people dying is and simply states the fact.
When you die, thats it. No more "life" for you.
Posting an opinion, based on fact or not is common to everyone here. I for one agree with his/her view.
...if Heaven is perfect...
Then it should also not have any arrogant jerks who think they are right and anyone who believes something they don't is wrong, even though they have absolute 0 evidence to back up their guesses.
So I guess that means you and me both are out. Although considering I don't think the place exists, that's probably more upsetting for you.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8ALInv_wzSQ
$5 million probably isn't enough to set up much serious biology. Maybe better than giving it to the Vatican.
I was raised in USSR, when/where Atheism was a part of a mainstream culture, and even though I disliked that mainstream culture, it did not inspire me to adopt some bizarre beliefs just to be easier distinguishable from Leonid Brezhnev. I now live in US, where Christianity is one of the foundations of the accepted worldview, that I also dislike. This still does not prevent me from having a burning hatred toward all forms of superstition, including religion in general and all forms of Christianity in particular.
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
1) State alleged facts. GOTO 2
2) Play Evil Laugh GOTO 3
3) Run Flying Police Box Video GOTO 4
4) Queue Dr. Who theme....
I really hope the two people who modded this interesting did so as part of the joke, but I suspect that this is yet another case of mods not even bothering to mouse-over links to sources, let alone read them.
Rest assured, socialized medicine will not cover it. No need to clutter up the place with the hoi palloi. Treatments reserved for the elite only. Good thing you are part of the elite!
No, there is experimental data as well. Lobotomies are a result of "change the brain, change the intelligence/personality" experiments. There is direct experimental data, not just external observation.
Learn to love Alaska
This story reflects the fundamental bias of science -- that the Universe is objective. Without that bias science as we know it would be radically different, but that doesn't mean the bias is accurate. There is no evidential reason to make us decide that the Universe is an objective, mechanical place, governed by rules arising from randomness and chaos, or that life evolves solely out of random mechanical mutation. If we take it as read that everything within the Universe arises subjectively, that is, it emanates from consciousness instead of consciousness emanating from matter, then it not only becomes a much more interesting place, but we can better understand phenomenon like the rapid pace of biological evolution, dreams and "paranormal" experiences, as well as physical death and what may or may not proceed it. It also resolves the problem between "God or no-God" -- if matter is energy and energy is consciousness, then an external God cannot exist, and yet "God" becomes pure consciousness, the thing itself that animates all reality.
At this point in the game I don't see why it's so much trouble to simply try switching the bias from objective reality to subjective, from mechanical to conscious. I realize the objective approach is connected to the necessary split that had to occur between religion and science, that science had to distance itself as much from matters of God as it could to avoid persecution, and this led science to dismiss any inherent consciousness to matter. In the end, though, I think we'll find that a subjective Universe is actually a more intuitive bias.
"Molest me not with this pocket calculator stuff."
- Deep Thought
What is considered the self has no immortality, it is a veil for that which transcends the need for death as before Abraham was, I am.
Physical immortality would ultimately depend on a steady state universe as you would need to not have to go through the singularity if it is a closed system.
If not closed light departs from light at the speed of light and everything escapes, including intellectual debatable ideas about immortality. No mind, beyond the beyond of beyond, random thought.
Most of the great geniuses of recorded history lived when not professing a belief in an afterlife would get you to that afterlife (or lack thereof) more quickly.
Learn to love Alaska
The _only_ scientific connection between consciousness, intelligence and the brain is external observation. That is not even enough for a reasonable theory. You should read up on your science.
LOL. By definition of science, external evidence is both the only source of evidence and sufficient for a theory.
This topic cannot really be studied scientifically, because science is limited to the physical human senses. For those who only believe that what is physical, touchable, viewable etc., this is a great waste of time and money. Whether there is life after death can only be grasped by faith.
Jesus Christ came and made the claim that he is God. The people of his day, especially the religious ones were unbelievably upset by this claim. They were torqued out of shape enough to conspire with the Roman governmental authorities to have Jesus executed. Jesus proved his claim to deity by resurrection from the dead. All religions, but one, are human efforts to reach God. There is only one faith that makes an exception to this. That is the Christian gospel where God becomes a human being in order to make it possible for him to confer eternal life to all humans who are simply willing to believe this. God reaches down to man, rather than man reaching up to God.
Anyone who studies the biblical record of the resurrection appearances of Jesus Christ, will realize that Jesus is a physical being, capable of all the normal physical activities normal humans are able to do. There were however also activities which show that Jesus existed not only on the earthly plane, but also a higher spiritual level or dimension. He was no longer subject to time and space in the same way that we are right now. He could materialize in and out of our time–space dimension, which is a technology that most scientists can't even talk about, because they don't believe in any dimensions beyond our own. When he finally ascended into “heaven”, he did not need a thundering rocket, but was quietly lifted up from the earth and disappeared into a cloud. He promised that everyone who believes and trusts him, will at some point in time inhabit a body just like his resurrection body. This body is no longer subject to entropy or decay or death.
A sufficiently advanced simulation is indistinguishable from reality.
"The mind is what the brain does"
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
You assume consciousness is an emergent property of the brain. That is a bit like assuming what is shown on a TV screen is generated in there. A good first assumption, but not more than an assumption. The currents state of scientific research is that it is completely unknown what consciousness is and what intelligence is. Both can be described by their effects, but to speculate on where they reside and whether they are generated there is very much premature at this time.
So, no, we do not understand that "the brain is a biological computer". Actually we do understand that human minds can do things that computers cannot do, and that is currently fundamental, i.e. not a question of the power of the computer, but a lack of any implementable theory that could make a computer do these things. I have been following the state of AI research for quite some time (and know some people in it personally), and this is what comes out when you ask people on the side or actually read the papers. Nobody knows how strong/true AI could be built, yet every healthy human being has strong/true Intelligence. (Never mind the BS some researchers publicly say to get funding.) This is actually a rather strong indicator that either the brain is far more than a "computer" or that intelligence and consciousness are not generated solely/fully by the brain.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
Kurzweil et al are Idiots.
Uploading your brain is NOT immortality
Uploading your brain just makes a copy. You still die in your rotting corpse.,
PS. wtf has theology hocus pocus got to do with science or immortality
Not any type of proof. If you damage part of a TV set, it stops to exhibit all of its features, for example may stop to display color. That still does not mean the picture is generated in there. So while the brain plays a part like any good interface does, it is not enough to explain the overall thing.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
Virtually all the great geniuses of recorded history have believed in an afterlife. Some AC on slashdot confidently states otherwise. Who has more credibility - Isaac Newton or Anonymous Coward on the internet?
Neither. This should give you an idea of the state of the art in this area. $5 million isn't going to change things either.
You seem to forget that quantum theory made that paradigm obsolete.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
You assume consciousness is an emergent property of the brain.
You're assuming that you're not in the matrix. You're assuming that the flying spaghetti monster doesn't exist. I don't care what absurd things you can come up with; I'll stick to reality.
This is actually a rather strong indicator that either the brain is far more than a "computer" or that intelligence and consciousness are not generated solely/fully by the brain.
No, it's an indicator that it's a different kind of computer than we know how to make at this present point in time.
"I am just virtually certain that if it becomes available, five million will not begin to cover the price of immortality."
I'm sure the University of California at Riverside will hold the patent, so it's up to them, I suppose.
Yeah, usually decomposition, and depending on the humidity levels, mummification. But you won't be around to experience any of that, being dead. You'll have exactly the same point of view as you had before you were conceived. You remember all that stuff from the beginning of the universe until you were born? No. Well that's exactly what will happen after you die, until the end of the universe...
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
Not necessarily.
Necessarily. Having been dead for quite a few minutes myself, but being lucky enough to have been reanimated, I can assure you absolutely nothing happens. No white lights. No angels. Nothing. But then again who are you going to believe - me, who is not trying to sell you anything, or the guys/gals who want you to a) buy their book or b) donate money to their church?
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
Second would be to investigate the full range of questions about Judeo, Christian, Hindu, Buddhist, and other Asian religions' conceptions of the afterlife to see if they're theologically and philosophically consistent. 'We'll look at near death experiences both in western cultures and throughout the world and really look at what they're all about and ask the question — do they indicate something about an afterlife or are they kind of just delusions that we're hardwired into?
Fixed. And who cares if they're "theologically and philosophically consistent" if they're wrong?
We can try an experiment. If we remove your brain from your head I hypothesise that your consciousness will immediately cease to exists. Let me know when you want to begin.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
I see this as more evidence that when income diversity grows beyond a certain point, we'll end up with the very wealthy creating a breakaway culture.
Not human anymore.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Don't tell the Vorlons! They might decide to blow it up.
Your TV analogy is massively flawed because there are ways to prevent the TV from receiving the signal AND to detect the signal AND to alter the signal.
There is nothing equivalent with the brain. So there is no evidence to support the hypothesis that anything can "survive" death.
But there is lots of evidence (and repeatable) that shows that changes to the brain change the personality of the person.
You are, essentially, demanding "proof" of a negative.
And that usually indicates that you've lost the thread.
Somebody should award a school a TEN million dollar grant to investigate immorality!
Didn't they try to get answers to that in the movie Flatliners... that ended well...
"A different kind of computer" is actually not a computer but something else. I have the theoretical computer science background to see that. Computers are rather limited in some respects, and these limitations are fundamental, i.e. not a question of technology. There are indications that human beings are not subject to these limitations. So the current state of scientific research is that we have no clue whether we can ever built that "something else" or how it would work. Sorry.
I am not saying religion has it right. Not at all. Religion is amply explained by memetic theory and there is really no need for anything more to explain it. I think the scientific state of the art can demonstrate rather convincingly that religion is likely wrong, but only with the usual limitations you get when there is zero evidence for something and a rather convincing explanation for something else. Most people do not understand Occam's razor, unfortunately, but rather cling to some fairy-tales to make them feel better. A relatively new and interesting research direction here is Terror Management Theory, where they explore how people deal with fear of death. Turns out that religion is one of the major ways and that fear of fear of death makes people not look the gift horse in the mouth to closely.
But pure materialism does not come close to explain what is observable at this time either. I am just saying that at this time we do not know that death is the end of individual existence. It may or may not be so. It is most likely the end of external communication possibilities with a specific body. But "out of sight, out of existence" is a rather crude way to look at it.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
Also drugs aftect the brain and that affects consciousness. Same with electrical stimulation.
Why is it that it's not an altogether unusual thing for somebody who formerly did not practice any religious belief system, upon having a near death experience, they become believers afterwards in some concept of an afterlife, while you rarely, if ever, hear of situations where people who were believers in such a concept prior to having a near death experience, and afterwards conclude based on their experience that there's really nothing beyond it?
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
Then propose a testable hypothesis and we'll do some experiments. The fact is, you got nothin'.
How do define being 'dead'? Cessation of cardiac / pulmonary activity for some time? Perhaps you were trying to get there, but we know the brain doesn't 'die' immediately. You may have suffered some permanent damage (as evidence by your hanging out here on Slashdot) but you managed to get at least some of your brain functioning again.
Maybe the angels, lights and funny guy with the beard show up later.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
Only an Anonymous Coward would endorse Mitt Romney.
Good luck with that. You realize you have been scammed, right? The "Jesus" brand has had quite a long time to refine itself and it is impressive in its ming-controlling powers by now. It is still just a fairy-tale modified to fund some rather large and unethical organizations.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
That very good at this science thing, are you?
Required reading for internet skeptics
I don't want to live in a world with immortal rich people.
Actually, the other way round. I am just saying we do not know either way at this time. You are claiming we do. That places the burden of proof on you.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
We already know that brain is a biological computer with multiple chemical and electrochemical interfaces to the rest of the body
How are things in the 1950's? You know, back when that was still tenable.
Required reading for internet skeptics
This topic cannot really be studied scientifically...
Should have stopped there.
Anyone who studies the biblical record of the resurrection appearances of Jesus Christ...
... should know that the Bible is not a historically accurate account of real events.
Wow, you manage to fail both computer science AND philosophy in a single post!
No wonder you're posting as an AC -- I wouldn't that bit of nonsense tied to my account!
Required reading for internet skeptics
Actually we do understand that human minds can do things that computers cannot do, and that is currently fundamental, i.e. not a question of the power of the computer, but a lack of any implementable theory that could make a computer do these things.
Could you be more specific? What are some things a human can do that it is fundamentally impossible for any computer, no matter how powerful, to do?
"I'm too busy to research this and form an educated opinion, but I do have time to tell everyone my uninformed opinion."
I've been in line at the DMV. Does that count?
Certainly that is correct for the forms of consciousness we as humans relate to. Future AIs may beg to differ, however, and given they will have been constructed by us, will probably be able to communicate with us despite this difference. They may have quite a new perspective.
Someone had to do it.
Adam savage ages 1000 years
If you could reason with religious people, there would be no religious people
As much as I hate to feed the trolls: how do you know that Jesus was telling the truth?
I don't see a safe logical path to the implication that consciouness (as opposed to a particular "awareness") is composed of information. While retention of an identity, e.g. memories, would require information transmittal, transfer of consciousness itself (when defined simply as sensation and observance) may not, until we can definitively unify consciousness with an information bearing construct.
Someone had to do it.
You assume consciousness is an emergent property of the brain.
"Emergent property" is in a non-hand-wavy language is known as "information processing". It's what computers do.
That is a bit like assuming what is shown on a TV screen is generated in there.
No, it's not. TV receives images using a well-known mechanism that is based on well-known properties of electromagnetic waves. TV is not special in being able to receive electromagnetic waves, and TV station produces known and observable electromagnetic radiation that is processed by TVs. Even a person who knows nothing about TVs, TV standards and protocols, can easily discover that there is a big tower on a hill that produces electromagnetic waves with wavelengths between tens of centimeters to meters, and all TVs with antennas display pictures carried by changes in parameters of those electromagnetic waves -- it can be studied by blocking those waves, passing them through a filter, adding noise, etc.
With more sophisticated tools, a person may learn about details of how the images are encoded and how signal is modulated, but the most fundamental piece of knowledge -- that TV receives radio waves that contain encoded pictures -- is immediately evident to any person who is willing to perform research using basic knowledge of Physics, even if such person knows nothing about TVs.
With the brain, there is no BIG TV TRANSMITTER IN THE SKY that has all matter completely unaffected, except for EXTRA-SPECIAL HUMAN BRAINS BECAUSE THEY ARE SO SPECIAL. Things don't work that way.
So, no, we do not understand that "the brain is a biological computer".
Not only we do understand that as a result of rigorous scientific research, it's such an important piece of knowledge that a person who "disagrees" with it, should be considered to be unqualified for any kind of discussion related to science or brains, in the same way as a person who believes that Earth is flat is unqualified for any kind of discussion related to geography or astrophysics.
Nobody knows how strong/true AI could be built
I do! There are over 7 billions of examples of it currently in use! They even occasionally assemble new instances! The only question is, how it can be built USING SOMETHING OTHER THAN EXISTING BRAIN CELLS. And obviously, it's important to understand how it works. However fundamental processes are known very well -- neurons, electric pulses carried by changes in relative concentration of ions, various chemicals involved in the process either directly or indirectly regulating the speed and intensity. On top of that, there is plenty of math, however the same can be said about any computer.
Can you produce a Nintendo 64 starting from sand crystals and ending with playing a Mario game? Will I have to do it personally on my desk over this weekend, for you to believe that there is nothing magical about it? And if no, then what the hell do you want from scientists to do about a much more complex and much more weird computer, so you will shut up about your religious nonsense?
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
What are some things a human can do that it is fundamentally impossible for any computer, no matter how powerful, to do?
A computer, as far as we know it, cannot understand speech on a level that would be comparable to a human. At this time we can throw hardware at this problem but still we cannot build a computer for the starship Enterprise.
Today's speech recognition is still unbelievably crude, and it depends upon physical recognition of sounds (phonemes) and matching them, fuzzily, to a set of known words. Context is lost, and incompatible (wrong) words can be strung together. A human does not recognize speech on a word by word basis - that process is continuous and predictive.
Virtually all the great geniuses of recorded history have believed in an afterlife. Some AC on slashdot confidently states otherwise. Who has more credibility - Isaac Newton or Anonymous Coward on the internet? That is indeed a tough one.
That's appeal to authority, but not a very well-formed one because you didn't even bother to declare what authority you were appealing to. The fact is, without any evidence to back up such claims, they can be dismissed -- on anybody's authority.
Isaac Newton also believed in the Philosophers Stone and wasted most of his career on alchemy, not on physics. Excellence in one area does not normally translate into excellence in another. Something, by the way, more than a few engineers should keep in mind before they start opining outside their field.
Trust the Computer. The Computer is your friend.
"You seem to forget that quantum theory made that paradigm obsolete."
Citation?
And the "citation?" part is only to not look too rude saying "you are wrong".
near-death experiences and the impact of belief in an afterlife on human behavior.
Near-death experiences have nothing to do with immortality (but it's interesting for another reason). "Belief in an afterlife" is just some story made up for people to cope with death of loved ones (ohhh "they're with God now" and suddenly it's alllllllright), and their own ever-nearing death.
Why not give the money to Aubrey de Grey and/or the SENS Foundation - have some actual research done on the causes of aging and what to do about them. You can say what you like about de Grey, but he's right about one thing: aging should be treated as a disease.
When the copyright term is "forever minus a day", live every day like it's the last.
"there is room for reincarnation without the religious connotations."
As much room as for a wristwatch about to be hammered to transfer its time to another one.
you need actual evidence to back up your nonsense.
The concept of eternal oblivion requires as much evidence as the concept of an afterlife. Though we may be able to observe skips in time, or moments of feeling "in the dark," by definition we cannot experience obvlivion. All we have direct evidence of is the ability to travel forward in some timeframe with no subjective effect (no surprise there, if you are a photon), and the ability to experience a primal evasion instinct. As such, and since we do experience the state of consciousness, even a philosophical reason to believe in eternal oblivion is lacking. The very concept may be just a linguistic construct for all we know, and as such, just as much a meme as religions.
Someone had to do it.
... immortality ?
I saw that tunnel of light, once, when I was still a little kid - of course I didn't know what was it then - but seeing that does not give me the power of immortality - I know I _will_ die someday
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
"You assume consciousness is an emergent property of the brain."
Quite a sensible assumption since, by all that we know, any change in conciousness can be mapped to changes in the brain and nowhere else but the brain.
Or are you aware of other sources of conciousness you want to share with us?
Isaac Newton is DEAD!
The discovery of a way to make a human life forever would be devastating to Earth. If it became cheap enough, and most people had access to it, the population explosion alone would wreak havoc upon the world.
How are things in the 1950's? You know, back when that was still tenable.
Just because there was an invasion of religious pseudo-philosophers into universities, it does not mean things that were certainly known then ceased to be known now. However a lot of shit was written pretending that superstitions reflect reality, before and after the middle of last century.
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
We don't know that this is impossible for a computer to do. All we know is that we don't fully understand the process necessary to do it. That's not proof of anything. Please try again.
When Richard Dawkins first proposed the word "Meme" in his book, 'The Selfish Gene', he admitted there were several basic problems with the concept of Memes as Replicators subject to natural Selection. He wrote that he hoped some of the difficulties could be overcome in the future. None of his own objections in this early work were ever successfully addressed, but he started writing as though they had been dealt with, perhaps because so many people seemed to sieze on the idea and accept it with various accolades. Unless those objections can be overcome, referring to Meme-infection is a way of disguising that you are stooping to an unfounded ad-hom attack on the persons you disagree with. (not that I'm saying you personally have that motivation, necessarily, just that you need to read the original objections one of the chief inventors of the meme concept once acknowledged existed and is now trying to sweep under the rug, and think about whether you still want to use the whole thing). I wouldn't chew you out for it, except you have several valid points if I understand you, one that reincarnation is not necessarily connected to any particular religion or religious idea, and another that there is evidence to suggest treating consiousness as just a brain epi-phenominon is inadiquate at best and missleading at worst. You don't need to buttress your arguments with references to Meme-infection.
Who is John Cabal?
Based on what evidence? I'm going to boldly assume you've never been dead before.
He or she certainly HAS been dead before. Where were you 200 years ago? Certainly not alive!
Mitt Romney refuses to release his tax returns. There must be something really bad in there for him to not release them. I'd bet bad enough to scuttle his entire campaign.
Jesus Christ came and made the claim that he is God. The people of his day, especially the religious ones were unbelievably upset by this claim. They were torqued out of shape enough to conspire with the Roman governmental authorities to have Jesus executed. Jesus proved his claim to deity by resurrection from the dead.
You said a bunch more but it was claptrap not even worth quoting and for the most part nonsense anyway.
What we know is a lot less than what you said. We don't know that Jesus ever made the claim that he was God. We only know that that claim was made on his behalf after he was dead. And he was executed by the Roman Empire because they thought his followers were trying to set him up as some sort of king. Nipped that in the bud, they did.
As for his alleged resurrection, he never got around to proving it to anybody but the insiders of his little cult and by the time all this stuff got written down, it's not even clear whether the whole thing was intended to be taken as a literal fact or meant as a metaphor for spiritual renewal.
Look, if you don't understand what I've written, you very likely don't have even a basic understanding of the subject.
Yet here you are, proud of your incredible ignorance -- confident that the subject must be nothing but nonsense and thus you automatically know everything about it.
It'd post something more substantial, but it's a waste of my time. It's like arguing with creationists.
Required reading for internet skeptics
Sorry, you have to believe me on that. If you want to invest a few months or years, look as Computability, Goedels incompleteness, the current state of the art in AI, etc. Simply (and grossly inaccurately) put, anything that needs "improvisation", "flexibility", "insight" and "understanding" is completely beyond computers. So completely that there is not even a theory how this could be fixed if there was unlimited (but finite) computing power. Some of these limitations survive if you assume infinite computing power.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
For $5M I'd tell them whatever they want to hear.
2019 is going to be the year of Linux on the desktop.
You seem to forget that quantum theory made that paradigm obsolete.
I have to agree with the other poster about you just being wrong. It doesn't help that we don't have evidence either that quantum theory plays a role in consciousness. That's a double whammy.
Indeed. Well said.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
Only an Anonymous Coward would endorse Mitt Romney.
On a side note - We aren't all living forever, but this election season is making it feel like forever.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Well, there is no arguing with your beliefs. Beliefs they are and your augmentation is at best sloppy.
Just one comment: "Emergent property" as used by me here means "unexpected behavior that cannot readily be explained" with a slightly ironic connotation.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
Yet here you are, proud of your incredible ignorance -- confident that the subject must be nothing but nonsense and thus you automatically know everything about it.
You're quite confident about that. You seem just as arrogant.
You are confusing correlation and causation.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
"We want funding to send a ship to the end of the ocean to determine what shape the world is."
"We already know what shape it is: Flat."
plant ZEIST and PS that movie sucked
I just my whole existence, is this bad?
No, it's not. TV receives images using a well-known mechanism that is based on well-known properties of electromagnetic waves. TV is not special in being able to receive electromagnetic waves, and TV station produces known and observable electromagnetic radiation that is processed by TVs. Even a person who knows nothing about TVs, TV standards and protocols, can easily discover that there is a big tower on a hill that produces electromagnetic waves with wavelengths between tens of centimeters to meters, and all TVs with antennas display pictures carried by changes in parameters of those electromagnetic waves -- it can be studied by blocking those waves, passing them through a filter, adding noise, etc.
The reason it's a 'well known mechanism' is we know how to build the thing. In the process of building the thing, we know to do things like block the radio waves to work out how it works. Bring somebody from the 18th century to our time and have him work it out and... nope, he's not going to get it. Which... actually that was the point of that analogy.
However fundamental processes are known very well -- neurons, electric pulses carried by changes in relative concentration of ions, various chemicals involved in the process either directly or indirectly regulating the speed and intensity. On top of that, there is plenty of math, however the same can be said about any computer.
Has anybody built a working model of a brain that has become conscience?
"I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)
Not even close.
Maybe at some point, consciousness will be so well understood that it can entirely be explained by the activity of the brain, but not yet.
We're only now getting the outlines of an understanding of dreaming and sleeping, for example. It hasn't been that long that we've been able to identify more than a dozen senses for another example, and there are more yet being discovered.
We can see what the amygdala is doing, but we don't see just how.
We know that it requires the brain, but as far as being located in the brain, there is some evidence of consciousness being distributed. And, it depends how you define consciousness.
We haven't seen consciousness with only a brain, for example. So you can say, "there's no consciousness without a brain" but there's really isn't a lot of evidence of consciousness without a body either, unless you buy the stories of decapitated heads cursing out the executioners. Maybe one of these rich guys will have his brain kept alive in a lab and we'll find out if consciousness exists only in the brain. I would like that. Not that I'd like that for myself, mind, but I like the idea of a disembodied brain of an ultra-rich guy floating in a solution and interacting with the world via computers.
Isn't proprioception a possible case of distributed consciousness, by the way? The sense of touch?
I don't know about this immortality project, though. I can absolutely see the possibility of there coming a time when I've had enough. The existence of this project does demonstrate one thing for sure, though: the rich guys who are funding it sure have a high regard for themselves. Is there any evidence that anybody else wants them around forever? You think their trophy wives are thrilled knowing that Daddy Warbucks is going to last indefinitely? I'm betting there are some progeny that definitely wouldn't approve of them attaining immortality. Immortality would definitely change things.
I can think of at least one very well-known public figure whose life would have been very different if his father had lived forever.
You are welcome on my lawn.
I am applying for a grant to study the possibility of pots of gold at the end of rainbows.
Figure it should be good for about 3 mil.
No, you are the one that claims that there is such a thing as a soul. Prove it or shut up.
Will his consciousness cease to exist or will his ability to show us it exist cease?
That's sort of a serious part of the question. Does someone's consciousness really cease to exist or just our ability to perceive it.
You're mistaken. I made no such claim. I don't think any such thing exists.
The number of people who DO report 'near-death' experiences each year is in the six digit range (In a typical year, over 200,000 people report some variation on these experiences in a western medicine style clinical setting - for support of this claim, interested persons mighrt start with: Mauro, James "Bright lights, big mystery".Psychology Today, July 1992, and see where that article's references lead them.). If you want to claim there are 8 million books and churches to match that many living Americans who claim to have had such experiences, go right ahead, but as it stands, your absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. Personally, I don't assume that everyone who says they have had a different experience than I have is motivated to lie by money. You do realize that in taking that position, you are revealing something rather unpleasant about yourself?
However, we may want to take your (non) experience as a disproof of the contemporary Pop-Christian style God, as presumably you would have had one of those negative versions of the white light experience so as to induce reform. Logicially then, there is either no afterlife, or there is, but you aren't on the list, or it IS a heaven or Hell thing, but you (of all people) don't need a nudge in the right direction, or it's not a Heaven or Hell type thing so there's no particular need to give everyone a sample.
Oh, and I'm neither selling a book or founding a church, but that does not mean I haven't seen the light. I just don't usually talk about such experiences.
Who is John Cabal?
Like, whoa, dude, citing "quantum theory" lets you make any argument while pretending to be right. Awesome, man. We're all a bunch of dreaming dolphins floating around in space. Quantum theory says so, man, cause like, ANYTHING can happen, even if it has infinitely low probability. That low probability makes it, like, more likely to happen, cause I read Hitchhikers Guide in high school.
Ad hominem, and baffling bullshit. Sure, your arguments are so much better.
No, he isn't, you bleeding retard. Or are you saying that brain surgery somehow affects the soul separately from the brain, and that changes in behavior and perception after such surgery is caused by something that affects something that is magically correlated at 1:1 with brain tissue?
Bullshit magical thinking.
aging rich guy who fears death, realizing money is not everything ...
I like my spaghetti with source.
Dementia is ugly and disconcerting to those who live with it. The probability of suffering from dementia increases dramatically after age 85. That's why you run into so few cogent centigenerians. So, who would want to live on after their brain is no longer useful to themseves or anyone else? Or is this yet another waste of resources aimed at the misguided goal of interstellar travel?
What's next, a grant to employ state-of-the-art technology to indirectly measure the weight of the soul?
Virtually all idiots and morons have believed that shit too.
Being "smart" doesn't make your beliefs true, especially when you allow your cognitive biases to run wild because you don't even know what cognitive biases are, much less how to elucidate their presence or compensate for them.
"I saw that tunnel of light, once, when I was still a little kid - of course I didn't know what was it then"
Let's hope it ain't a train.
"Consciousness and life itself are still not understood at all, so there is room for speculation. "
You are a naked ape and you'll die like an animal. Get used to it.
Do you have two IDs? And you have them arguing with each other?
Jesus. Fucking. Christ.
Also, the burden of proof is always on the idiot claiming that some magical unobservable thing exists, not on the person who sees such idiotic claims and claims it doesn't exist. This is the case for magical self containers, deities, and sentient floating amalgams of pasta and meatballs.
If it was a train in a tunnel I would not be here typing
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
Hey! Go hijack your own thread!
Thanks for speaking your doctrine as if it were established fact.
Like, whoa, dude, citing "quantum theory" lets you make any argument while pretending to be right. Awesome, man. We're all a bunch of dreaming dolphins floating around in space. Quantum theory says so, man, cause like, ANYTHING can happen, even if it has infinitely low probability. That low probability makes it, like, more likely to happen, cause I read Hitchhikers Guide in high school.
Obvious troll is obvious.
That's not an answer. And I think you know it as well as I do.
First, I'm quite familiar with computability and Godel's incompleteness theorems, and they have nothing at all to do with the question. There is absolutely nothing in them that implies AI is a fundamentally unsolvable problem. In fact, most AI researchers probably understand those subjects far better than you do - and they still consider AI to be a worthwhile problem to study.
Second, the current state of the art in AI is irrelevant. You didn't just say there were things computers can't currently do. You said there are things no computer can ever do, no matter how powerful. That claim needs to be justified.
Third, AI has actually been making dramatic progress in recent years. After decades of following paths that didn't lead anywhere, researchers have finally found some techniques that enabled major breakthroughs. If you want to see practical applications of that, just look at Watson or Siri or the like. A mere five years ago, both of those would have been science fiction. Today they're real.
"I'm too busy to research this and form an educated opinion, but I do have time to tell everyone my uninformed opinion."
Mitt Romney refuses to release his tax returns.
And Hussein O'bummer refuses to release his Real birth certificate
We are still waiting
I suppose that's better than the billions in funding that universities normally get for their ongoing study in immorality...
The medical definition, which is quite easy for me since I'm also a physician. Death can be reversible or non reversible. The legal definition of death is the minute I put my signature to the death certificate. Either way clinical death is defined as lack of pulse, blood pressure, breathing deep tendon reflexes, etc. It is identical in both reversible and non reversible cases, which is why efforts are usually taken to reanimate a recently dead person, especially if the death happens in front of medical staff and is not obviously irreversible (example, decapitation, a body that is obviously cold/stiff to the touch, etc).
but we know the brain doesn't 'die' immediately.
The tissue does not "die", however it stops working almost immediately when blood flow stops. The brain consumes huge amounts of oxygen and will immediately deplete any oxygen present in the blood. That's the reason people will suffer "transient ischemic attacks" (sort of like a mini-stroke) even with partial blockages of their carotid arteries - because there is a momentary disruption of blood flow. Now you could argue that a cell that is still alive in that it can maintain the permeability of its cell membrane for the moment, is not technically dead and you are correct. However that cell, at that moment, is not "working". All remaining ATP is being used to try to keep the cell alive, and it has no energy spare to do things like depolarize and transmit signals.
Maybe the angels, lights and funny guy with the beard show up later.
Buddy you are free to believe whatever you want. For me I just remember not finishing a sentence in the ER, and then being ventilated with a crowd of colleagues and nurses around me a few minutes later. There was no passage of time. There was no pain. There was no suffocation. In fact when I "came to" it took me a while to realize what had happened, with the obvious disbelief that it was happening to me. I do remember a certain disconnect from my body and it took a few minutes to register all the poking and prodding that was going on as IV lines were inserted, etc. And after a few minutes the incredible pain from the burns I had from the defibrilator started to be felt. But it's an amazing feeling to not have to do your own breathing. But I wouldn't read more into it than that. At least now I know that death is completely painless, and I'm not afraid for next time. I was taken completely by surprise, so now I figure that no one realizes when they are going to die. Oh they might feel really ill, or they might realize they are in real danger. But there's no "I'm dying" sensation. It just happens, quite suddenly, and just like the exact moment when you fall asleep, you have no idea exactly when it happens. But all the religious stuff I chalk up to people making shit up because they want/need attention, or they have to justify their beliefs to others in order to convince themselves that it's "true".
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
There's a whole bunch of people who report little green men and anal probes and all sorts of shit. That doesn't make it true. Anyway I don't need to convince anyone. I've said my piece and I think I'm pretty well qualified. If you don't agree then I really don't care.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
What? Earth isnt flat? Do you know that for a fact? I'm going to report this to the Pope, you heathen!
Will his consciousness cease to exist or will his ability to show us it exist cease?
If you tell me that something everyone calls blue is actually red, does it really make a difference if I keep calling it blue? Are humans defined by their consciousness, or more by their ability to express their consciousness and use it to impact the world around them? If you remove his ability to do this - even if his consciousness were to remain - could we still call him "human"?
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
My experience includes fellow humans who for whatever reason believe in things that are provably untrue. Spies in their underwear, CIA receivers in their fillings, a potential balanced federal budget, and so on. Subjectively these folk are in my experience and I am confident they believe these things absolutely through whatever defect in their mind manifests these visions as concrete unambiguous subjective proof as much as I disbelieve them through what I perceive to be absolute unambiguous subjective proof. I therefore cannot trust my own mind, as I have no objective measure to know if I am not equally defective. All objective proofs I might instantiate are filtered through this potentially fallible mind of mine and might be imagined, so they can't be trusted either even first-hand, let alone second hand. For all I know I'm making all of this up after the fact, none of them or even you /.ers actually exist and so on. Maybe this is a test.
I am left with nothing but to act as if I am sane without knowing whether I actually am within the context of what I believe sanity is, to be successful in my social context - to deal with the folk I come across as kindly as I can in the hope they might reciprocate and leave me with a mutually pleasant subjective experience; to leave them to their phantoms and demand they leave me to mine as much as possible - which thus far is working out. Maybe the Dalai Lama is right, and kindness is the path to wisdom. Or maybe he's just a creation of my psyche as much as you are.
I'm fairly acclimated to this doubt. Given a couple pages of LZW proofs from the ACM Communications and an article on packet streaming I can implement the .GIF protocol in any of the 40+ programming languages I know. Given 40 thermocouples in a box I can develop a sensor input to fan speed algorithm to minimize the acoustic output for any level of processor and other system thermal output. I can design a server, storage and networking architecture to serve 40,000 users with email and VDI for least cost. My subjective experience is that the external responses to these efforts are generally positive. But I can't be sure this isn't just some sort of mental masturbation and I'm actually locked in a ward somewhere, and these things are figments of my imagination. Nor can you.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
I mean, Riverside is right next to their secret Gold Base compound at Hemet where all Scientologists can only dream of being told they're a "suppressive person" and kept in "the hole" at David Miscavige's whim.
Seriously that $5 million could be spent getting a whole 14 people from The Immortality Project up the "Bridge to Total Freedom" to Operating Thetan level 8! (unless they have to redo any levels, at David Miscavige's whim)
And now a quote from Fads and Fallacies in the Name of Science (1952) by Martin Gardner:
In 1950, speaking to an audience of 6,000 in the Shrine Auditorium, Los Angeles, L. Ron Hubbard introduced a coed named Sonya Bianca as a clear who had attained perfect recall of all “perceptics” (sense perceptions) for every moment of her past. In the demonstration which followed, however, she failed to remember a single formula in physics (the subject in which she was majoring), or the color of Hubbard's tie when his back was turned. At this point, a large part of the audience got up and left. Hubbard later produced a neat dianetic explanation for the fiasco.
As any member of Scientology in good standing will tell you, to learn more just read a book!
Then you were not as quick (nor as dumb) as I was as a kid. I've lived through several rapidly approaching trains in tunnels.
The closest I've ever come to a near death experience however was that time when a really big burly biker unfolded himself from a small pink smartcar carrying a small dog in a pink coat.
Ever tried so hard not to laugh that you start to feel faint?
Ugh.
Either you are unbelievably stupid or you are lacking a lot of imagination
Well, that is sort of the question now isn't it?
I mean forget about all this mumbo jumbo on spirit and soul or afterlife, if a person is clinically dead, can they still think or experience something on any level? If so, to what extent and should we reconsider how we treat these people?
On the other hand, we do not bother to much with restoring cognitive brain function in traumatic head trauma cases where the brain is damaged significantly. We do attempt to retrain them if possible to make use of other parts of the brain for the same type of skills and function. I know a guy who laid a bike down and impaled his head, through the helmet, on an Iron rod sticking out the side of a telephone pole. They said he is a 1 percent'er, as generally only one percent of people survive something like that and he made a decent recovery. Still has issues with balance sometimes and is a complete ass at times, but he was a prick before the accident too. His mother says he's changed, I think he's more of an ass more often, but most people can't tell the difference outside him constantly bringing the subject up and almost falling two or three times an hour If not sitting.
So if the consciousness is there even though the ability to express it isn't, then perhaps we could recreate this ability and perhaps end some suffering from situations like that where people damage or destroy the ability to express their consciousness.
This could have applications outside of mortality. But I guess is brain dead really dead could be the question.
Hi there. I'll reply to you.
First, a pet theory. I consider AI to be a deep racial fear, because once it gets going there will be no shutting it down, so in a way it is 10% like the Matrix, in which people have to push themselves ever harder to keep up, and AI just gets to copy the prior progress and keep going.
And also as much as it is slammed, I feel the Loebner prize is an important branch of AI that could highlight one currently under-rated aspect of AI: defending against troll comments. Currently the favorite way to bust the Loebner entries is *by having an incentive to reward non-meaningful conversations*, the contestants immediately start asking pure troll questions like "is Queen Anne bigger than an opera singer?" In one sense, these are not as hard to parse as they look. Instead of getting all wrapped up in 7 layers, the program could have a troll-deflection routine that acts like someone chatting on a forum, "lol wut is who bigger than wha?"
Changing topics here, 5 million "to study immortality and life&death" is pitifully small! What do they expect to buy with that budget? "A theologist, a biologist, and a family planner were sitting in a bar". It's almost as low balled as 1$ mil in rent, 1$mil in tests, 1$mil in hospital stays for a patient experiment, $1 mil for your choice of equipment on site, and then 2 years of salaries for some small number of people vanishes into the last million.
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
I have yet to see evidence of causality. Does changing the brain change consciousness or does changing the brain change the ability of consciousness to use the brain?
Immortality through some after-life like concept is impossible. First, there is no god. That's not my opinion, that is a fact. I'm not gonna go into details there, but it's been discussed enough, and every single argument for the existence of a god has been disproved. Anyone still believing in that is simply refusing to reason. So, no afterlife.
Now, immortality through human technology is inevitable. It'll happen one of two ways: Either through bio-engineering, or through some kind of memory download. I consider the later the most likely scenario. I think a lot about the concept of the last generation. Or the first one, however you want to think about it. Essentially, that generation that will be alive at the right time to see that technology be born. They will be the last generation of humans that can actually die. How that tech will change society is the realm of science fiction.
Now give me my 5 million dollars.
WTF am I doing replying to an AC at 5 A.M on a Friday night?
Her special line of cell of her is immortal. But Ms Lacks is dead for the concept of life we use. Indeed for a human to live , it needs a consciousness , a living brain, for all we know. My skin cell might suddenly decide to become immortal, and killing me with it if the cancer treatment don't work, but that would be the end of me , my memory, my logic reasonning, my emotion. All that would be left would be a few cell on a petri dish somewhere. For all purpose , for my family, my descendant, the whole human society I would be dead.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
not enough to explain what is observable? God in the gaps? Fuck that. That kind of superstition is no better than regular religion, and it comes from the same state of mind. "Not enough to explain what is observable", so it must be magic. That's bullshit and you know it. Anybody without a deep understanding of semiconductors will think that a CPU is not enough to explain what the computer is doing, and if that person is crazy enough, he will come up with a concept similar to a CPU-soul or something like that. That doesn't mean that CPUs might have a soul, or that they are not enough to explain what a computer does, it just means the person looking at it is uneducated and prone to wishful thinking.
WTF am I doing replying to an AC at 5 A.M on a Friday night?
I find christians to be a very complex paradox. Think about it this way:
The soul is a myth, and everything we are is in our brains. Anybody with a functioning brain can't believe in a soul. But christians do believe in a soul, therefore they must lack a functioning brain. But they still walk around, so there must be something else keeping them walking, i.e: a soul.
I like to think that's not true, and they are simply zombies. That's more believable than the existence of a soul.
WTF am I doing replying to an AC at 5 A.M on a Friday night?
...until somebody mentions death. Then the nutbars come out of the closet. If anybody thought religion was ever about anything except the fear of death, this is some fascinating evidence to the contrary. Slashdot threads about religion in general don't get nearly this strange. The prospect of dying is so terrifying that people who write otherwise perfectly reasonable posts in other threads go completely batshit insane and start trying to claim that consciousness is completely unknown and therefore they must have an immortal soul.
I have bad news for you fucks. You are not special. You are not a beautiful and unique snowflake. You are the same decaying organic matter as everything else. You WILL die. Your consciousness will cease to exist. Your precious "you" is going to end, and in less than a century, no one will even remember you were here. All your fairy stories you tell yourself to avoid spending your pathetic life shaking in fear, unable to move, are lies, and I'm sorry for you that the prospect of your own end is so debilitating. But shut the FUCK up about science and the real world. The rest of us don't need you in the way, with your terrified babbling bullshit.
It ceases to exist. And it's easily proven: If you cut out part of the brain, you can notice serious changes in that person's ability to think. That person can still show us that it exists, and can show us how that part of the brain being removed affected him. In this way, we can establish a direct correlation between consciousness and gray matter, and even between parts of consciousness and parts of the brain. Therefore, it's reasonable to think that once the entire brain ceases to exist, so does all traces of consciousness. Also, Occam's razon applies here.
WTF am I doing replying to an AC at 5 A.M on a Friday night?
Chromosome malformation. Brain retardement. ,you lose consciousness
Brain Injury. (various, broca zone language impairment; visual blindness with intact eye ; memory problem; neuropathy ; alzheimer; personality changes with brain injury of special zones ; inability to recognize body as own)
The simple fact that once pulse go below 40 or blood to brain go too low
brain cancer
And I pass many others. Consciousness and brain are intimely linked. In fact there is ZEROevidence that we are anything else than a complex organic computer with multiple parallelism. Soul ? Afterlife ? ZERO evidence. Consciousness being the emerging process of the brain ? Plenty.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
"Emergent property" is in a non-hand-wavy language is known as "information processing". It's what computers do.
No, "emergent property" is a term co-opted from complex systems research that if you have enough agents with fairly simple rules (say, termites laying down pheromones) you can get some astonishingly complex macroscopic behaviours (say, termite nests). It gets co-opted and used in some hand-waving to try to explain away consciousness as an "emergent property" (and abstraction) of there being lots of neurons in the brain.
Unfortunately, it also entirely misses the point -- consciousness is not an abstraction, it is atomic (as you sit staring out of your eyes -- which by definition is the only way you have of knowing that you have a consciousness -- you experience only the consciousness and not the neurons).
Not only we do understand that as a result of rigorous scientific research, it's such an important piece of knowledge that a person who "disagrees" with it, should be considered to be unqualified for any kind of discussion related to science or brains, in the same way as a person who believes that Earth is flat is unqualified for any kind of discussion related to geography or astrophysics.
Your rhetorical bluster merely suggests you don't understand of how science works. There is no such thing as "unqualified for any kind of discussion" -- when you submit a paper for review you will never be asked your qualifications or whether you agree with a prescribed set of opinions. Certainly I am yet to contact the author of any paper I have ever reviewed to say "Before I read your paper, I just want to check you're fundamentally opposed to dualism..."
Moreover the way we choose to define science (necessarily third party observational) makes this question inaccessible as it is necessarily first party observational. The philosophical question has always been "I am" not "my neurons fire in a particular way", nor even "you are" or "he is".
Nobody knows how strong/true AI could be built
I do! There are over 7 billions of examples of it currently in use!
You are aware of what the "A" stands for in AI, aren't you?
On top of that, there is plenty of math, however the same can be said about any computer.
Nope, we've found out since the '60s that things work remarkably differently than a computer, and AI is no longer slavishly attempting to replicate theories of human cognition in algorithmic form.
god in the gaps. The last refugee of delusion. Occam's razor takes care of your argument.
WTF am I doing replying to an AC at 5 A.M on a Friday night?
Yes, he is, you ignorant trout. You're automatically conflating behavior and perception with consciousness, which is ridiculous since even robots we build exhibit behaviors and can detect things.
Two views of consciousness:
1. Emergent property of the brain. Any change to brain affects consciousness. (causation)
2. Property of the universe which the brain uses. Any change to brain affects consciousness' ability to use the brain. (correlation only)
We have enough evidence that changing the brain is changing the cosnciousness , thus this is suffisent to show the cosnciousness as emerging property of the brain. If you claim MORE like the brain only transmitting whatever information your soul transmit from somewhere else, or whatever bizare theory you have beside the actual science has, it is YOUR job to provide evidence for it. Good luck with that. Most of those theory are either not falsifiable, or provide no further explanation power and no difference to the accepted "consciouness is emerging property of brain". In other word, you can cut the cruft and keep the simplest explanation.
I wonder why you were modded interresting. You are attempting to shift the burden of proof of a claim onto others, whereas it should be the job of the one putting forth the claim to defend it.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
I don't know what happened there. Replace "That" with "Not". I guess I fail English today!
Required reading for internet skeptics
Your story reminds me of a bouncer who used to sit in the corner of the local pub and knit football scarfs. (Rural Oz, back in the day before bouncers were licensed and registered).
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
So your alternative is magic. See, that's where all the arguments for anything like that fail catastrophically. We don't understand it, so it must be magic. This is the strongest argument against a god: God say let there be light, and light was created. Ok. So, he just said it. As in, he spoke out loud: "Let there be light'. And something heard him, parsed his sentence, and executed the command in some way. What is that system that hard and executed this command? Wouldn't that be the real god? But then again, nobody's explaining how that thing actually executed the command. Did it also just wish for it to happen? That is circular logic, since it would also require something else to actually fulfill the wish.
Your argument has the same problems. If for a second we agree with you that no computer could do it. Then what? Magic? The implications are even more unbelievable, and create a whole new set of issues, so we must go back and say "There must be something we overloooked, let's keep trying".
Just because we haven't figured it out yet, doesn't give you carte blanche to invent all kinds of crazy, unsubstantiated guesses.
WTF am I doing replying to an AC at 5 A.M on a Friday night?
You are the slashdot equivalent of creationists calling creationism "Intelligent design". You are taking the irreducible complexity argument and adorning it with badly applied computer jargon. It's still irreducible complexity, and it's still stupid.
WTF am I doing replying to an AC at 5 A.M on a Friday night?
While it seems the person you're replying to is mostly trolling (he got me too), I would like to take a small part of your comment to discuss if I may.
I don't know about this immortality project, though. I can absolutely see the possibility of there coming a time when I've had enough. The existence of this project does demonstrate one thing for sure, though: the rich guys who are funding it sure have a high regard for themselves. Is there any evidence that anybody else wants them around forever? You think their trophy wives are thrilled knowing that Daddy Warbucks is going to last indefinitely? I'm betting there are some progeny that definitely wouldn't approve of them attaining immortality. Immortality would definitely change things.
I've always thought such reasoning was a little suspect, if not outright selfish (Not to say I am surprised about the rich being selfish of course ;)
Yes, immortality would most definitely change things. I've posted before along those exact same lines.
But as you have pointed out, a very large group of people seem to oppose research into immortality because of either
A) It will upset the status-quo which they are in, and so don't want it to happen, or
B) It will be first given to rich people, of which they are not, and so don't want it to happen.
While I readily admit, yes immortality would very likely be given to the rich first ignoring the rest, and I also admit I am not rich nor part of the status-quo and so not only will not be among the first to be involved in the fruits of such research, but quite possibly would still end up dying of old age due to my status even IF immortality became possible within my life time.
I also admit to agreeing with your second sentence as well. I personally don't really want to live a hundred years, let alone be immortal or live forever (But I reserve the right to change my mind on that one :P If assuming a time when medical technology can fix "old age", it's not unreasonable to assume I wouldn't have the medical issues I do now causing me to feel that way.)
I just don't see any of that as a valid reason to avoid such research in the first place.
Even people in group "A" above, such as the examples you've already given, who arguably would see such a change as personally harming them, I would argue is not a sound and valid reason, despite being a reason none the less.
There really will come a time at some point however when the question must be asked: Does the benefit of long life to the individual, or even to society in whole, out-weigh the desires or needs of these few?
At this point in time, there are too many people who (rationally or not) believe having immortals around would be harmful to the rest of society, and thus such research should be banned.
While we may or may not agree with that reasoning, I can see that will be the reason society as a whole will not answer the above question in the affirmative anytime soon. An individual may, but as the past has proven, that doesn't matter much.
Of course those lines of reasoning have a ton of assumptions in them, which might not turn out to be true in the end.
I guess the point of all this is just my bewilderment at the vast number of people who are outright against such research that could potentially benefit their lives so greatly compared to anything in the past, based on the assumption that society as a whole is so broken as to actively keep such literally life changing technology out of the hands of most people including them.
This in an age where even cell phones can be bought in gas stations and extremely powerful computing resources are available to most anyone who wants them.
While I don't argue when others claim the government has far more important things to worry about, when a private individual or company wishes to answer these questions before technology reaches the point that the issue is forced upon us immediately, it seems amazing that so many people wouldn't want to avail themselves of such wisdom. Especially so on another persons dime and time.
What a waste of money.
The reason it's a 'well known mechanism' is we know how to build the thing.
No. As I have demonstrated, knowledge of electromagnetic waves and their role in TV is easily available to a person who knows nothing about specifics of TV, leave alone being capable of building one.
Bring somebody from the 18th century to our time and have him work it out and... nope, he's not going to get it. Which... actually that was the point of that analogy.
A scientist from 18th century is perfectly capable of determining that TV depends on some form of radiation coming from a TV transmitter, as he would be able to observe shielding the antenna causing loss of reception. However your example is bullshit because people in 18th century had an incomplete knowledge about forms of radiation (and they knew about it, and researched those things for the whole next century). We, on the other hand, have complete knowledge about fundamentals of electrochemistry that is the only mechanism involved in our brain functioning -- all questions are about things below that layer (Physics, and it's irrelevant for the purpose of brain functionality) or above (structure of the brain, and it's the only thing that is worth studying in this matter). We are absolutely certain that brains are not invisibly remotely controlled by divine beings.
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
I'll be wishing them luck finding all 7 dragon balls. They'll need it with a goal this hilarious.
Feel free to mod me down, just know that unlike some Anonymous Cowards I'm not afraid to express my views as myself.
*citation needed*
Exactly what part of that was fail again? Minus the excessively 'we know all' part, it was fairly consistent with the current state of science as I understand it.
No, "emergent property" is a term co-opted from complex systems research that if you have enough agents with fairly simple rules (say, termites laying down pheromones) you can get some astonishingly complex macroscopic behaviours (say, termite nests).
That's what information processing is. It's not Computer Science / Information Theory people's fault that people from other areas of science created their own names for it.
You are aware of what the "A" stands for in AI, aren't you?
I was born in a hospital, that for some count as artificial.
Nope, we've found out since the '60s that things work remarkably differently than a computer, and AI is no longer slavishly attempting to replicate theories of human cognition in algorithmic form.
Just because modern "AI research" is enamoured with engineering quick hacks based on things easily implemented on modern computers, does not mean that the whole area of study is somehow reduced to inventing new ways of building Kinects and looking for nonexistent chemical weapons labs in the photos of deserts.
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
Your rhetorical bluster merely suggests you don't understand of how science works. There is no such thing as "unqualified for any kind of discussion" -- when you submit a paper for review you will never be asked your qualifications or whether you agree with a prescribed set of opinions. Certainly I am yet to contact the author of any paper I have ever reviewed to say "Before I read your paper, I just want to check you're fundamentally opposed to dualism..."
There are things that were clearly rejected, never to be considered again unless something truly world-shaking will happen. Superstitions about brain and soul is firmly in that list.
Moreover the way we choose to define science (necessarily third party observational) makes this question inaccessible as it is necessarily first party observational. The philosophical question has always been "I am" not "my neurons fire in a particular way", nor even "you are" or "he is".
The philosophical question that has no defense other than "But truly how anyone can know anything?", is by definition, superstitious idiocy.
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
Wow, that's a really good point there. So why don't you write up how we would observationally distinguish between the brain's "antenna/cable" (that receives signals from the soul) being broken, as opposed to its "CRT/LCD" being broken, and then we'll go look for instances of the former and see if we can find any!
Sound good?
No? You just wanted to lean back and sagely claim that there's a super-secret thing *really* generating the brains output that we just happen to be stubbornly refusing to see while also not saying what it would look like to see it?
Well, then I guess we don't have a lot to talk about...
Information theory is life. The rest is just the KL divergence.
Given that Islam is alone is giving a detailed account of what happens after death and the researchers are including religious beliefs, one can only wonder why it, with 20% of the world population , has been omitted.
Just one comment: "Emergent property" as used by me here means "unexpected behavior that cannot readily be explained"
Why, though? I mean, we already have a standard term for that concept: it's called "I'm confused".
Information theory is life. The rest is just the KL divergence.
Logic and "making sense" are two different things.
What you may not realize is that storm is a caricature of your posts in this thread.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
Life is designed to be Quantity over quality. Meaning that energy is primarly put into replication. Sustainability of a individual cell serves only the purpose of being able to produce even more copies.
Meaning all energy of the organism is put forth to that goal. If we would find a "switch" that would concentrate on sustainability we would be able to live FAR longer. Molecular biology and genetics are the way to go.
PS its funny how people always have to advocate their belief that they dont have a belief.
I guess you are missing the question. Even if you cut out part of the brain, are you removing part of the consciousness or the ability to express it. In other words, if someone steals your Cell Phone and you have no other way of getting a message out, does that mean the message disappears. And with that scenario, it could be that the message is just as important and will wait until you find another way of conveying it or it might not be longer relevant and not need conveyed at all.
The 'incomplete knowledge' bit would only be BS if we had complete knowledge of the brain now. We don't, and you've already backed me up on that.
"I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)
Actually, until they work out how to generate their own TV signal, they would not be able to prove how the picture was generated. The best they would be able to assume, provided they are not scientifically inept, is that they can interfere with some of the inner workings. They may suspect how it really works, but they would not understand it. That is where we are with the brain right now.
The example stands.
There's a whole bunch of people who report little green men and anal probes and all sorts of shit. That doesn't make it true. Anyway I don't need to convince anyone. I've said my piece and I think I'm pretty well qualified. If you don't agree then I really don't care.
I don't see why the idea that different people die for different reasons and in different ways is so outlandish to you. When I was taught some emergency procedures I was also taught that heart attacks are often accompanied with cold sweat, chest pain and an intense feeling of panic/dread - so your experience that dying "is completely painless" seems not to be all that representative (death itself is trivially painless and you can't separate dying from the effects of whatever is killing you),
Why is it in your opinion so outlandish that in certain circumstances your oxygen-deprived brain does some funny stuff (either while shutting down or when coming back into consciousness) that it later reconstructs (trying to make sense of it based on previous experiences, cultural context, ...) as your typical near-death experience?
We already know that brain is a biological computer with multiple chemical and electrochemical interfaces to the rest of the body. This is understood very well, and was understood even before people had computers and therefore could not yet compress this explanation into such a short statement. The only things unknown about it are the structure and mechanisms, and it's extremely foolish to claim that it breaks the laws of nature known through Physics and Chemistry.
Any alternative to the above is LESS LIKELY TO BE TRUE than "we are all in The Matrix" or "We are in a dream of a sleeping God" hypotheses, what means that it can not be a part of any realistic philosophy and should be relegated to the realm of fiction. All support for this nonsense comes from superstition and nowhere else.
It makes sense up to a point. But here's a problem. If you are an organism, a biological computer, just a very sophisticated one, but a computer nonetheless, then your computer is able to get up, go to work, send messages to other biological computers, network and form societies of biological computers, and all of this computation can happen automatically. I don't mean to shout but, THERE IS NO NEED FOR YOU TO BE AWARE OF ANY OF THIS. In the biological computer model, consciousness has zero part to play. Consciousness has zero value, serves zero purpose, and simply doesn't need to exist.
The whole of the universe and all the organisms could just as easily be running IN THE DARK, computing, executing, interacting, evolving, without any awareness anywhere to experience any of the process. Consciousness, the experiencer, is totally unnecessary. For example, your fancy digital camera captures light, processes it and identifies faces and adjusts the focus on the faces. The camera doesn't experience doing this, the camera is not a "being".
Yet "being" is the single most irrefutable fact of your existence. You're a being. You are right now experiencing being. And that conscious experience is totally irrelevant to a biological computer. So why are you experiencing? It has no purpose to experience. Why be able to watch life? What is watching matter? Matter doesn't watch matter, matter reacts, processes, computes. Even "emotions" don't need to be experienced, they are chemical floods in the brain. They work perfectly well without anyone to "experience them. The message still gets there, it is physical.
At most you are along for the ride, but all the "choices" you make are being executed by the biological computer, so even being aware of choices has zero value. The system doesn't need "you" the conscious part. What could your brain possibly not be able to process on its own automatically and in the dark? Your brain can run all the processes that need to run. Why do you have to experience any of life? Why the awareness? Why consciousness? The brain could process information and make decisions and adapt and do all that stuff IN THE DARK. Matter exists. No reason for consciousness to exist. Yet it does. Or perhaps in some very strange way, the two are false categories, but that's taking us to the mind-body problem. If it is simple, if you are a biological computer, then you should be running in the dark, you shouldn't be experiencing your life. The simpler model and the only necessary model is that the brain runs in the dark. See we are not adding anything that isn't already forced upon us by the mere fact that we experience life as a conscious being.
I mean, yes we can forget the weird otherworldly ideas, because most people never see those anyway. (Some do, lately a neurosurgeon has an NDE and OBE and when he woke up, his understanding as a neurosurgeon, knowing his brain's condition at the time he was having these experiences, his understanding as a neurosurgeon was that he should not have been experiencing anything at all, so he wrote a book about it). But the point is, even being conscious as an experiencer, that is already strange, even though it is taken for granted when we say, oh the brain is a biological computer and nothing more. Everyone is conscious, yet the universe could work 100% without that. It would just run in the dark.
Or are you joking? Your post is so full of fallacies and outright bad reasoning that it's kind of hard to tell. Just to take a couple of examples:
Yeah, because we all know books can't be read by multiple people.
Ah, that old canard. Here's the thing: Absence of evidence that should be there most definitely is evidence of absence.
Has anybody built a working model of a brain that has become conscience?
I doubt that anyone's built anything that could reasonably be said to be working model of a brain. Whether anything that has been built has become conscious is unknown, and probably unknowable. How would you test for it?
To summarise the summary of the summary: people are a problem. ~ h2g2
This is 5 million dollars to study religious history of immortality beliefs. If you are interested by immortality, why not fund SENS instead? An institute of bio-gerontologists who try to understand and correct aging like it was a disease. (And if you just discover the thing, don't stop at the mighty guru-beard of the founder, his excuse is that he comes from CS background)
The Wise adapts himself to the world. The Fool adapts the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the Fool.
Want to provide a citation proving anything else?
When you're dead, you cease to exist in any form other than rotting flesh and bone.
but if you wish to remain deluded that you have an after life of some sort, then thats your choice. Don't be scared of death, just enjoy life.
"The hands that help are better far than lips that pray." - Robert Ingersoll (1833-1899)
To start with a specific example with which I am familiar: not death, but stroke. My mother suffered a stroke in her visual cortex. In the end, she had a blank area in her field of vision. But as the stroke happened, and for a short time afterwards, she said that she saw funny rainbows and colors in that area.
In the case of a heart attack, the brain isn't always instantly deprived of oxygen: this may happen over some time, depending on the specifics of the case. A partially oxygen-deprived brain may continue to "function" in unreliable ways, which may lead to hallucinations: seeing bright lights, or whatever.
It is well-known that the brain will invent entire stories to fill in gaps and cover up inconsistencies in its experience. Combine hallucinations and a belief in an afterlife with this "invention" capability, and you get near-death religious experiences. Here in Switzerland, there have been a number of people who claimed to "float" over the scene of their death, seeing everything from above. This became so prevalent that a skeptics program has placed pictures on top of the cabinets in various emergency rooms around the country. They are still waiting for the first person who suffers a near-death experience and can name anything they saw on top of the cabinets...
Enjoy life! This is not a dress rehearsal.
" there is some evidence of consciousness being distributed. And, it depends how you define consciousness."
Br> can you provide a link to where i can find the evidence of "distributed consciousness"
The sense of touch is surely controlled via the brain.
"The hands that help are better far than lips that pray." - Robert Ingersoll (1833-1899)
I guess I fail English today!
I guess you must have a hidden need to fail yourself
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
Well, yes? If you write a text file, save it locally, and then destroy harddrive, CPU and RAM Chips, that text file is pretty much gone.
If you arrange a bunch of sticks in a pattern, and then destroy the sticks, and/or disperse them -- where has the pattern gone?
Nobody would even ask that. But that's because we don't care about a bunch of squiggly lines formed by sticks on some beach in the middle of nowhere, do we. But when that own personality is that pattern, ohhhh, it's such a mystery, where does that pattern go... it has to go somewhere...
The question of course is, is this applicable to the consciousness... I dunno. And even if it is, do we want to apply it? Personally, I (think I) know for a fact that everything is everything, that nothing we do will change the outcome, which will be nothing/everything, and that free will may very well be a complete illusion. I (think I) know that, but I consider it more noble to pretend otherwise. I have no arguments for this, I just do. It beats the alternative; Nietzsche warned of nihilism for a reason, it sucks :P Though of course there is another way to look at it, too:
"We feel free to express ourselves because we are ready to fade into emptiness. When we are trying to be active and special and to accomplish something, we cannot express ourselves... So we have enjoyment, we are free."
-- Shunryu Suzuki
Same input, much better result ^_^
But while I'm rambling: What I wonder about is *real* AI. Since the 90's I'm waiting, I'm convinced that actual AI wouldn't do squat, since thorough computations would show the end result to be the same, heat death of the universe. So yeah, we could build this city and then wait until it decays, or we could just not bother. Kinda like Marvin from HGttG, but without the pain in the diodes and nagging ^^
But of course, we'll create it in our own image, so that won't happen, it will happily slave on, like a dog that never gets tired of fetching stick. Then we'll start to worship it, because it's bigger than us individually, just like we already worship the herd. It will be great :/
'People have been thinking about immortality throughout history. We have a deep human need to figure out what happens to us after death,' says John Martin Fischer,
Nothing, You're dead.
Not necessarily. Obviously the religious fairy-tales are just that, i.e. whatever people need to hear to strengthen the meme-infection. But there is room for reincarnation without the religious connotations. Consciousness and life itself are still not understood at all, so there is room for speculation. Obviously, the body (brain) plays a part (for many the dominant part, it seems), but it is not enough to explain what is observable. Still, no need to do "immortality" research, everybody finds out sooner or later what happens. I guess these 5M just show that quite a few rich people live pathetic lives and know it.
Here's an interesting concept... not quite sure if I accept it or not, but it's something which has had me thinking a bit recently.
Assuming the following things:
1) Existence (I hesitate to use the word "universe" given the various theories of multiple "universes") is infinite in either direction, time or both.
2) Randomness exists
3) Consciousness is caused by a specific arrangement of the make-up of our brains and could also be caused by similar specific arrangements of other things
Assumption 1 is very debatable; however certainly not outside the realms of reason. Assumption 2 is, in my understanding, pretty strongly confirmed - although there's still those who'd argue against it. Assumption 3 seems quite logical and reasonable in general.
Assumptions 1 and 2 lead to the idea that anything that can happen eventually will. Adding assumption 3 leads to the idea that after our consciousness stops in our brains (death), it will eventually spring up again somewhere else including all of the memories from our lives before.
It's also worth keeping in mind the idea that your consciousness is only aware of the present - the past is accessed through memories. Therefore it seems quite acceptable to say that there's no fundamental difference to waking up in the morning as a "different consciousness" today than the one you were yesterday whilst still retaining all the same memories versus actually remaining the same consciousness. You can't prove it one way or the other and it makes no difference whatsoever. Therefore this new consciousness that awakes a trillion trillion years from now that has all your memories IS just as much your consciousness as you are now.
Like I said, I'm not sure I accept this general idea or not (I certainly wouldn't go so far as to say I "believe" it); but it definitely is food for thought for me, and I would like to hear others' (reasoned) opinions on it.
My book about LSD and Self-Discovery
Also on facebook as: DroppingAcidDaleBewan
I have a wonderful plan for a project on Unicorns - can I have 5 million please?
Perceiver perceives the perception as the extension of perceiver thereby corrupting the perception :)
aahh a common sense post.. thanks
"The hands that help are better far than lips that pray." - Robert Ingersoll (1833-1899)
No, "emergent property" is a term co-opted from complex systems research that if you have enough agents with fairly simple rules (say, termites laying down pheromones) you can get some astonishingly complex macroscopic behaviours (say, termite nests).
That's what information processing is.
No, it's not. It is something that may occur in multi-agent systems, but it is not "what information processing is".
(Snipped the remainder of your post as it's essentially irrelevant posturing.)
"You are confusing correlation and causation."
No, I don't because you still didn't provide a different *testable* source of conciousness and I clearly stated my position as an asumption -and a sensible one at that.
Again, I have to say that you talk about things like "scientific method" or "correlation is not causation" but you don't understand their meaning.
I mean, really.
Your rhetorical bluster merely suggests you don't understand of how science works. There is no such thing as "unqualified for any kind of discussion" -- when you submit a paper for review you will never be asked your qualifications or whether you agree with a prescribed set of opinions. Certainly I am yet to contact the author of any paper I have ever reviewed to say "Before I read your paper, I just want to check you're fundamentally opposed to dualism..."
There are things that were clearly rejected, never to be considered again unless something truly world-shaking will happen. Superstitions about brain and soul is firmly in that list.
What a fertile imagination you have. I wonder whether you think this list you imagine is stored digitally somewhere or carved in stone. How disheartening it must be for you to wake up and realise that all the empirical evidence (such as the $5 million funding grant just awarded in TFA) suggests you are wrong. But hey, at least you got to use the word "superstition" to do a bit more posturing, so at least you can take comfort in that.
No, there is experimental data as well. Lobotomies are a result of "change the brain, change the intelligence/personality" experiments. There is direct experimental data, not just external observation.
The word of the day, "consciousness," appears markedly absent from your description of the experimental data -- you are making a false connection between consciousness and personality. Or to put it more humorously: plenty of observers around me can tell you my intelligence and personality are different before and after my first cup of coffee in the morning, but I can assure you I'm still the same consciousness...
Define consciousness.
Learn to love Alaska
What a fertile imagination you have. I wonder whether you think this list you imagine is stored digitally somewhere or carved in stone.
There is a thing called scientific method. It works [, bitches]. In fact, all currently available knowledge was obtained through it. And according to it, when ignorant idiots repeatedly assault the researcher with their outlandish fantasies that have no foundation in reality, and no way to verify or falsify, the proper response is "Enough with this bullshit!".
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
When you turn off your computer, does it stop making calculations or does he simply stop outputting them and manifesting them as actual voltages on wires?
There is nothing "magical" about a brain, it's physically a dynamic electrochemical circuit, so we can expect it to work the same way as any other physical circuit: turn it off/destroy it and all its manifestations and emergent properties disappear.
There's no reason to expect a circuit to have any other manifestation beyond what is coded in its internal state as voltage, at any given moment in time, so why would you expect different for the brain (which just seems like a rather elaborate and dynamic electrochemical circuit)?
That's not an answer. And I think you know it as well as I do.
First, I'm quite familiar with computability and Godel's incompleteness theorems, and they have nothing at all to do with the question. There is absolutely nothing in them that implies AI is a fundamentally unsolvable problem. In fact, most AI researchers probably understand those subjects far better than you do - and they still consider AI to be a worthwhile problem to study.
Second, the current state of the art in AI is irrelevant. You didn't just say there were things computers can't currently do. You said there are things no computer can ever do, no matter how powerful. That claim needs to be justified.
Third, AI has actually been making dramatic progress in recent years. After decades of following paths that didn't lead anywhere, researchers have finally found some techniques that enabled major breakthroughs. If you want to see practical applications of that, just look at Watson or Siri or the like. A mere five years ago, both of those would have been science fiction. Today they're real.
Ironically, the recent advances in "AI" were largely through stopping thinking about AI as building an artificial version of human cognition, and instead doing something with far fewer philosophical claims: statistically mining the heck out of big data.
If you start from the assumption that the conscious is only what the brain can muster, this makes sense. If you however question if the conscious is something beyond the brain or still resident in the brain, and seek to find if it is limited to the brain, then it doesn't. I seriously do not understand the hostility in looking or trying to find out. It is not like you have something to lose do you?
Well, not asking the question is the best way to not have it answered. As for free will, even if it is an illusion, it is sufficient as you get to ask and answer you own question of meaning.
But while I'm rambling: What I wonder about is *real* AI. Since the 90's I'm waiting, I'm convinced that actual AI wouldn't do squat, since thorough computations would show the end result to be the same, heat death of the universe. So yeah, we could build this city and then wait until it decays, or we could just not bother. Kinda like Marvin from HGttG, but without the pain in the diodes and nagging ^^
But of course, we'll create it in our own image, so that won't happen, it will happily slave on, like a dog that never gets tired of fetching stick. Then we'll start to worship it, because it's bigger than us individually, just like we already worship the herd. It will be great :/
your probably right.
Ok. So, quick question: does Caenorhabditis elegans have a mind? It has a (very primitive) brain of 302 neurons, but is it possess "consciousness" (under your definition of it)?
If not, at what point does a brain get "consciousness"? Only humans have "consciousness"? Only humans have minds?
We have complete knowledge of the foundations of Chemistry, and we have already excluded all non-electrochemical mechanisms from having any role in brain functions. We also know very well that simple foundations are sufficient for extremely complex systems, so there is absolutely no reason to look for hidden divine mechanisms that somehow manage to only manifest themselves in human brains, and are completely undetectable in each and every experiment that happens not to include specifically brains specifically of living humans.
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
Actually, until they work out how to generate their own TV signal, they would not be able to prove how the picture was generated.
And this is completely unnecessary for the purpose of understanding of basic nature of TV transmission. I can not generate a DRM'ed to Hell Blu-Ray disk, either, however this does not mean, I should accept the hypothesis that movie studios produce those disks by praying to the deity to digital media distribution.
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
Yes, it is. People just seem to create a new name for it every 20-40 years, because people who worked on the old one shift to practical applications of the most trivial forms of it, and CS is too uncool for anyone outside of CS to listen to.
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
he's not missing it.
what you're implying is that the gray matter is possibly a connector to some nether-ether-heaven-whatever-bunch soul system. well, that's all and good but there's nothing to prove that. 5 million dollars thrown into that isn't going to change that, people have spent very, very, very long time trying to prove otherwise already without any success.
if your body(brain) ceases to exist you're dead. however "you" can still have an effect on the world after that through having put into motion events that will roll out after you're dead, most common case is that you had inspired or affected someones life before dying, in some way you're still giving out a message. now it's debatable if your personality could be simulated to some extent after you're dead would that mean that "you" are still alive("uploading yourself to the net", "ai clone", etc bullshit) - however this debate needs zero amount of money to progress currently and it's a purely philosophical question for the foreseeable future(one of the aims of the study is to find out just this. well fuck you don't need 5 mil to find out that you can't do it now nor with any tech we currently can foresee being a practicality even).
doesn't mean that you wouldn't be dead though. this is a stupid victorian mumbo-jumbo mysticism study - furthermore it's ran by liars and it's done solely to pump out money out of a foundation created for pro-theology reasons.
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
Define "mind", and you will be trivially able to answer that question.
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
If they can invent immortality, I'll be sure to write them into my will!
What hostility, what unasked question? I've been pondering this stuff since I'm a teenager, I'm just not easy to surprise.
As I said, everything is everything... the "problem" with that is, it doesn't make much sense to speak of individuality then, either.
My point was, even though everything that can be learned about neurology seems to utterly destroy most notions we have about ourselves and our decisions, we still have them. We go further and further away from just being, and coming up with objecties and properties to "possess", and "narratives" and all that nonsense. So yeah, let's ponder our mortality. I have great trust we won't fatfinger it. We already applied our rational brain to economics and politics, let's do this now.
From the summary:
"including near-death experiences and the impact of belief in an afterlife on human behavior."
Notice what they have in common? Both are about living people. The latter is actually a joke. Why not include "the history of folkore about immortality?" That's also "studying an aspect of immortality". I'm not opposed to questions, I'm opposed to shallowness :P
from the article:
"If you believe in reincarnation, how can the very same person exist if you start over with no memories?"
You see, even comedians are more insightful than that.
"I suppose it would be nice if reincarnation were a reality, but I have problems with the math. At some point, originally, there must have been a time when there were only two human beings. They both died, and presumably their souls were reincarnated into two other bodies. But that still leaves us with only two souls. We now have nearly six billion people on the planet. Where are all the extra souls coming from? Is someone printing up souls? Wouldn't that tend to lower their value?" - George Carlin
There. Done. Tomorrow we'll talk about Noah's Ark.
Everything is everything, and there is no hostility in that. The notions we have, what we call humans and how we consider ourselves - that won't disappear, because it never existed in the first place. A needle isn't hostile to a bubble, the tension in the bubble is hostile to reality.
.. no, wait, umm .. :)
That'a s tall order. Even just adding a couple of years to our lifespan will play havoc with the whole pension and retirement planning idea, and there are whole tribes of people who can't even be nice to the elderly.
On the flipside, they could do worse than starting to read SF - plenty of material that deals with the theme.
Insert
But what if brain is the mere "driver" for our I/O channels? Like in computers we have drivers for devices, in our case brain is a collection of drivers.
Pulsed Media Seedboxes
To continue in that way of thinking, consciousness could be thought of as our operating system while as the brain is the CPU, RAM, Drivers etc.
If that's the way of thinking then it becomes clear how brain affects our mental capabilities, even if our operating system could be easily capable of greater things but processing speed and RAM is too limited to handle certain things.
Then where is this O/S stored in? Is it in brain as well, and it is inherited from our parents? That is the mainstream science, but what if that O/S is something in religion described as "Soul"? Where does this "Soul" exist then? How could we interact directly with it?
If we figure out the O/S and data storage (our memory, learned abilities etc.) portion, then we can achieve great things. But first we need to isolate and distinguis the O/S, or consciousness, can we be certain it resides in brains as well, and brain damage also damages our consciousness directly?
No we cannot prove that at this point of time.
Pulsed Media Seedboxes
<face-palm> Sorry, no. Just no. I don't care if you're an MD; words have meaning. If a person's heart stops and you revive him by cardio resuscitation, you are not reanimating a dead person. You are stopping a person from dying. I'll lay heavy odds that you would do the right thing if the patient's heart and breathing stop and the patient loses consciousness, because I have high regard and respect for anyone who has successfully passed through the grueling process of becoming a medical doctor. But I would argue that proper use of terms is particularly important in the field.
Wikipedia: "Death is the cessation or permanent termination of all biological functions that sustain a living organism." Cessation; not interruption.
Merriam-Webster.com: "a permanent cessation of all vital functions: the end of life."
Dictionary.com: "the end of life; the total and permanent cessation of all the vital functions of an organism."
MedicalDictionary.theFreeDictionary.com: "Death is defined as the cessation of all vital functions of the body including the heartbeat, brain activity (including the brain stem), and breathing." Cessation, not interruption.
Euthanasia.procon.org: "the cessation of life; permanent cessation of all vital bodily functions. For legal and medical purposes, the following definition of death has been proposed-the irreversible cessation of all of the following: (1) total cerebral function, usually assessed by EEG as flat-line (2) spontaneous function of the respiratory system, and (3) spontaneous function of the circulatory system..." There are those pesky words again, permanent and irreversible.
The Definition of Death (Stanford Encylopedia of Philosophy: "According to the organismic definition, death is the irreversible loss of functioning of the organism as a whole (Becker 1975; Bernat, Culver, and Gert 1981)." ... "According to the mainstream whole-brain approach, the human brain plays the crucial role of integrating major bodily functions so only the death of the entire brain is necessary and sufficient for a human being's death (Bernat, Culver, and Gert 1981)." ... "According to the higher-brain standard, human death is the irreversible cessation of the capacity for consciousness...Although no jurisdiction has adopted the higher-brain standard, it enjoys the support of many scholars (see, e.g., Veatch 1975; Engelhardt 1975; Green and Wikler 1980; Gervais 1986; Bartlett and Youngner 1988; Puccetti 1988; Rich 1997; and Baker 2000)." Each of those three definitions shares the necessary component of "irreversible".
Immortality in our lifetime requires a few basic scientific advances: 1. Preservation. The most obvious means to do that is freezing. 2. Revival. If we can freeze a mind and bring it back with its memories intact then we can wait for technology to repair the damage that necessitated freezing the body in the first place - assuming the preserved mind does not decay further over time. Factors that are probably significant here are whether freezing the body below a certain temperature actually makes revival more difficult. If not, then the colder the better, since the longer the body can be frozen the higher the probability the revived body can be repaired. One more thing... Uploading our minds into computers is not "immortality". A program would be a copy, not the original. Longer term, gradually replacing parts of a living mind with electronic components such that the mind felt a sense of continuous existence would be one way to transition from organic to machine. Immortality is continuation of our mind and personality. I hope to be frozen when I die. A slim chance is better than no chance at all. Cheers, Mark
The closest I've ever come to a near death experience however was that time when a really big burly biker unfolded himself from a small pink smartcar carrying a small dog in a pink coat.
I remember vividly seeing a burly individual having the looks of a stereotypical biker scolding his dog in public. The dog in question was a chihuahua or some similar breed and it was constantly barking. "Apo! Be quiet, Apo!" It turned out that the biker's chihuahua answered to the name of Apocalypse.
Ezekiel 23:20
Let the pseudo-epistemological bullshitting commence!
"How do you know that you know what you know?" != "My emotionally palatable beliefs are as valid as your observation-based hypotheses!"
A burning hatred of belief systems held by others is not a sign of good mental health. While it need not necessarily manifest in bigotry in social interaction, my experience is that it is quite likely to. A burning hatred of truly evil ACTIONS taken by others, whether or not supported by their belief systems, is more rational and is an entirely different matter.
because it is the religion of oppression and subjugation. Up to WW2, via the British Empire, it had a chunk of beef in one hand, a mug of beer in another and its bootheels on the necks of hundreds of millions of Africans and Asians.
If you look at what they can actually study, then 5 million is way more then the field deserves. What can they do with the money, except maybe interview the few people that were brain dead and recovered (but even these interviews won't give any hard information since the people were not dead)?
The only thing they can study is what people BELIEVE about immortality and life&death, not immortality and life&death itself. And do we need a study about that, when every religion is so eager to let us know it's own beliefs?
This is where I think you go a little wrong.
You underestimate the disparity - the separation that is occurring exceeds any in human history. At some point a separation occurs that cannot be jumped. I'm talking about a completely breakaway society. It's not like the signs aren't already there.
You believe technology will always follow a model that starts at the top and eventually trickles down, but that leaves out the most important side-effect (or primary effect) of immortality: There is an obvious incentive for the people who have achieved immortality to prevent those down the ladder from achieving immortality. I'll bet I don't even have to mention it for you to figure it out if you think a few steps forward. And immortality would bring advantages that would allow the immortals to do something about it. That means trouble for most of us.
Hell, we're already seeing those that have achieved a certain level of wealth actively work to suppress incomes at lower levels and to severely limit social and economic mobility. How much more incentive will they have to limit mobility into the immortal class? We already see efforts to limit access to medical technology among the non- super rich. You don't have to make an assumption to see what happens when disparity increases. There is a lot of research into the dystopian effects of income and wealth disparity. There is a terrific TED talk about such research from last year.
And even saying all this, I'm not against immortality research. But not until we reform this repressive "intellectual property" regime. Maybe wait until we have a little more evidence that the super-rich are human and can evolve immortal morals, too.
For now, it's just another sad, slightly sinister effort like cryogenics.
You are welcome on my lawn.
So how would you go about proving causation? Just about everything in nature could just be the result of some 'undetectable force', rather then what we currently thing of as a cause.
When you hit the ball you might not cause it to move. The undetectable pink gerbils might be moving it, you just happened to hit it at the same time. And it might happen every time, but that's just correlation.
Has there been a study done, where people that didn't have any complications during a surgery were told they were dead for a few minutes, then asked if they saw anything?
It would be interesting to see how many of the people that were just unconscious also reported tunnels and lights.
It's ok. It's money that belongs to the idiotic Templeton foundation. Look them up. Better they waste their money here where it does little harm.
All our votes are anonymous too.
"there is room for reincarnation without the religious connotations."
As much room as for a wristwatch about to be hammered to transfer its time to another one.
Wearable NTP enabled device, with WiFi, Bluetooth, 4g, and a display showing current time?
I can't think of anything that even comes close.
--- Mercutio was right.
That's a seriously good question. Without trying to defend the gp post (i'm not in agreement with a number of his claims) I'm thinking along the lines of;
If he actually did do miracles - then he clearly knows something that everyone else doesn't - so he'd be worth listening to at least.
If he sacrificed himself to help others - then also he might be worth listening to.
And if he did both - then you can be fairly assured of his benevolence - otherwise he could have installed himself as despot and had a whale of a time. ;)
Not any type of proof. If you damage part of a TV set, it stops to exhibit all of its features, for example may stop to display color. That still does not mean the picture is generated in there. So while the brain plays a part like any good interface does, it is not enough to explain the overall thing.
Surely the "brain as receiver" hypothesis is easily defeated by the types of changes in fuction observable after damage to the brain? It's one thing for a TV to stop displaying colour, but for the metaphor to match what we've observed with human brain injuries, you'd need the TV set to suddenly only show spaghetti westerns, or to translate one particular actor's lines to German, or it blur out any area of the screen that contains a picture of a cat.
Rampant carbon sequestration destroyed the Dinosaurs' tropical paradise. I'm here to help repair the damage.
Yet you use the word "revive," i.e. "to restore to life"... It does sound kind of silly when people say "I was dead for 3 minutes", but I don't think we can be very accurate when describing a process. The concept of "clinical death" has a practical utility, though maybe they could use a different word...
You become a Republican?
No, not trolling at all. Was just in a hurry and flatly stated my beliefs, acquired thru reading about neurology.
Awesome furniture, accessories and cabinetry in Santa Rosa, CA: http://humanity-home.com/
You said a bunch more but it was claptrap
I'm not disagreeing with that or that the claim of godhood came after Christ's death and a million other things....
Although he was executed by the Romans - the NT texts make Pontius Pilate out to be very reluctant to do so - and not for the reasons you claim. Pontius was afraid of the trouble the Jews (not Christ's followers) were going to cause him (and it is well demonstrated that they were very troublesome indeed with multiple uprisings documented). It's documented that Pontius tried to get out of his crucifixion by having the crowds pick either Jesus or Barabbas - but that vote didn't go his way so he 'washed his hands' of the affair and sent Christ to his death.
Interestingly - the only 'follower' of Jesus that possibly was trying to actively install Jesus as Emporer - was Judas. It is argued that his 'betrayal' was an attempt to get Christ to assert himself - which obviously he refused to do - and Judas ultimately suicided because his despair and guilt at sending an innocent and inspiring leader to their death. Judas was a zealot - so he was always in favour of taking over by force. The other disciples - though they might have been brimming with confidence when with Jesus was alive - weren't nearly as brave. Hence the standard Roman execution of the leader (though motivated by the Jews) - should have had the impact you imply by nipping Christ and along with it - Christianity in the bud. However much is made of the resurrection - from that point on in fact - but perhaps the only remaining 'proof' cited today is that Christianity is still a living meme despite countless other 'Messiah's' and uprisings being put down and not being heard from again other than a footnote in Roman history.
So on that basis - the resurrection is claimed as literal (and most definitely by the NT texts) out of necessity - as without it - like countless other cults of the day were - it had all the signs of being 'nipped in the bud' up until that point.
Occam's Razor is a rule for removing useless external actors from conversations. It is not a physical law of the universe. It is a recognition that the most useful and satisfying answers come from the simplest components. This is useful because by only accepting the simplest components, can we develop conclusions in a reasonable timeframe. This makes logical argument a lot more useful. It does not, however, make the existence of more complex solutions or the existence of "unnecessary" externals impossible.
The problem with the God of the Gaps idea is that there is the suggestion that science or some philosophy can disprove the unfalsifiable and that this gap of understanding is the only place God can continue to exist because he's been ruled out due to not being observed.
One could invert the concept and propose that there is a limited domain that science will ever be able to explain and eventually that gap will progress to the point where science can go no further in producing useful theories for real things that we can observe, but do not have the ability to test. So, either the gap can never actually close, or the completed domain of the scientifically testable is merely a subset of reality bounded by the limits of what can be perceived.
The existence of something does not depend on if it is falsifiable or not. It merely means that it's proposed existence does not allow for scientific exploration. The universe itself is an example. You can propose that there is "nothing" outside the universe, you could propose that the concept of "outside" the universe is not useful (which smacks of defining away the problem), or you could propose a domain that the universe is part of. Depending on physical laws, we may never even be able to say which is likely.
Science is incredibly useful, and I dislike those who unthinkingly fear what it produces. At the same time, I am cognizant of the fact that science isn't a replacement for metaphysics, it is a tool. And like even the most useful tool, it has limitations. I would no more use science to disprove God than I would use metaphysics to disprove relativity. Both are examples of presenting every problem as a nail to be hammered.
Future AIs would still have senses though. A digital camera is sight. Streams of digital data are still senses.
so your experience that dying "is completely painless" seems not to be all that representative
You misunderstand me. I felt like absolute shit, which is why I went to the ER in the first place. I felt all of that, and as a (then) medical student I knew I was having a heart attack to boot. I was in a great deal of pain, probably the worst pain I had been in my life up until then, don't get me wrong. Now, ask me 10 seconds before I died if I thought I was about to die - and the answer is "no".
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
The problem's all on your end, pal.
How do you know any historical information is accurate? There are people today who deny the fact that the Holocaust really happened. Just study the historical record of the resurrection of Jesus. Did it really happen?
A sufficiently advanced simulation is indistinguishable from reality.
Hey, spoiler alert this shit, or nobody can get any more research grants for it.
How do you know he wasn't telling the truth? When someone tells you something you cannot personally verify, how do you know that person is telling the truth? When Jesus was on trial for his life, Pilate the Roman governor who had the power of life and death in that society asked that question. Jesus was not only telling the truth, but he made an incredible claim. He claimed to be the very embodiment of truth. In the end, we have no alternative except to either believe or disbelieve. It is a choice that everyone of us must make.
A sufficiently advanced simulation is indistinguishable from reality.
Before any of that happened, I would be surprised if the original upper class was not completely eradicated. Immortality does not mean invulnerability. Even vast riches can't buy that. Between disenfranchised heirs and disgruntled peons, the best way to actually maintain immortality is to assure that either no one knows you are immortal, or that you are able to assure that most everyone is also immortal as well.
The idea of the boot stomping on your face forever is a compelling scenario, but reality has a way of taking theoretical cases of exponential growth or lifespan or inequity, and derailing them pretty completely. I have trouble theorizing a method of maintaining immortality in the near future that could not be overcome by emptying the clip of an AK-47 into you or your supporting infrastructure.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
If you can not destroy or create energy, what happens to our energy when we die?
Answer; it goes on to build other life.
What happens to the electrical thought processes?
My Answer; It is absorbed by the ether and our 'memories' of that person help
to propel their energies outward into the universe. A sort of balancing.
So keep up the good thoughts!
No, it isn't. That bloke would have no idea it's a radio transmission until he could build something that, at minimum, could generate a pattern on the screen. He wouldn't even know where to begin.
Example still stands.
We're like that Bruce Willis movie. Or the Matrix. Ok, sure.
The followers of Jesus did indeed believe that Jesus rose from the dead, because they saw him with their very own eyes. All of them, except for John, died a horrible death for this belief. People do not go to their death for proclaiming something they know to be an out right lie. If Jesus had not resurrected from the dead, there would be no Christianity today.
A sufficiently advanced simulation is indistinguishable from reality.
"Wearable NTP enabled device, with WiFi, Bluetooth, 4g, and a display showing current time?"
Exactly: all of them require an external knowledgeable agent to pivot the information to a new object.
Well, where's the external entity for the soul? How can it be tested?
So they want to live longer so they have time to find out what happens after they die?
Well, exactly. Current religious thoughts on reincarnation suggest that the information IS destroyed. All that remains is consciousness itself. Personality, memories - they are all gone.
False. We have no clue what consciousness IS, or how it works. None. That's not to say it isn't purely physical in nature. But we could just as easily find out that consciousness stems from a few parts of the brain working in concert, or that there is something (physical or not) that "plugs in" to the brain. Also, given that we have yet to make a conscious computer, I don't think the computer analogy gets us quite as far as we'd like.
That's why I feel uncomfortable stating what is likely to be true. How can we state what is likely when our scientific understanding of consciousness is so poor?
No. "We" don't. Perhaps you do, but don't presume to speak for everyone, because it just makes you (more) wrong.
We know what happens after death. Our bodies, and more to the point, our brains, rot. The electrical, chemical and possibly quantum effects and actions that make our selves up can no longer operate in that degraded environment; the "us" goes away like light and heat from a burned out light bulb.
Religion is bunk; this "study" is bunk; the only path to longevity is via technical means.
Of course, the hoople-heads are free to believe otherwise, and they do. But belief has absolutely no effect on reality.
We haven't seen consciousness with only a brain, for example.
Nor have we seen circulation with only a heart, breathing with only a pair of lungs, or insulin production with only a pancreas. So what? All organs operate within the body, and are mutually dependent on each other's correct function. This doesn't imply anything mystical.
The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
I do not have two IDs. You are pretty gullible though and fell for somebodies idea of a joke.
And no, I did not make the claim you claim I did. Read my postings again. Hint: Ever heard of a "thought experiment"? It can be used to show that something is more complicated that somebody states.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
Wow, you really failed. You may have looked at all these subjects but you did not get any of the implications. The very least you should have gotten out of these studies is the insight that there is no quick answer to your question. You even failed that, which indicates complete absence of understanding. That is tragic. It also means arguing with you has no point as you seem to be a victim of the Dunning-Krueger effect.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
[...] there is room for reincarnation without the religious connotations. Consciousness and life itself are still not understood at all, so there is room for speculation. [...]
Correction: they're not understood BY YOU. They're understood perfectly by me, and others who aren't fucktarded assclown morons. You (your consciousness, the part of you that thinks you exist,) are essentially a computer program running on the organic bio-electrochemical analog machine called "your brain". This is made obvious by the fact that you can easily observe how personality is impacted by changes to the brain, such as with chemicals, psychotropic drugs, powerful magnetic fields, physical trauma, etc.
If I may offer you an analogy, in conventional computing, (in digital electronic computers,) what happens to a computer program being run when you completely shut off the power?
The program being run ceases to exist in any meaningful sense. Any data is saved by altering the structure of the machine itself.
Without the ability to send or receive electrochemical signals between its constituent parts, the brain can't run YOU. YOU don't go anywhere. You simply cease to be. You can't get reincarnated, because there is nothing to reincarnate you, and no means to accomplish the transfer. MAYBE you could achieve something vaguely like that if someone ate your brain, but that's still not the same thing, not even close.
So I could have saved these cowardly morons $5,000,000 and just told them the answer, but anyone stupid enough to squander five million bucks that way is obviously desperate for an answer that doesn't involve the phrase "You're wormfood, bitch!" So we couldn't have saved these nitwits their money, because if we just told them, "Hey, the answer is "nothing happens, and you don't 'Go' anywhere..." they would stupidly assume we were wrong, and keep looking for their non-existent answer, out of fear that when the show ends, it really just ends.
People who say things like "I can't believe this is it, and there is nothing more" are exhibiting delusions. The fact they can't believe it doesn't mean it isn't so. This really is it, the only whack you get at life, so quit pissing yourselves with fear of what will happen after death. I promise you, by definition, you won't feel a thing, and won't even notice you died, since noticing something requires your brain to be working which it won't/can't after it dies. Obviously. To "reincarnate" you, you would have to transfer the actual working pattern in the brain itself to another skull, neural interconnections, chemicals present, and all, which even if you could, it's the same brain, and so you haven't really gained anything, in terms of immortality by swapping bodies, if your brain is just as old.
So sorry to be so definitive, but your optimism is idiotic. You're not coming back as anything, except perhaps wormshit.
I never made that claim. Read my postings again.
Side note: Reading comprehension really seems to be a dying skill....
Hint: Just seeing some words is not enough to understand a statement. A bit more effort is required.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
Indeed. One reason for that is continued failure when trying to mimic human intelligence. And the second is some impressive successes when going other ways, mainly the statistical route.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
If you look at what they can actually study, then 5 million is way more then the field deserves. What can they do with the money, except maybe interview the few people that were brain dead and recovered (but even these interviews won't give any hard information since the people were not dead)?
The only thing they can study is what people BELIEVE about immortality and life&death, not immortality and life&death itself. And do we need a study about that, when every religion is so eager to let us know it's own beliefs?
No, we definitely do not need more of that. It just confuses the issue.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
"Things don't work that way."
Is that the Scientist or the Atheist speaking? Because just among us girls, the divergence of Atheism and Science is getting as scary as the divergence of hard Theism and Science. I got shouted down in grad school (Botany) because what I spoke wasn't religious, no, it was against Canon. The subject was how peanuts grow. They do so in an odd and unique way. A way that sets them up to one day mutate into an incredible weed. My question was why are they only ones that do what they do given how adventitious it is. Another grad student called me an idiot for even asking. See, I went against Canon. I asked my advising professor about it later (it was her symposia) and she described the lack of imagination and original thinking in the hard sciences and exhorted me to not become the same. She herself had a hard time even getting her PhD as a mere woman because of this lack. This was a Big Ten school btw.
Your lack is philosophy, and imagination. It is you that is holding back Science as much as the Theists. When all he dreamers left NASA what happened?
I can see a forest, I can see trees, I can see a single tree, and I can describe everything that goes on with that tree, from its birth to its death and yet there is more to a forest than atoms banging around. Go outside and smell the flowers, Gather ye rosebuds while ye may.
Slashdot, where armchair scientists get shouted down and armchair theologians get modded up.
No. My alternative is to recognize a "we do not know". Why is it so hard to live with unexplained facts? Why do you have to invent an explanation? And invented it is, and that is the thing I am pointing out.
Incidentally, overcoming irrational beliefs is a necessary step to start seeing what is there.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
And as a Scientist you are OK with this as proof of their Atheism?
Slashdot, where armchair scientists get shouted down and armchair theologians get modded up.
Thank you. At least somebody understands what I am trying to say. Sometimes, in these /. discussions, I get the impression that "human intelligence" is actually a rather rare quality.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
Now you are just being childish. The analogy was clear. You are able to understand it. This "but I want it to be different"-stance is ridiculous.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
So, the brain is the driver to what? A magical cloud that connects wirelessly to the brain? What if we are just a tv show in magic unicorn land?
Your What-ifs have no basis on anything even remotely scientific.
It's just wishful thinking.
WTF am I doing replying to an AC at 5 A.M on a Friday night?
Sorry, as a scientist and from talking to several chemistry PhDs about the topic, I can state with conviction that this is not at all the state of affairs. Chemistry knowledge today is a bit like classical mechanics: A usually pretty good approximation, but in no ways complete and when you get to extremer circumstances, the current models break down. Same for the understanding of complex systems. Maybe in a few hundred years, but it looks doubtful.
I also do not get were you see "divine mechanisms". At least I did not claim any. I just claimed that the question is currently open and that "death is the end" is just as unsupportable by the observable facts as "death is not the end".
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
I am cognizant of the fact that science isn't a replacement for metaphysics
Yes it is. And in areas where it's still not, it will be. Socrates, Aristotle, or Kant did what they could with the tools they had available, which were essentially basic observation. They all theorized in the unknown, and did their best at it. Except that is no longer the unknown. We know pretty damn well how it goes. Hero in Alexandria was the first to discover the nervous system, and the first to realize that personality resided in the brain. Greece philosophers thought consciousness came from the liver.
I'm tired of your argument, I've heard it so many times. You look for the gaps, where science can't yet explain everything, and you put there the same magical universe you enjoy so much. Ah, science can't explain other dimensions? Well, other dimensions are magic realms where your wishes become true, and nothing makes any kind of logical sense because it's all harry potter.
Fuck off. I've tried for a long time to have rational discussions with people like you. I'm tired of that, here's my new approach:
Your argument is stupid. I'm talking science, you are talking magic. Go watch harry potter and shut the fuck up.
That kind of response is the only one worthy of your stupidity.
WTF am I doing replying to an AC at 5 A.M on a Friday night?
Good points. And stated better than I did.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
You are desperate to hear science say "we don't know", for it's in those blanks that you hide your magic universe.
There is a difference between "We don't fully understand it yet" and "we have no idea, it might as well be unicorns". We DO UNDERSTAND that all of our consciousness comes from our brains. There is no discussion there, no doubt. Ask every single biologist, every single neurologist, they'll all agree that everything we are is software running on the brain (hardware). So, haven't reverse-engineered all of the software, or all of the hardware. Sure, we haven't. That doesn't mean that we have no idea, and it doesn't mean that anything is possible, it's not a blank where you can hide a soul.
Now fuck off, and go back to watching harry potter.
WTF am I doing replying to an AC at 5 A.M on a Friday night?
Atheists have been around since time immemorial. Even Plato said that every educated man becomes an atheist in his youth, only to find god again in old age. (Although it's unclear whether he means the old man actually believes, or just falls into line because he appreciates obedience to societal norms.)
Considering that atheistic beliefs have been so prevalent throughout history, it's likely that it was always highly tolerated. What has not been tolerated is belief in the _wrong_ god, and sustained public discourse denigrating the prevailing religious beliefs. This applies not just to religion, but to almost any other societal norm. It's why Socrates was put to death. Socrates was condemned not because of his beliefs (he committed severe blasphemy in his tales about the oracle), but because of his agitation. Likewise for almost all the victims of Christian and Islamic doctrinal persecution.
See, religious people generally are superstitious about _behavior_, not thinking. And an atheist has no peculiar behavior of his own, which means he's not a threat. Likewise, if a society demands some sort of ritual, the atheist has no problem completing the ritual; it's all non-sense anyhow.
Small minds like yours are the reason people like Einstein, Shannon and others had problems publishing their results. There is no "list". Every real scientists looks at the argument, no matter how outlandish and considers its merits merely on the implication chain presented and on the anchor points. If both are sound, then the conclusion is sound. Of course, extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof, but once it is given the claim has merit. That is too much for many people to understand though.
You are clearly one of them, as your posturing shows.
Your "list" is nothing but an attempt to define what is "blasphemous" in your own inflexible and small model of the world, which basically is a religion of your own devising. Anything that does not fit it must be false, no matter what logic says. Even pointing out that some things cannot be stated with certainty is too much for you to handle. In some ways that makes you even worse than the religious nuts.
Site note: You have no clue how the scientific method works. And it does work. "Enough with this bullshit." is not part of it.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
I dont like most of the cunts around today (more than likely vice versa).
Maybe one advantage would be they would be more careful of the shit they pull if they had to live in it for a long long time
1. Emergent property of the brain. Any change to brain affects consciousness. (causation)
2. Property of the universe which the brain uses. Any change to brain affects consciousness' ability to use the brain. (correlation only)
Well stated.
Also, when they start to use insults, you always know they just have seen they have no leg to stand on and are trying aggression as dominance strategy. Quite transparent. (Insulting back is fair game ;-)
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
Their willingness to die for something they believed in it doesn't prove that they believed what you believe about what they believed in. A belief that God was going to give them eternal life in heaven (a view they shared with the Pharisees and with the guys who took down the Twin Towers) would be quite sufficient. .
Im glad you can prove that by experimentation. Now if you'll just direct me to your submission on Arxiv?
The fact is, noone in this thread has any "testable hypothesis". Everything from post one on down is raw speculation by armchair neuroscientists.
But carry on-- it is delicious watching all the hypocrisy, as people go after religion as not being testable (and get modded up for it), and then spout something like this:
That doesn't mean we fully understand it, or that we ever will, but consciousness very obviously arises solely out of the brain.
Oh, I see-- we cant explain it or understand it but we are willing to make dogmatic statements about it.
Likewise you claim that there is not. We might as well degenerate this conversation into "prove you exist" if you want to make "proveability" the god du jour.
Only if you are willing to acknowledge that those theories remain theories, and are based on a mountain of assumptions.
The idea that you can prove things all the way down with no assumptions is laughable and crumbles under the first shred of inspection.
So how would you go about proving causation? Just about everything in nature could just be the result of some 'undetectable force', rather then what we currently thing of as a cause.
Fortunately, it is not as bad as this. There are some things than can be done. In a sense, causation is only present when one thing is dominant. (For brevity, I use ~ for correlation and -> for causation left-to-right):
Do these elementary tests:
1. If you see A~B, you try to first manipulate A independently to see whether B follows.
If so, you have A->B. If not, you have not(A->B)
2. Do the last thing with B and A swapped.
Note: Testing it both ways is critical!
You can now have several outcomes:
1. A->B and B->A: There is no causation.
In fact it is likely A and B are the same thing, just observed from different angles.
Next step: Look at that further.
2. Neither A->B nor B->A are true: There is no causation.
But there is a C with C->B and C->B, as otherwise there would not be a correlation.
Next step: Go looking for C.
3. A->B but not B->A: You have causation.
This is the only case where you have causation.
(Of course same applies with A and B swapped.)
In practice you do typically not get really clean truth values, so some interpretation and care is required. This approach works well in many cases and is well tested and established. It is also logically sound. Still, sometimes the elementary tests fail, are inconclusive or cannot be conducted a the time because of various problems.
And here is the kicker that most people do not get: Unless you get conclusive results from both elementary tests, you do not know anything about causation! Most people make the mistake to think that if they only have one conclusive result from the basic tests, they know causation. Not so. (Basic mechanism from elementary logic is that "A implies B" is also true if A is false and B arbitrary. People see "A implies B" to be true and fail to check that "A" is true as well. Only then is "B" actually true. Without the check, "A" can just be false and B as well and the implication is still true. This is also known vulgarly as "garbage in, garbage out").
So, you see that there are ways and in practice causality can often be established or rejected. Just not always and it is important to recognize when it is not.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
With the brain, there is no BIG TV TRANSMITTER IN THE SKY that has all matter completely unaffected, except for EXTRA-SPECIAL HUMAN BRAINS BECAUSE THEY ARE SO SPECIAL. Things don't work that way.
To be clear, are you here saying "there are no phenomena we have not accounted for, because things dont work that way"?
Im no scientist, but im QUITE sure SCIENCE doesnt work that way.
This sounds like a semantic argument. Possibly what you mean by "dead" is not the same as what others mean by "dead". Certainly you did not reach "brain death", or you would not be posting on slashdot right now.
You both mistake my intentions and the strength of your arguments. I have absolutely no desire for any "magic". But you do have a dominant desire for knowing how this works. Dominant enough in fact that you re distorting reality badly.
I suggest to read up on what current neuro-science says on "the location of consciousness" and you will find that they are much, much more guarded and typically refrain from making anything like the statements you claim in any scientific context. Sure, many of them have an opinion and for some it is well be along the lines you suggest, but almost nobody in these fields will claim what you suggest as scientific fact. Their papers would get rejected if they did, as they cannot prove anything like it. A few decades ago, the pysicalist view you represent was pretty popular there. By now people have taken a step back, as it just does not mesh with the observable facts has been recognized to have been premature.
It is a popular misconception though, but it stems from some fundamental misunderstandings.
As a starting-point for reading, I recommend the wikipedia article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consciousness#Scientific_approaches
You will find that while it is frequently implicitly assumed that the brain creates consciousness, this is by no means established fact. It also happens to be immaterial for most research at this time. But the mere fact that there still is no good definition of consciousness should be pretty illuminating. Also note that any brain scan results always only talk about correlations. You are reading things into the current scientific understanding that are just not there.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
You assume consciousness is an emergent property of the brain. That is a bit like assuming what is shown on a TV screen is generated in there. A good first assumption, but not more than an assumption. The currents state of scientific research is that it is completely unknown what consciousness is and what intelligence is. Both can be described by their effects, but to speculate on where they reside and whether they are generated there is very much premature at this time.
To have scientific research of consciousness, you first need to define what it actually means - a strict and clear definition. We don't have one. So everyone is really talking about their own thing.
Look, if you want to believe in soul that's separate from the physical body, by all means, go ahead. Just please don't call it a scientific theory, and don't pretend that we can have a rational debate over it.
Unfortunately, it also entirely misses the point -- consciousness is not an abstraction, it is atomic
How do you know that? We perceive the concept as atomic, true, but you cannot properly measure yourself. And I've yet to see a way to directly measure the consciousness of some other person - you only see its manifestations, not the thing itself. In fact, we don't even know what "the thing itself" is - what does it mean to be conscious? You'd think that you know that about yourself, but do you really? Try putting that in words and explaining to someone else, without assuming that they already know it (after all, you cannot assume that their perception of consciousness is the same as yours - in fact you can't even assume that they experience the same exact thing).
Death is the cessation or permanent termination of all biological functions that sustain a living organism." Cessation; not interruption.
This is an exceptionally silly definition, because how exactly do you determine permanency?
To give a simple example with GP. Suppose the people around him decided to not reanimate him. What, precisely, would be the moment of his death? Is it when he lost consciousness (since that's where "termination of biological functions" began, and it was "permanent" since he didn't get reanimated)? Or the moment when they decided to do nothing? Or the moment when they could have still done anything with non-zero chance of success, regardless of whether they did or not? What if that happened when defibrillators didn't exist, did death occur earlier back then?
You are not thinking outside the box.
Do you have any way to calculate the probabilities of any of these things, even in a crude order-of-magnitude way? No, of course not. So your claim they're LESS LIKELY TO BE TRUE is completely unsupported. But even if you had a way to calculate the probabilities, your claim "it can not be a part of any realistic philosophy" would not follow. In science there are often competing theories, some more likely than others, and they only get relegated to the realm of fiction once they're ruled out by actual evidence. To the best of my knowledge, the idea that our universe is actually a simulation (which includes dreams) hasn't been ruled out, nor has it been confirmed.
All in all, these religious arguments certainly do serve to illustrate the human tendency towards irrationality, and not only in the believers.
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.
I did not submit it is proof of atheism. I submitted it as proof that a public statement is not proof of the facts of that statement "read my lips, no new taxes" "I did not have sexual relations with that woman" Such hearsay is proof that they said such things, but not proof that the things said are true, as was assumed in the post I was replying to.
Learn to love Alaska
In science, reproducible results and testable hypotheses are more important than God. And I would argue that the same is true in life generally.
What specific limitation are we talking about, and what indicates that humans aren't subject to it?
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.
(Although it's unclear whether he means the old man actually believes, or just falls into line because he appreciates obedience to societal norms.)
As for my dad, he was atheist at 20, agnostic at 50 and religious at 80, even though his personal beliefs didn't change. The problem is when we try to have a rational discussion about people's irrational beliefs. Better when we are looking at surviving documentation about public statements of that personal belief made my many in times when public statements of some nature could result in great loss of personal standing.
Considering that atheistic beliefs have been so prevalent throughout history, it's likely that it was always highly tolerated.
The real "original sin" is that everyone is born atheist. No baby's pops out of the womb and asks for God. They look for food and that familiar warm heartbeat they heard for the last 9 months. It's not until the parents teach religion to them when they become believers.
And everyone is superstitious. Even those that aren't, are, just not about the same things as others. Even if it's not religious or supernatural in origin. For one, people are horrible at risk analysis. People fear flying much much more than driving. But so many more die driving. That's superstitious, as it's a belief the opposite of reality made because of some hidden (or overt) belief.
Learn to love Alaska
Oh wow, I am very sorry. I got my posts completely mixed up somehow.
Actually the trolling post was by gweihir, not you.
He made a number of posts, and two of them replied to by poperatzo. For some reason I thought this was one of those.
So I fully withdraw that comment, and apologize for mixing you up with someone else.
Like, woah, dude. Anyone who points out your bullshit is, like, a "troll". Dude, what if this internet stuff worked in real life? We could make, like, anything, be, like, the way we wanted it to be.
Dude!
You are making a logical error here: you assume that other human beings have a conscious experience despite this being - according to yourself - unnecessary to explain their observed behaviour, yet you assume that the camera doesn't have it. Then you present this presumed difference - which, remember, you yourself said cannot be proven from the actual observations - as something mystical and in need of an explanation. In other words, you claim that an unobservable agent exists and then want its existence explained.
It would be far simpler to say that the camera is indeed aware of the image it processes to the extent its observable behaviour suggests, and extend this to everything - and yes, this means that electrons are aware of the electric field, since they react to it. In this model the difference between "conscious experience" and "mere awareness" becomes a matter of semantics: agents which have a lot of information processing capacity relative to their inputs and complex enough feedback loops that their internal state becomes more important than their immediate inputs for determining their reactions are said to be conscious.
The alternative is a universe overrun by philosophical zombies - or, as you say, one running IN THE DARK.
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.
Will his consciousness cease to exist or will his ability to show us it exist cease?
That's sort of a serious part of the question. Does someone's consciousness really cease to exist or just our ability to perceive it.
I have a magical unicorn that shits gold bars. The downside is that you won't be able to perceive it until you buy it from me for $10,000 (no personal checks, please). But, considering the value of gold, obviously you can simply assume the unicorn exists, right?
Ask me about my sig!
The Templeton Foundation is a front for the pseudo-scientific presentation of religious ideas in face with scientific make-up on.
Please read the comments by John Carroll, from CalTech, and Richard Dawkins, and Peter Woit and Deutsch at UCSD..
The foundation attempts to put a legitimate scientific veil over their actual desire to push a religious and anti-evolution agenda. Many scientists have backed out of conferences and grants when they discover the shenanigans that the Templeton Foundation engages in.
Unfortunately, this disqualifies your experience of disproving any but the most bureaucratic of hypothethical afterlifes. And the same is true of anyone else capable of relaying theirs, of course. Which rises some questions about the viability of this entire research project as anything but a flamewar generator.
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.
It's too bad they didn't drop the $5m to the Methuselah Foundation for non-philosophical scientific research.
So... Grampa finally croaks at the age of 101. Hasn't been able to see, hear, taste, smell, or think straight for the last 15 years. When his magic soul is divinely uploaded to a new, angelic, ether-based model, is his consciousness just like it was when he died? Senile, socially disengaged, and slow to understand anything going on around him? Or, as many believe, would it be transformed to its former glory, when gramps was a young adult.
O.K... Now think about how differently you looked at the world; the skills, interests, and personality you had when you were much younger. Grandfather is a categorically different person from the vital young man he once was (he'd probably yell at him to get off his lawn if they met). So, in what sense would that angelic being be the same guy that died and not more so a recreation of somebody that existed 75 years ago?
I just can't see how the Judeo-Christian concept of an afterlife is anything but a big pile of paradox.
Ask me about my sig!
No, I am implying that we do not know how the conscious works and it can be the part of other organs or collective intelligence of the individual cells or groups of them acting as a whole that make up the body in it's entirety. People have spent a very long time trying to prove the moon landings are faked too. The difference is that technology has progressed and our understanding has progressed and it will not hurt anything if we take another look at it. It may even benefit victims of brain trauma if we find the conscious is still there and we can access it differently only through the damaged brain matter.
Are you upset because someone is spending money on science you will not participate in or the possibility that they might find something more to death then now your gone? It seems to me that those objecting to this are somehow connecting it to a spirit or soul and appear threatened that someone might look into the reality of it.
Yep, thought so. You are scared they might find something that would completely disprove your view in religion or science and that you might have made the wrong decisions in life.
It doesn't matter if they are liars, the point of science is finding facts, not supporting false claims. If they make inaccurate claims, it will be disproved by other testing or stand on it's merits. That is how science works.
I'm not sure why you would think that, even everything will have parts of the collective that might need identified. The every thing is everything should be everything is everything that functions.
Are you suggesting we should stop trying to learn?
The question is meaningless without first defining "I". This is the more poignant question. What exactly is it that "dies". What is this "I" that allegedly goes somewhere?
Answer this question and the former becomes moot.
I'm glad your imagination is working. I'm also glad you reached the mental wherewithal to post something about it instead of sitting in your mom's basement all day playing extreme candyland- the shoots and ladders edition.
Let me explain something, this is a lot like memory for the computer. You know, that thing that allows you to surf porn and post remarks to show the world your lack of intelligence. If the power fails, the reason your Asian babes with porcupines page disappears and needs reloaded when the computer restarts is because it is part of a memory that needs a constant voltage to maintain it's condition. Much like a fully functioning brain, we can measure that voltage and even monitor activity. Now there is another type of memory, this type of memory hard codes the information until it is manipulated again which is why you computer can restart and load the operating system in the first place. In both scenarios, when the power is gone, you get the appearance of nothing and when the power is on, you get activity that can be measured. However, even if the information is still there, it cannot be perceived as being there.
So is the consciousness random access memory that disappears with a power failure, or one that remains except that you know it because the monitor was damaged in the power outage? Should I automatically assume the computer is dead and throw it away, or should I look at it to see if there is another way to access the information- perhaps with a new monitor.
Now go back to thinking about your animal feces and what that means to you and let the adults talk for a bit.
Now you are either lying, or deluding yourself. You are reading too much into it. You are reading about NCC. Of course no scientist will say "the brain did it". That's the whole point of NCC. To pinpoint which structures in the brain are responsible for which conscious thoughts. But you are doing the usual default argument religious people use: They are not being super explicit about it, therefore god. That is wrong.
Anyway, why don't you stop hiding and flat out tell us what kind of delusion is it that you have? No rational person believes that any part of our consciousness resides outside the brain. So, what is it that you believe?
Be specific, answer this short questions so I can tell how fucking crazy you are exactly:
1 - Do you believe that some part of our consciousness originates outside the body?
2 - Do you believe that consciousness continues to take place after or before death?
3 - Are you religious in any way?
4 - Are you sure your mother got you tested?
WTF am I doing replying to an AC at 5 A.M on a Friday night?
I guess you didn't read my reply very carefully or understand it. Lots of people willing to die for what they believe. What nobody is willing to die for is something they KNOW to be a falsehood. The disciples of Jesus had seen him in his resurrected glory. The apostle Paul tells us in 1st Corinthians 15 that the resurrected Jesus Christ appeared to 500 people at once.
People continually repeat the refrain, “the Bible cannot be trusted to be historically accurate”. There are people today that deny the historicity of the Holocaust. There are people today that refuse to believe that any human being ever walked on the moon. Anyone who does not WANT to believe something they are told, will not believe, no matter how much evidence they are presented with.
A sufficiently advanced simulation is indistinguishable from reality.
I am doing no such thing. I happen to be a scientist myself and _can_ interpret the language. I happen to have in-dept knowledge on how it goes in AI research: "bla bla bla, computers will be more intelligent than humans soon, bla bla bla, we need more funding". Then you ask them in the coffee break at a conference, and they admit that of course that is BS, but they have to say it to get that funding. I would be very much surprised if neurology researchers were any different. In fact it is quite likely that they are doing the same thing here: "bla bla bla, we are close to finding where consciousness is generated in the brain, bla bla bla, we need more funding". In fact they actually have nothing, not even a good definition of what consciousness is. Some of them begin to admit that in public.
No rational person believes that any part of our consciousness resides outside the brain.
This is not a discussion about beliefs. It is one about rational argument. And there is no hard fact available at this time, even if you are unable to understand that. Pysicism is a belief, just like a religion. You have swallowed it whole and seem to never have questioned it sufficiently. If you really cannot see it, what I am doing is pointing out that your "religion" is just as flawed as other ones are. It is basically a modern form of nihilism, with a pseudo-scientific justification.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
So you need a push mechanism on the wristwatch to send data out, and this action occurs based on some event at the watch?
Not making this any easier.
--- Mercutio was right.
One of the issues I remember reading about was from Roger Penrose where he laid out a Goedelian proof demonstrating a limit of a turing machine. It was a proof that a human could understand, but the proof itself demonstrated its unknowability by a turing machine, which would be limited to mathematical logic. He argued that since all of known physics can be theoretically modeled on a computer, that the human brain must be using something outside of _known_ physics and there is still more to discover, something that allows the brain to do things related to noncomputability.
The argument was posed first in "The Emperor's New Mind" and later in "Shadows of the Mind".
http://www.calculemus.org/MathUniversalis/NS/10/01penrose.html
Missing the point. I assert that there is no experimentation that you could perform that would prove that we exist without making non-testable assumptions.
Of course, your emotions and strong language not only prove your point, but also show us all that you're rational person, absolutely secure in what you believe in. Right? By making personal attacks you do not make your point more valid, in fact, you're doing quite the opposite. BTW, I do not believe in soul or other "magical unobservable things", but I also believe in that our observation methods are constantly improving, giving us more and more data on previously "impossible" things, so I do not shut myself completely from anything not consistent wit my current view of things.
Absence of proof != proof of absence.
Define consciousness.
That's actually precisely my point. A claim "there is experimental data (about X)" is meaningless if (i) the experiments were about something else, and (ii) X cannot be sufficiently well defined to conduct any experiments on it. As I've had to point out elsewhere on this topic, "consciousness" is necessarily defined first person ("I am" not "you are" nor "my neurons happen to fire in a particular way") which is precisely why we can never have experimental data on it -- because it is by definition only accessible first person and our experiments are by definition only reportable third person. Foolish attempts to duck the issue by "let's just call something else 'consciousness' and pretend we've answered the same question" are just that.
Unfortunately, it also entirely misses the point -- consciousness is not an abstraction, it is atomic
How do you know that? We perceive the concept as atomic, true, but you cannot properly measure yourself. And I've yet to see a way to directly measure the consciousness of some other person - you only see its manifestations, not the thing itself. In fact, we don't even know what "the thing itself" is - what does it mean to be conscious? You'd think that you know that about yourself, but do you really? Try putting that in words and explaining to someone else, without assuming that they already know it (after all, you cannot assume that their perception of consciousness is the same as yours - in fact you can't even assume that they experience the same exact thing).
I am. And I don't care if you "aren't". It is by definition first person. And here's the thing -- If the "perception" differs from "the measurement" then it is the measurement that is wrong -- we can only experience the perception not the measurement, and it is the first hand (not the third hand measurable) nature of existence that is what people talk about when they say "consciousness". You could be imaginary and the world could be an illusion putting on a show of pretending to have some physics for just now or have been created yesterday, for all it matters. I still am.
Yes, it is. People just seem to create a new name for it every 20-40 years, because people who worked on the old one shift to practical applications of the most trivial forms of it, and CS is too uncool for anyone outside of CS to listen to.
Apparently CS is too "uncool" for you to want to learn anything about it. Go read some CS textbooks, and come back when you know that "information processing" includes many things that are not complex systems and do not have emergent properties, and that when CS researchers say "complex systems" and "emergent properties" we mean something very specific, not a brainless catch-all for anything that processes information as you keep claiming.
There is a thing called scientific method. It works [, bitches]. In fact, all currently available knowledge was obtained through it. And according to it, when ignorant idiots repeatedly assault the researcher with their outlandish fantasies that have no foundation in reality, and no way to verify or falsify, the proper response is "Enough with this bullshit!".
Well apparently my correct response to you is "Enough with this bullshit"... You appear to have disconnected with reality. Most of currently available knowledge was not in fact obtained through the scientific method (we are yet to find the peer reviewed journal that contained the original paper on fire by Caveman Ugh... in fact until about 1900 there was comparatively little agreement on what scientific methods should be) and neither does it say anything about "proper responses" to what people say about us.
"I am" is not something you can subject to scientific method. Hence, it is doomed to be perpetually relegated to the realm of philosophy and religion, not science.
The post I replied to was asking about consciousness, intelligence, and the brain. I ignored the unanswerable one, and addressed the other two. Consciousness is a personal interpretation of experiences. It can be defined like color. You can tell someone what it should be, and test if they respond appropriately when asked, but you can never experience the colors someone else sees. For all we know, the color my brain assigns to green is not the same one you see when you see green. Sure, we can test the wavelengths that trigger cone firings, but not test the visualization assembled within the brain. That's personal and inseparable from the person. My green could be your red, and there's nothing that could ever be done to test that, so there's no reason to even consider the possibility. It's beyond our ability to know, so no reason to even consider it.
Learn to love Alaska
Interesting argument. If all that human being is only a deterministic machine, then why would it need consciousness? Everything else in nature is geared towards maximum efficiency - every law of physics, biology, even sociology seems to support this claim. And yet - consciousness? Absolutely inessential thing? In our perfectly running universe? Well, something's not summing up here.
Absence of proof != proof of absence.
Isaac Newton was also a paranoid bible bash who believed the world was going to end in 2060, and was secretly trying to figure out how to transmute lead into gold using alchemy.
Heck through most of history genius's have believed in the philosophers stone and alchemy, but ask any dumb kid on the net, and he'll tell you alchemy is hogwash.
Guess what? The dumb kids are right.
Excuse the Unicode crap in my posts. That's an apostrophe, and slashdot is busted.
This is stupid, and you are stupid for making such a stupid statement.
Most knowledge is completely unrelated to being able to reproduce the phenomenon that is being studied. It's very unlikely that anyone will produce, say, a new galaxy, however this does not prevent astrophysicists from studying them.
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
The post I replied to was asking about consciousness, intelligence, and the brain. I ignored the unanswerable one, and addressed the other two. ...
gweihir's post you replied to was not "asking" and was itself a reply to the statement "That doesn't mean we fully understand it, or that we ever will, but consciousness very obviously arises solely out of the brain.". It appears you decided to silently ignore the topic of conversation! And if you read it again in the context of the thread, you should see your post appears to (apparently accidentally) read as if it is claiming there is experimental data for precisely what you now say is unknowable.
Yes, I am "emotional" therefore the burden of proof falls on the one saying that something doesn't exist. Great logic there.
Show me proof of a soul, and I will believe in it. Otherwise, shut the fuck up and stop spreading your self-superior agnostic crap. Hurr durr strung lunguage pruvs u r rong.
We're talking about undetstanding mechanisms, here. That TV set would run on magic or just theory until that man understood what radio is. If he wasn't able to generate a radio wave, all he'd really know is that he's interfering with the mechanics of the device. Stupid would be drawing a broad conclusion from that experiment.
Incidentally, you should learn the difference between 'know' and 'study' before you run around calling anybody stupid. Thank you, though, for supporting the point this entire discussion about the TV was about. I know it wasn't intentional, but it sure was effective.
Nice try, sophomorically speaking. If the condition turns out not to reversible, because the patient recovers, then the condition is not death, by definition. Ventricular fibrillation for example is a condition which, absent effective intervention, leads virtually 100% to death, but it is not death _until_ it is death. If the patient has been in VF for 30 seconds, no one would fail to attempt resuscitation. If for 30 minutes, resuscitation may be attempted but the outlook is very grim. If for 4 hours, absent extraordinary circumstances, normally resuscitation would not even be attempted. The patient is determined to be dead, and declared so, when a physician either determines that attempted resuscitation would be hopeless, or resuscitation has been attempted with reasonable persistence and has failed. Not before.
It is a moving target though. Two hundred years ago, if a man fell over for no reason on the sidewalk with no pulse and no respiration, he was just declared dead quite promptly because nobody knew how to restore the pulse and respiration. Today in such a case, CPR is attempted promptly, and cardioversion as soon as possible, because we now know what to do and the training and equipment is widely available. One could academically argue that the declaration of death in the old days was premature, but it is pointless to do so, because given the state of knowledge at the time, the subject _was_ indeed dead.
heres a fun game, believe you have no mind ;)
According to cell theory, all cells arise from previously existing living cells. Each one of the cells in our body has immortality, looking backwards to the origin of life. Each one of us is the same age since our lives did not begin at birth or at conception but when life began some few billion years ago, if on earth and earlier if one agrees with Panspermia. We have changed a bit since our origin and for those cells that will be around derived from humans or luckily, each one of us, we would probably not recognize ourselves in 100,000 or a million years. Immortality is not just for the gods or crazy cancers like HeLa but for all the next set of lucky winners of the original Darwin award.
Nothing, You're dead.
Not necessarily. The "human" part will be dead though. The more we discover about the brain, the more it seems all our emotions and thoughts happen within it. When we die, the experience - if there is one - will be completely and utterly un-human; unlike anything we can imagine with this material brain.
Indeed there may not even be an "I". We're on the way to finding the part(s) of the brain that create that sensation too.
Personally, I'm very curious about death. Ironically, however, I will probably lose all curiosity once I'm there. :)
It appears you decided to silently ignore the topic of conversation!
Taking it as you said, his statement was essentially stating "you can't prove there isn't a God" That's a nonsense statement that may or may not be true, but is untestable either way. So of course I'll ignore it. I brought up the tests we have done on the subject and that every test ever done comes to a similar conclusion. Nobody has refuted anything I've said, just complained that I said it. That's an interesting non-sequitur.
And if you read it again in the context of the thread, you should see your post appears to (apparently accidentally) read as if it is claiming there is experimental data for precisely what you now say is unknowable.
There is experimental data that whatever happens in our brains is tied to the brain. There is no reason to go into why the research done supports that because it doesn't address the soul directly. From the comments on consciousness, there is nothing that indicates the definition as used by the "believers" is anything other than "soul" Why not just call it that and simplify the discussion?
Apparently because their argument is "if you can't prove it wrong, it must be right, not that I believe it or are willing to tell you what I believe at all."
Learn to love Alaska
When I was at UVA in the 90s, there was a researcher who was studying reincarnation by studying young children who are "born" (which is to say when they are old enough to express themselves) have memories of a previous life. They know details of self, life and death that it would be impossible for them to discover without knowing things about a random person very far away. He had collected a small number of cases that were quite astounding. His conclusion: Damned if he knew what was going on, but it looked like there was at least a possibility of reincarnation.
This was not a gullible new age "doctor" but a hard headed researcher who did not expect these results. They confused him not because he wanted anything from the study but because he could discover no mechanism that would explain what was happening. Each case was separate, no one knew about his research so no one was deliberately faking data for him. Leads came from friends and ex-students who knew his interest in the question and heard about "some weird kid".
Nothing for certain here folks, keep moving, and wondering.
Subversion of spatial scale luxury decoration ideas.
Nothing silly about it. There is an abundance of difference between existence of a permanent state and the clear determination of that state's exact moment of arrival.
What you are arguing is that if we don't know exactly when something happened, we can't define it as permanent. Patent nonsense.
Most of the great geniuses of recorded history lived when not professing a belief in an afterlife would get you to that afterlife (or lack thereof) more quickly.
Please, read some history. Most of them did not live in a culture where it was common to kill unbelievers. That's nonsense.
They did, however, live in cultures where they were raised as children with a particular belief set and were surrounded by people that largely agreed with those beliefs. Therefore, even were there total absence of hostility to unbelief, there is no question that they were much influenced and persuaded by their culture. Which is to say very little, as that is true of most of us. Swings away from parental beliefs are rarely dramatic, though typically done in some increment. Few of us are content to accept them wholesale. :)
A permanent state in this case is equivalent to irreversible. Given that this is not set in stone, but rather subject to the available resuscitation techniques (and, to some extent, luck), there's no clear point at which the state is truly irreversible. At best, it is irreversible to us, given present constraints. That's a pretty weak basis to build a definition upon.
You're wrong, you people could learn a little about correlation, causality, and concurrent causes... most children can understand that perfectly at the age of 10 if properly explained.
We known that certain functions of the brain AFFECT personality traits, we don't know if they CAUSE them. Hell if we knew that most problems about the brain would be easy to solve since we knew that some little part of the brain was causing it. These two are very different questions and I really hope you don't work in the field.
Just because we see the wind pushing a balloon around in the air it does not mean the wind is the cause of the balloon being in the air.
Oh, yeah, I published introductions to chapters on the theme in google groups, 2004 and I got myself almost... immortal. Pure soul, you understand? Perchance they have NO IDEA of my material? Because I have been since then TRYING to get ANYONE pay attention to it to earn some INCOME. (Funny guy in the icon, eh!) Thanks for the tip. Danilo J Bonsignore
someone thought about it already, it's not a matter of 'if', it's a matter of 'how much effort will be put into it'p
clinical immortality should be possible from a scientific point of view, but statistically (we know statistics dont mean something will happen ofcourse) your chances of dying by accident would increase the longer you live
Free speech was meant to be free for all... how can anyone grow up in a nanny state ?
Horseshit.
It appears you decided to silently ignore the topic of conversation!
Taking it as you said, his statement was essentially stating "you can't prove there isn't a God"
Actually, so far as I can see, you're the first person to insert the word "God" into this particular part of the discussion at all. And if you read two posts further up the tree it's clear he's not particularly religious.
Nobody has refuted anything I've said, just complained that I said it. That's an interesting non-sequitur.
Upon what you apparently said (in context) being refuted, you backpedalled and claimed to mean something entirely different and irrelevant to the topic at hand at all.
There is experimental data that whatever happens in our brains is tied to the brain. There is no reason to go into why the research done supports that because it doesn't address the soul directly. From the comments on consciousness, there is nothing that indicates the definition as used by the "believers" is anything other than "soul" Why not just call it that and simplify the discussion?
I see you're into tagging people, and trying to shuffle the discussion into one on religion. Actually, I've no idea which of the commenters in this thread are believers in a "soul" because the philosophical issue of consciousness (and dualism v idealism v realism) isn't uniquely tied to religion.
Apparently because their argument is "if you can't prove it wrong, it must be right, not that I believe it or are willing to tell you what I believe at all."
I'm yet to see that quote anywhere in this thread other than your made-up post. Could it be you've decided "Sod the world, I'm just going to argue with myself; it's easier"?
And you think human cognition has little to do with "statistically mining the heck" out of vast amounts of data? I can't speak for other parts of the brain, but the visual system at least appears to rely very heavily on building and using statistical models for everything from shape and texture to distance and orientation.
For example, (almost) everybody who looks at this image will at first glance see stairs on the ground, ascending from right to left. But the image is actually ambiguous! You see stairs on the ground because the model in your brain expects stairs on the ground, rather than on the ceiling. Many visual illusions play on these sort of expectation that objects are orientated in certain ways or are a certain size.
Actually, so far as I can see, you're the first person to insert the word "God" into this particular part of the discussion at all. And if you read two posts further up the tree it's clear he's not particularly religious.
A purely faith-based "prove me wrong" argument is a theological argument, not a rational one.
I see you're into tagging people, and trying to shuffle the discussion into one on religion.
I'm stating that the elusive and non-defined nature of his assertions are essentially the same as religion. I'm not going to re-hash thousands of years of religious debate for one Internet kook, so I jumped to the end. Sorry you can't keep up.
Learn to love Alaska
We're talking about undetstanding mechanisms, here. That TV set would run on magic or just theory until that man understood what radio is.
That's a strawman. There is no need to understand the details of how exactly the images are encoded, to answer a much more importan question, where they are originated, and what physical phenomena (or magic, if any) are involved in getting them displayed on the TV screen.
If you don't understand the difference, you are either incredibly stupid, or intentionally trying to support a point of view that you know to be invalid.
Incidentally, you should learn the difference between 'know' and 'study' before you run around calling anybody stupid.
I am well aware of what those words mean. You, on the other hand, make idiotic claims that unless one can present knowledge about each an every detail of a complex process, it is perfectly fine to claim that something completely different is taking place, despite having no knowledge of it whatsoever, or presenting a reason for such outrageous claims.
I know it wasn't intentional, but it sure was effective.
As I said before, you are trying to defend a known-invalid claim by attacking a strawman and moving goalposts of what you believe, should be considered to be a proof, knowledge, or everything else. While, indeed, effective when arguing in front of ignorant and stupid audience, it demonstrated nothing but your love for cheap sophistry.
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
He doesn't need to know how they're encoded, he needa to know a radio wave generates the picture. That is unproven until he manipulates the on the screen. Any conclusion he draws up until then is just an assumption, and he'd be a poor scientist.
The example still stands. You are mixing science with an agenda and cherry-picking what you think supports your point. You have become what you hate and are trying to project your behavior onto me. You can call me stupid all you like, but as you've already pointed out, we're great at making up conclusions when facts are not present.
Romans 10:9 If you declare with your mouth, “Jesus is Lord,” and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.
There are two scenarios for when you die. Romans 10:9 is great advice to avoid the wrong scenario.
No-one knows what happens after death, apart from the dead. Even near-death experiences could be the brains last ditch attempt at freaking out and hallucinating. Nothing to say those were not made-up experiences. And those that say they experienced the same after-life event? Could be just a common occurence of the human brain going into shutdown mode, just like it's common for us to wee when our bladders become full.
And for all we know, the after-life may well be the next stage in ... something, and if you solved the mortality "problem" you might just be missing out on something.
We're all going to die, and i'm sure we'll all find out what happens at that point.
"Everyone knows that vi vi vi is the number of the beast" -- Richard Stallman
And I counter that this means epistemology is not a legitimate field of study. It's a field of opinion.
I accept your point that you know of and can find workman's "pockets" and unevennesses in the walls, fast enough, without panicking.
But what were you doing that would regularly put you through tunnels which weren't designed for pedestrian use? If the terrain is that mountainous ... well, pedestrian tunnels get built (or pedestrian walkways added to road tunnels ; I've never taken a train in Norway to see what they do with railway tunnels).
Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"
Well, my memory might be a bit hazy about what I was doing, but from what I recall I was walking in train tunnels. Not to get to the other side, but because it was a big dark hole in the mountain, and that's pretty damn cool when you're an exploring child.
And no, I had no idea of workman's pockets or such brilliant things at the time, but I knew the train was running on top of rails that was taller than I was if I laid down, and trains don't tend to have things hanging down past the "bottom of the wheel" level. At least those trains didn't, I suppose I can't speak for trains everywhere. So just getting down on the ground as close to the wall as possible was safe enough... Then of course I learned about workman's pockets, safety rooms, and so on.
Exploration is awesome.
When I was growing up, there was a small epidemic of inner-city children playing "chicken" with suburban trains, particularly around tunnels. With the predictable consequences for the drivers and the suicidal idiots. Lots of publicity about that. Also plenty of publicity about kids getting lost in the wartime iron ore mine workings, which were finally closed off when I was about 7. Somehow, artificial holes in the ground didn't have much appeal for me. 11 years later, natural holes in the ground, "Kewl!"
Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"
Yeah, usually decomposition, and depending on the humidity levels, mummification. But you won't be around to experience any of that, being dead. You'll have exactly the same point of view as you had before you were conceived. You remember all that stuff from the beginning of the universe until you were born? No. Well that's exactly what will happen after you die, until the end of the universe...
I pretty much agree with you.....although as a Christian, I believe in the resurrection of the body at the Last Day. But until that time, when a person dies....they do just that -- they die.