Life is brain activity and when that ceases it’s the fade-to-black.
Simple as.
Comment on WHO STOLE MY FUCKING BARS?
Technus@lemmy.zip 1 day agoI’m an atheist but I don’t actually preclude the existence of an afterlife. “There is no heaven or hell, it just all goes black and that’s it,” is just as patently unfalsifiable as any claim made by any religion.
It’s just as likely to be something completely different and alien from anything conceivable in our limited world view. In an infinite space of probabilities, the likelihood of it being “literally nothing” actually seems pretty low.
That kind of uncertainty is exactly what scares most people, but not me. I’m looking forward to finding out one day.
SantasMagicalComfort@piefed.world 1 day ago
Technus@lemmy.zip 1 day ago
My whole point is that I disagree with the certainty of that claim. It’s not grounded in empirical evidence, because we don’t have any.
SantasMagicalComfort@piefed.world 1 day ago
We have proof of brain activity and it ending at death.
Cruxifux@feddit.nl 1 day ago
Exactly. It’s not like you experienced anything before you were born either. Your brain starts sending signals, you experience those signals. After your brain stops your experience stops. Everyone has already observed this phenomenon. Unless technology advances to a point where we can reverse entropy somehow to the point where we can resurrect your dead brain cells, you will not experience anything ever again. And that’s fine, it won’t be scary, you won’t care, because you literally can’t.
Technus@lemmy.zip 1 day ago
I don’t agree that the cessation of brain activity necessarily means the end of the subjective experience. That doesn’t mean I purport to know what actually happens at that point. I hope it’s some sort of reincarnation but that’s just because there’s more I want to experience in this universe than I possibly could in a single lifetime.
“You only have one life, live it the best you can” is a nice motivational mantra, but however well I live my life, it’s highly unlikely I will live long enough to experience interstellar travel, for example, or first contact with alien life. I think that really fucking sucks, and I really hope I’ll have a chance on the next go-around. But if it’s something completely different, I’m cool with that, too.
Jax@sh.itjust.works 1 day ago
Ah, so you’re in the ‘teleporters are just cloning machines’ camp.
SantasMagicalComfort@piefed.world 1 day ago
What do you think they’re a 3D printer with a soul transfer function?
Jax@sh.itjust.works 1 day ago
Nope, just aware there are different ways of thinking about it — wasn’t implying any one was wrong or right
Clent@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 day ago
Teleporters are a plot device.
dangling_cat@piefed.blahaj.zone 1 day ago
What if I believe that after you die you get reincarnated as the type of person you hate the most?
Ahhh dirt I don’t want to be a transphob trillionaire.
Technus@lemmy.zip 1 day ago
Yeah but on the second incarnation, wouldn’t that put you right back where you started?
Godort@lemmy.ca 1 day ago
I realize this is also unverifiable, but it’s just a return to non-existentence.
You already experienced that for most of human history, and then for a comparatively breif period, things were different, and then it’s back to non-existence.
Technus@lemmy.zip 1 day ago
The lack of memory of past existence isn’t evidence of anything. We have clear evidence that memories are physical things, stored as connections of neurons in the brain. They can be lost to disease or injury, and they’re destructively modified every time we access them.
deltapi@lemmy.world 1 day ago
Similar, but I consider myself agnostic, and I’m in no rush to reach the point of ‘find out or cease existing’
Tracaine@lemmy.world 1 day ago
Sir this is a Wendy’s. We’re discussing drugs, not God. Arguably the same thing but still.