3 ms·
A collection of philosophical thoughts that I should probably put into an essay at some point, but in the meantime... Some have likened the experience of death
by nlh 6y ago
A collection of philosophical thoughts that I should probably put into an essay at some point, but in the meantime...
Some have likened the experience of death to what it's like when you black out (true loss of consciousness) or, to a lesser extent, when you go to sleep at night. One moment you're there, the next moment you're coming back from not being there. (Give me some leeway on the sleep thing - I know that when you're actively dreaming or tossing and turning it's not quite a jump cut).
So in that moment when you're coming back to consciousness from a state of previous unconsciousness, what's to say you're the same "you" that was beforehand? Sure, you remember a whole life, but then there's this gap in continuity. Maybe you were someone else and then all of a sudden, you're now "you" with all those memories in that mushy brain of yours.
But if that's the case, why is the gap of consciousness needed to separate "you"? What's to say that from any given instant to any other given instant the "you" is continuous, other than for this stream of memories coming from your meat brain. Maybe "you" jumps around all the time.
But then - what is "you" anyway? If we're just a collection of meat brain memories, maybe there's no core identifying "you" in the first place, and we're all just part of a big collective pool? Like a piece of code running in an overall shared memory space. The complexity forms (your program / you), and then the function exits and the memory goes back to the collective pool.
So then - what if life and existence is all about perspective? I'm me because, well, I'm me. I expeierience this life and remember these memories. And you're you because you experience your life and remember your memories. Is there really a difference from a third-party observer?
Maybe life is simply in the eye of the beholder. As long as there is ANY conscious life, then life is being experienced. And so maybe death really is nothing to worry about -- you'll get a chance to experience another life as someone else.
But then - why does it even need to be linear? Maybe we ARE experiencing life as someone else -- as evidenced by all the someone elses experiencing life right now :). Just because we can't experience it (hardware limitations - sorry. Brain can't handle multiple sets of inputs ;) doesn't mean it's not happening.
Maybe we're all experiencing consciousness in our own ways as part of one big system. That leopard in the zoo is experiencing it. I'm experiencing it. You reading this are experiencing it. Maybe our meat brains and linear single-track memories are just a nice little lie, and we're really just all temporary functions running as part of a bigger computing system. Function runs, exits, memory goes back to the shared pool. New function runs, exits, memory goes back to the shared pool. Many functions run simultaneously - each doing only what it was programmed to do, then each exits and the memory gets released again....
This really gets wild when you start thinking about clone experiments (or teleportation). Make a perfect clone of yourself right now, down to the neuron, and assemble it in across the room. You'll experience nothing other than to see a clone appear 10 feet away from you. Your clone will have the experience of being you one instant, and then waking up across the room looking at you "Holy cow! Cloning and teleportation worked! They're real!" Then your clone will go on with life, doing the same things you want to do, remembering the same things you remember.
Then think about whether there's REALLY any difference between that clone of you and any other person on earth....
- aschismatic 6y agoI've had a lot of thoughts similar to yours. I especially wonder about the linear qualities we often attribute to life and death, and potentially rebirth. We often assume that if we are somehow reborn, it will be in the future. But what if I am reborn while I still exist, just somewhere else? After all, time is simply another dimension, right? At least, as we humans understand it. Your comparison to computing, functions, and shared memory is very good at describing that. But to go even further, since computers as we know them still run in a linear fashion with regards to time (forward), what if all consciousness across all time and space is just one "thing?"
- nlh 6y agoI love this. And it adds a whole new dimension (ha ha) to the thinking. And you're right - it starts to get really wild when you remove the linear constraint. Or even the singular universe constraint. Think about a multiverse, where not only are there other people in this one timeline experiencing things, maybe there are multiple (infinite) simultaneous timelines. Or, as you said, not even timelines. Multiple infinite states of being. I think perhaps the most comforting part of trying to "figure it all out" is the realization that we're, in all likelihood, woefully incapable of really ever figuring it all out, especially if "reality" (whatever that is) looks nothing like the tiny, single-brained, single-universed, linear timeline perspective that we have.
- aschismatic 6y agoWoefully incapable indeed. But at the same time, the inability to know or understand the entire nature of our universe creates an eternal, enchanting mystery, and drives our search for meaning in life. I find it romantic.