Emotions in regards to ones death (becoming nothingness)?

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Eduk
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Re: Emotions in regards to ones death (becoming nothingness)?

Post by Eduk »

No Greta I don't believe everything is solved. There are lots of known unknowns and an unknown amount of unknown unknowns.
Just because I dont believe things which don't have any evidence doesn't mean I think I know everything.
On the flip side there a good number of knows. Which have practical application. People inventing stuff without evidence is a very well demonstrated known. Stuff with no evidence is known to have no practical value.
Simple enough to prove me wrong.
Unknown means unknown.
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Sy Borg
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Re: Emotions in regards to ones death (becoming nothingness)?

Post by Sy Borg »

I have already discounted religions so the "inventing stuff" angle is smelling somewhat of straw.

What you have said makes clear that you think reality's mysteries have been solved enough to answer the question of death and the afterlife. Yet, as noted, there may be strange time related effects or things pertaining to other dimensions, or dynamics not yet even imagined by humans.

However, afterlives do exist in a sense, as attested by too many NDEs to discount as fantasy, trickery or simple effects akin to what happens in G-force testing facilities. However, we don't know how long the experience lasts, perhaps only 3-6 minutes until brain death but, as noted, subjectively it could seem very much longer.
Eduk
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Re: Emotions in regards to ones death (becoming nothingness)?

Post by Eduk »

Realities mysteries have been solved enough to prove that anecdotal evidence is the worst kind of evidence and does not constitute, alone, proof.
At best it suggests areas to study, which is what happens.
Let me put this another way. There must be something which you don't believe?
Unknown means unknown.
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Sy Borg
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Re: Emotions in regards to ones death (becoming nothingness)?

Post by Sy Borg »

Eduk wrote: October 19th, 2018, 3:40 am Realities mysteries have been solved enough to prove that anecdotal evidence is the worst kind of evidence and does not constitute, alone, proof.
At best it suggests areas to study, which is what happens.
Let me put this another way. There must be something which you don't believe?
Anecdotal evidence is the worst kind, sure, but when there are thousands of the anecdotes with many similar aspects, then to ignore all of that and treat it like a single anecdote is simply being incurious. Trouble is, when people are dying the focus is on medicine rather than covering their heads with instruments to measure brain patterns while they are on the way out. It's a hard area to study all round.

Non beliefs:

I don't believe in a deity that obsesses about the reproductive activities of a species of hominid on one planet in the Orion Spur of the Milky Way.

I don't believe that reality is an illusion or a simulation, nor that our perceptions are illusory, just very incomplete.

I am unsure whether free will is apparent or actual, and suspect it doesn't matter.

I am unsure about black holes and suspect they are actually gravastars because I am unsure that I believe in infinite things while being unable to think of the universe in any other way. I suspect that this does matter.

I don't believe that the Genesis creation passages were meant literally but were a metaphor for the process of evolution by an observer without knowledge of scientific language.

I don't believe that putting the interests of zygotes, basically microbes, over adult women is rational.

I don't believe it's a good idea to keep alive dying people who wish to go, but I am unsure as to how long subjectivity lasts after clinical death for a proportion of dying patients.

I don't believe that those claiming to be okay about dying would be quite so sanguine if death became immanent.

Would you change or expand on the above?
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chewybrian
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Re: Emotions in regards to ones death (becoming nothingness)?

Post by chewybrian »

Eduk wrote: October 18th, 2018, 8:59 am 2. If my choices are determined does that mean they aren't choices?
It means exactly that, and this is the only aspect of this whole conversation that seems perfectly clear to me. To make a free choice, it is necessary that I was able to do otherwise. This is the nature of choosing. If prior events determined the answer for me, any perception of freedom on my part was an illusion. This begs the question--why am I designed to feel that I am making a free choice if I am not?
Eduk wrote: October 18th, 2018, 8:59 am
So, the question is, are you comfortable with the idea that every choice you are about to make has effectively already been made?
Well cause and effect would point in that direction, I thought I already answered yes to this question by the way?
Evidently, I still have not made the point, or you are choosing (no pun intended) to ignore it. I'll try once more.

1-To be free, I must be able to have acted differently in any given situation.
2-If determinism is the truth, then I can only act exactly as directed by prior causes; I am not free.
3-Therefore, if I take a choice under determinism, my taking it shows that it was the one and only choice dictated by prior events.

Think hard about the reverse (#3)--choosing it makes it become unavoidable! It is a lot easier to play along with determinism when you work from causes to effects than it is to acknowledge the reverse. Certainly, you've acknowledged the idea that you think everything is determined, yet I think you've ducked the absurdity of the implications I am trying so hard to lay out. I can't imagine any person takes action in the world (other than perhaps suicide) and honestly believes that anything they choose will turn out to have been determined and beyond their control. To be a devout supporter of determinism, you would be neutral about any option available, believing beyond a doubt that you could not avoid what was coming. Why not do any horrible or foolish thing if doing it shows that it had to be done?
Greta wrote: October 18th, 2018, 6:07 pm You don't need a religion or to be religious to believe in probabilities, but that's what you are doing. You have assessed probabilities based on woefully inadequate data (as per above) and, worse, measured them between either the scientific program or the wild claims of religions taken literally. Given such a choice, one can only rationally choose the former.

Yet where is the consideration that both parties are wrong? That would seem the best probability of all.
^This! This is why agnosticism in these areas is a very fair response. To say with supreme certainty that religion or science has the answer ignores the obvious fact that we know pretty much nothing about how free will or consciousness function, or what they are or are not. We have only appearances and theories, and we are just as likely to be all wrong as the ancients were about the nature of the solar system, and other things which were beyond their capacity to measure.
"If determinism holds, then past events have conspired to cause me to hold this view--it is out of my control. Either I am right about free will, or it is not my fault that I am wrong."
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Sy Borg
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Re: Emotions in regards to ones death (becoming nothingness)?

Post by Sy Borg »

chewybrian wrote: October 19th, 2018, 11:55 am
Greta wrote: October 18th, 2018, 6:07 pmYou don't need a religion or to be religious to believe in probabilities, but that's what you are doing. You have assessed probabilities based on woefully inadequate data (as per above) and, worse, measured them between either the scientific program or the wild claims of religions taken literally. Given such a choice, one can only rationally choose the former.

Yet where is the consideration that both parties are wrong? That would seem the best probability of all.
^This! This is why agnosticism in these areas is a very fair response. To say with supreme certainty that religion or science has the answer ignores the obvious fact that we know pretty much nothing about how free will or consciousness function, or what they are or are not. We have only appearances and theories, and we are just as likely to be all wrong as the ancients were about the nature of the solar system, and other things which were beyond their capacity to measure.
Yes, it seems quite possible that reality is neither run by a giant spirit man nor is as dead, mechanistic or reflective of our senses as models suggest. It may even be ultimately fundamentally different to how we perceive it, a fish's idea of the world.
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ThomasHobbes
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Re: Emotions in regards to ones death (becoming nothingness)?

Post by ThomasHobbes »

I see a lot of clutching at straws here.

I do not really knows what happens when people jump off Beachy Head. Maybe when I do it I shall not be dashed to pieces on the rocks? After all we all need to be agnostic about leaping off cliffs until you actually try it.
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Sy Borg
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Re: Emotions in regards to ones death (becoming nothingness)?

Post by Sy Borg »

ThomasHobbes wrote: October 19th, 2018, 6:24 pm I see a lot of clutching at straws here.

I do not really knows what happens when people jump off Beachy Head. Maybe when I do it I shall not be dashed to pieces on the rocks? After all we all need to be agnostic about leaping off cliffs until you actually try it.
Talk about clutching at straws. We objectively know exactly what happens if you jump off a cliff, but not subjectively.

Don't let me put you off the experiment, though, and be sure to report back on it when you are done.

Why believe the universe is mechanistic when it's young, size unknown, the nature of time unknown, possible extra dimensions unknown? Why not reserve judgement and leave the issue open? Is there a rush to be "right" about this, to nail the issue once and for all, no matter how incomplete our information?
Eduk
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Re: Emotions in regards to ones death (becoming nothingness)?

Post by Eduk »

Chewy I simply don't agree with what you are saying.
You are putting forward one interpretation of determinism. I am saying I don't think it is the only interpretation. I am saying that we don't know enough to be sure.
We do know there is cause and effect. This is demonstrable.
We also know we experience choice.
We don't know how to resolve this.
I presented one possible resolution. But it's not the only possible resolution. There are unknown resolutions.
I am saying, for now, that we keep what we know, determinism and choice, and not assume there is a problem. There might be, there might not be.
Unknown means unknown.
Eduk
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Re: Emotions in regards to ones death (becoming nothingness)?

Post by Eduk »

Greta, let's take just one thing you don't believe. Say the creators distaste in homosexuality.
Many many people fervently believe this. They claim to experience this belief. Their claims are very similar. How can you ignore all these claim?
How many people believing something is necessary for it to be true?
Unknown means unknown.
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ThomasHobbes
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Re: Emotions in regards to ones death (becoming nothingness)?

Post by ThomasHobbes »

Greta wrote: October 19th, 2018, 6:34 pm
ThomasHobbes wrote: October 19th, 2018, 6:24 pm I see a lot of clutching at straws here.

I do not really knows what happens when people jump off Beachy Head. Maybe when I do it I shall not be dashed to pieces on the rocks? After all we all need to be agnostic about leaping off cliffs until you actually try it.
Talk about clutching at straws. We objectively know exactly what happens if you jump off a cliff, but not subjectively.

Don't let me put you off the experiment, though, and be sure to report back on it when you are done.

Why believe the universe is mechanistic when it's young, size unknown, the nature of time unknown, possible extra dimensions unknown? Why not reserve judgement and leave the issue open? Is there a rush to be "right" about this, to nail the issue once and for all, no matter how incomplete our information?
Yeah you are right. Why believe what you see, all the evidence, and the good reasons?
Just make **** up and believe what you want eh?
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Sy Borg
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Re: Emotions in regards to ones death (becoming nothingness)?

Post by Sy Borg »

Eduk, the difference is that death is serious adult business. By contrast, homophobia, like misogyny and racism, stems from fear and emotional immaturity.
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Re: Emotions in regards to ones death (becoming nothingness)?

Post by Sy Borg »

ThomasHobbes wrote: October 20th, 2018, 7:11 am
Greta wrote: October 19th, 2018, 6:34 pm
Talk about clutching at straws. We objectively know exactly what happens if you jump off a cliff, but not subjectively.

Don't let me put you off the experiment, though, and be sure to report back on it when you are done.

Why believe the universe is mechanistic when it's young, size unknown, the nature of time unknown, possible extra dimensions unknown? Why not reserve judgement and leave the issue open? Is there a rush to be "right" about this, to nail the issue once and for all, no matter how incomplete our information?
Yeah you are right. Why believe what you see, all the evidence, and the good reasons?
Just make **** up and believe what you want eh?
You appear to be projecting on to me notions you have read from even more strange people you have encountered online. Chill.

I am not saying what others are saying (certainly not them). That's the point. I don't posit belief in the main contentious points that crop up amongst web idlers that you are seemingly attributing to me. How the [fornication] am I supposed to know the ultimate nature of being, or of time, or whether determinism is true and so forth? How is anyone supposed to know these things?

To believe that we have largely sewn up reality with only the details to be discovered is to repeat the same mistake that people have made throughout history.

Why keep repeating the mistake? Every generation thinks they have the game largely sewn up, with just a few more details ... and then that opens up a new can of worms ... but if we just work out a few details ...
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ThomasHobbes
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Re: Emotions in regards to ones death (becoming nothingness)?

Post by ThomasHobbes »

Greta wrote: October 20th, 2018, 7:32 am
ThomasHobbes wrote: October 20th, 2018, 7:11 am

Yeah you are right. Why believe what you see, all the evidence, and the good reasons?
Just make **** up and believe what you want eh?
You appear to be projecting on to me notions you have read from even more strange people you have encountered online. Chill.
I was responding to this

"Why believe the universe is mechanistic when it's young, size unknown, the nature of time unknown, possible extra dimensions unknown? Why not reserve judgement and leave the issue open? Is there a rush to be "right" about this, to nail the issue once and for all, no matter how incomplete our information?"

... as if this was a licence to believe whatever you want. It is not. I prefer to stick to what I can know, and leave what I cannot.
The other's post on god's abhorrence of homosexuality ought to give you so thought for exactly
the same reason.

Make the most of it.

I do not think I'll be continuing here much longer.
When it reaches a point that posts are deleted by finger happy casual moderators the life of the forum is not worth living.
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Sy Borg
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Re: Emotions in regards to ones death (becoming nothingness)?

Post by Sy Borg »

ThomasHobbes wrote: October 20th, 2018, 7:38 am
Greta wrote: October 20th, 2018, 7:32 am
You appear to be projecting on to me notions you have read from even more strange people you have encountered online. Chill.
I was responding to this

"Why believe the universe is mechanistic when it's young, size unknown, the nature of time unknown, possible extra dimensions unknown? Why not reserve judgement and leave the issue open? Is there a rush to be "right" about this, to nail the issue once and for all, no matter how incomplete our information?"

... as if this was a licence to believe whatever you want. It is not. I prefer to stick to what I can know, and leave what I cannot.
The other's post on god's abhorrence of homosexuality ought to give you so thought for exactly
the same reason.

Make the most of it.

I do not think I'll be continuing here much longer.
When it reaches a point that posts are deleted by finger happy casual moderators the life of the forum is not worth living.
Don't fret, they were just fighty posts. I doubt anyone will miss them.

My point is that the universe is young. Consider how much it's changed so far, and what we have learned about abiogenesis and evolution and what that means in a universe with perhaps another trillion years of star formation.

As for time, its nature is unknown and it's pertinent to our sense of existence. Do we take Einstein seriously when he said that the passing of time was only a stubbornly persistent illusion? I'm not saying it's so, but maybe there's something unexpected in there?

Nor are other dimensions a fanciful idea but they emerge from the math of string theory, which is admittedly not looking good with the latest LHC results, but Greene, Kaku and co. don't see it as game over yet. There's also possible integration with quantum loop gravity.

Why do you and Eduk keep attributing belief to me? I have said over and over that I don't believe in anything yet it's the same strawperson again and again. I am sorry but I cannot be the theist you seem to need me to be because I'm not a theist; I don't believe in unproven things, which is the whole point of being an agnostic - admitting that there's an incredible amount that you (we) don't know.

I think I am just about out of here too if we can't get past "You are a believer" ... "No, I'm not" ... "You are a believer" ... "No, I'm not" ... which makes for dull reading.
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