/sci/ - Science & Math

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Anonymous Wed Oct 28 00:43:17 2015 No.7620531 [Reply] [Original]

Math PhD student here.

This may be a little off-topic for /sci/, but it seems like the only board that can have a good discussion about this. When I look at it honestly, I can only conclude that "consciousness" is purely a function of the brain. I would expect most of you agree with this. Recently, this has hit very hard. I've never liked the thought, but I've always sort of gone, "whatever, it'll just be like before I was born" and moved on. But I can't seem to do that anymore. I can't get out of bed, and I'm just terrified of that unending void. I'm terrified of not even knowing that I've died. It's crippling, and I can't carry on with courses and research. I have no motivation to do anything.

How do you guys cope with this? Do you simply go "the phenomena of 'consciousness' and 'oblivion' are poorly-defined and we can't really know anything about them?" How do you come to terms with this in an accurate way that doesn't resort to speculation? Even if you say that what we "feel" is purely a function of biological processes, why does that imply that I am stuck to this body and not another? How was this selected?

>>	Anonymous Wed Oct 28 01:06:28 2015 No.7620566 Shameful self-bump

>>	Anonymous Wed Oct 28 01:10:39 2015 No.7620571 >>7620531 Literally no one can answer your questions. All curious people hit this at some point if they have enough free time. You go crazy for a day or two, then find a distraction and snap out of it for a while.

Anonymous Wed Oct 28 01:17:36 2015 No.7620582

I remember going through this when i was young.

Eventually i just told myself im here anyway and thinking about it just made me feel horrible so i suppressed the feeling of the "unending void" and tried to move on. I think that's all you can really do. I still panic about it on rare occasion but it's gotten easier to tuck away.

>I am stuck to this body and not another
I had thoughts similar to this and all i could reason is that we're all consciously very similar from the start and its nature+nurture that makes us who we are.

Anonymous Wed Oct 28 01:18:01 2015 No.7620584

>>7620531
Every now and then when it's late at night and I'm in bed I think about death. Even if Heaven was real (please don't crucify me for this /sci) it would be torturous to just live forever. Everything I know right now has an end to it, so imagining something that never ends makes me go fucking crazy. On the other hand, just dying seems horrible too. I keep thinking of it as something that I'd be aware of and that I'd have to suffer through an eternity of darkness etc.

With stuff like this, I just push it out of my mind and forget about it. Honestly, thinking about it even for a few minutes makes me feel scared and slightly crazy since I just can't make sense of the infinities involved.

Anonymous Wed Oct 28 01:20:15 2015 No.7620586

All of your senses and experiences are contexts in which your consciousness exist.

That is why your consciousness is inherently tied to "that body."

It was not selected anymore than the presence of the ocean is necessary for dirt to be considered a beach. When the water evaporates, it's no longer a beach.

Captcha: Select all bodies of water

>>	Anonymous Wed Oct 28 01:23:55 2015 No.7620596 >>7620531 dying is fun OP

>>	Anonymous Wed Oct 28 01:27:07 2015 No.7620605 File: 54 KB, 576x324, it begins.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google] Just do literally everything that you could possibly want to do. That way, when it's time for you to go, you'll be sick of this shit anyway.

>>	Anonymous Wed Oct 28 01:27:37 2015 No.7620607 These are fantastic replies, /sci/. Much better than what I was expecting. Thank you guys.

>>	Anonymous Wed Oct 28 01:31:32 2015 No.7620613 >>7620607 We're all humans tbh. I'm sure everybody thinks about the same shit we're talking about here every now and then

>>	Anonymous Wed Oct 28 01:37:57 2015 No.7620625 >>7620531 >I've always sort of gone, "whatever, it'll just be like before I was born" and moved on. But I can't seem to do that anymore. Can I ask what changed, OP? Was there a specific event that caused this change?

>>	Anonymous Wed Oct 28 01:40:02 2015 No.7620630 Death is just part of life. If you live the life you want, then you won't care if you died. If didn't live the life you want, then you will be miserable.

>>	Anonymous Wed Oct 28 01:41:55 2015 No.7620634 >>7620531 What the hell are you going on about? I'd probably go with >>7620571 tbh, there's nothing much else to say, this is nonsense but understandable nonsense.

Anonymous Wed Oct 28 01:44:24 2015 No.7620639
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>>7620531
None of it matters anyway. Don't sweat it.

>How do you come to terms with this in an accurate way that doesn't resort to speculation?
You can't, unless you can die and come back to life and demonstrate whatever it was you learned. The only thing we know for sure is that you can't take your biology with you when you die.

Suppose God is real. This is unlikely bordering on impossible. If it's true, we're all fucked anyway. Suppose you die and there's nothing but void beyond, just an endless sea of non-sensation. Does time exist? Can you perceive it? If it doesn't or you can't perceive it, you can't FEEL like you're trapped in that void, so it's functionally as if the void doesn't exist.

And if you reincarnate as something/someone else, you wouldn't even know it unless you somehow retained your memories. And memories are biological, so that shit ain't happening.

Basically, don't worry. You're immortal within your own mind.

Anonymous Wed Oct 28 01:48:27 2015 No.7620648

>>7620639
>This is unlikely bordering on impossible.
How do you come to that conclusion?

I dont believe in god because i think it would be a waste of time either way but there is no evidence that there is no god. My question is why is it so black and white for most people. There either is a god or there is not. What gives?

>>	Anonymous Wed Oct 28 01:48:39 2015 No.7620649 Just watch that video of the old Indian dying on TV. He was ready. You can see it in his eyes when he turns off. Be like him when you die.

Anonymous Wed Oct 28 01:50:07 2015 No.7620651

>>7620625
The difference seems to be between not existing prior to existence and post-existence. To me it isn't terrifying to experience nothing, with existence in the future. This is basically what happens when I have a deep sleep. It's the lack of future existence that's problematic.

>>7620639
>You're immortal within your own mind

That's a very interesting idea. Very clever. That's potentially the resolution for me.

>>	Anonymous Wed Oct 28 01:52:10 2015 No.7620657 I only feel fear of death when I see people here feeling fear, but sometimes either here or on /lit/ there are threads that either give me hope or make me "accept things", shit's weird as fuck.

Anonymous Wed Oct 28 01:52:18 2015 No.7620658

>>7620648
Note I said "God" not "god"
God's definitely not real. A god might exist. And probably does. And definitely would, if given enough time to evolve.
I'm talking about The King of Kings, YHWH. The big dude in the sky that watches you masturbate. In order for him to be real, at least a significant portion of the Bible would have to be real. Since that's the God you're most likely to be afraid of if you live in the West, I just thought I would reassure you.

>>	Anonymous Wed Oct 28 01:55:44 2015 No.7620664 >>7620658 The bible is no evidence for or against God or gods. It's completely irrelevant.

>>	Anonymous Wed Oct 28 01:58:09 2015 No.7620668 >the phenomena of 'consciousness' and 'oblivion' are poorly-defined and we can't really know anything about them? Isn't that kind of right though?

>>	Anonymous Wed Oct 28 02:00:54 2015 No.7620673 >>7620668 That's always been what I've told myself. We don't even have a well-formed definition of these concepts, so how can we possibly fear one over the other? We can't even say they exist for sure.

Anonymous Wed Oct 28 02:02:39 2015 No.7620675

>>7620531
I think your conclusion is not at all obvious. If you're going to say that consciousness is purely a function of the brain, then it makes sense that you're saying consciousness is entirely a mechanical outcome. Okay, so far we're fine, but now you need some way to design a test which distinguishes conscious and non-conscious mechanical designs. To do that, it seems we need a kind of test. At a certain point of sophistication, we say that a device has passed the test and is conscious. But in order to say anything about "sophistication" we need to look at the processes which constitute it. That is, we need "thought" to be something mechanical, or in other words, some kind of algorithm, so we ought to be able to assign a certain amount of thought to any mechanical device - even, say, a thermometer which is just a complicated algorithm for measuring temperature.

But this is exactly the form of mind-body dualism you hope to escape when you say that consciousness is entirely a property of the physical brain. So it seems to me that to even arrive at this conclusion requires an argument which is not at all simple, and I think there's definitely some alternatives.

Anonymous Wed Oct 28 02:06:30 2015 No.7620679
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>>7620664
The Bible is evidence for/against the existence of God, its alleged author.

If God exists, He actually wrote the Bible, or attempted to. We already know that the Bible was written by men, but since we can't disprove that they are vessels of God, that's not enough to disprove His existence.

If God exists, everything He says is the truth. That means everything in the Bible would be true. We can prove that certain things in the Bible are physically impossible. But since we can't prove that they happened anyway (remember you're dealing with the Almighty here), even THAT isn't enough to disprove the existence of God.

God isn't real because He can't be the person He says He is and still do all the things He does in the Bible. The character of God in the Old Testament is distinctly different from the character of God in the New Testament. So either God changed, or God lied. If God is a liar, I don't have to trust a single fucking word of the Bible. If God is capable of change, what use is the Bible as a tool to understand Him? I can disregard it as circular logic.

easy

Anonymous Wed Oct 28 02:06:31 2015 No.7620680
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It's kind of funny, but this doesn't really scares me anymore, I just think that whatever happens happens and call it a day, but what really keeps me awake at night is the thought of one of my loved ones experiencing the horrible dread I felt when I first thought of this, I'm sure plenty of you are familiar with that feel.
When I had baby's first existential crisis I cried about it with my parents, I can't shake the feeling that I may have spooked them a bit, (and maybe my younger brother too) my"arguments" were not really anything powerful or special, but still I don't know if I'm just imagining it or if they were affected by it, and directly asking them feels like I might trigger something in them.

How can you tell when someone is having this sort of feels?

>>	Anonymous Wed Oct 28 02:08:27 2015 No.7620681 Partition your mind into a enjoyable alter ego

>>	Anonymous Wed Oct 28 02:09:47 2015 No.7620684 Learn algebraic geometry and you'll find out.

>>	Anonymous Wed Oct 28 02:14:23 2015 No.7620694 I'm most afraid of reincarnation. I wish not to live this life of purgatory once again. The burden of humanity is this very conversation.

>>	Anonymous Wed Oct 28 02:16:49 2015 No.7620698 >>7620679 Your effort is wasted. A work of fiction is no evidence for or against anything. You can't disprove anything from a work of fiction. Just try and disprove the elves from Lord of Rings based on inconsistency in the lore...

>>	Anonymous Wed Oct 28 02:18:27 2015 No.7620699 >>7620664 I always wonder how the bible elevated from being a book of parables to the book of god

Anonymous Wed Oct 28 02:19:25 2015 No.7620700

>>7620584
I understand completely
>Don't like void
>Don't like heaven
>Don't like LSD afterlife
>Don't like reincarnation
>Don't like eternal recurrence
>Don't like our possible brand of immortality

I wish I could live in some sort of unchanging status quo like everyday life in which time doesn't moves but no one notices and yet shit still happens.

Anonymous Wed Oct 28 02:26:56 2015 No.7620708

OP, you might read about quantum suicide/immortality. It's entirely speculative, but it is relevant.

You can extend the thinking behind the (already dubious) quantum suicide thought experiment to arrive at the idea that each of us might actually be immortal (that is, literally incapable of dying) from our own point of view. I happen to think the implications of this are far more frightening than just becoming one with the void, but hey, maybe you think differently.

Anonymous Wed Oct 28 02:32:38 2015 No.7620719

>>7620698
If you claim that a work of fiction is equal to reality, and your work of fiction talks about the past, you're basically claiming that this fiction is history. Are you positing that I can't prove that Middle Earth didn't exist? All I have to do is prove that it didn't actually happen.

But when you're talking about the existence of a thing instead of the circumstances of an event, and that thing would have the power to hide itself should it exist, things get complicated. If I break into your house, but I stay hidden well enough that you don't see me or hear me, you'd never know I was there. Maybe you could find some sort of evidence I was there, like a footprint on your floor. But I cleaned up after myself, and did it so stealthily and quickly you didn't notice me doing it. Does that mean I wasn't actually there?

So at some point I confront you, and I tell you that I broke into your house last Tuesday afternoon. Either you believe me or you don't. But all you have to do to discredit me is prove that I wasn't in your house at the appointed time. Either I'm really, really good, or I'm lying. It's easier to assume that I'm lying, and therefore a safer bet.

If you're interested in winning the semantic argument, no I didn't definitively disprove the existence of God. But that's why I'm pretty sure the Bible is bullshit and nobody should believe it unless they're prepared to take incredible and irrational leaps. It's about as factual as any other piece of fiction.

>>	Anonymous Wed Oct 28 02:37:28 2015 No.7620729 Oblivion is not a phenomenon. Phenomena exist in consciousness. "Why am I me and not another?" is a social question with concepts that have been beaten into you from birth.

>>	Anonymous Wed Oct 28 03:14:51 2015 No.7620793 >babbys first existential crisis

>>	Anonymous Wed Oct 28 03:21:44 2015 No.7620803 >>7620531 >worrying about things you have no control over Enjoy.

Anonymous Wed Oct 28 19:56:20 2015 No.7622230

>>7620679
Am I the only one who hopes that due to me being not even in my thirties I will live long enough to encounter at least some form of augmentatons that would further increase my life span and that boost would let me live to the point when we have at least some form of immortality?

>>	Anonymous Wed Oct 28 20:12:28 2015 No.7622271 >>7620803 Yeah this OP. It sounds like you need to look into some PHILOSOPHY for this one if >>7620639 can give you some solace. I'd recommend existentialism and stoicism as places to look for comfort about your mortality.

Anonymous Wed Oct 28 20:34:36 2015 No.7622321

>>7622230
I'm basically banking on that because I'm a smoker and a drinker. Uploading your consciousness to a computer might be cool. Think about how fast you'd be able to think. If computers got fast enough, and they will, we'd eventually all be the Flash.

>>	Anonymous Wed Oct 28 20:42:33 2015 No.7622340 >>7622321 everything would just scale and you wouldnt notice. your perception of time wouldnt change and it would seem no different than if every clock was broken irl right now. others you share space with would think just as fast as you

>>	Anonymous Wed Oct 28 20:44:32 2015 No.7622345 >>7622340 Why would I choose to spare space with them? I spent my whole life doing that. Yeah, I just got done reading Watts, if you were suspicious.

Anonymous Wed Oct 28 20:49:22 2015 No.7622353

>>7620531
I think of it like this:
When I realized that consciousness is just an organism acknowledging its existence or some shit, I realized that it is the only thing humans can truly have, regardless of any other factor. You can have wealth, dignity, freedom, vidya, or your life taken, but consciousness is only what you experience. You don't know what death will be, but you don't know what it's like before birth. So, if you don't go fucking crazy over what happened prior to birth, why be scared of death? If existence as we perceive it is a product of consciousness, why not enjoy it while it lasts?

>tl;dr existential bs and yolo

>>	Anonymous Wed Oct 28 21:59:26 2015 No.7622503 File: 298 KB, 2271x2380, 1436841241604.png [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google] >tfw you realize that you will never fully understand why you aren't just an automaton

>>	Anonymous Wed Oct 28 22:30:52 2015 No.7622584 >>7620531 Sorry to break it to you, but you continue to exist after death like you did before birth. The body is only your vehicle for this plane and is not actually you.

>>	Anonymous Wed Oct 28 22:51:45 2015 No.7622623 File: 631 KB, 3240x2102, 1446000958445.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google] >>7620531

>>	Anonymous Wed Oct 28 22:53:40 2015 No.7622627 >>7622503 >you aren't just an automaton >implying

Anonymous Wed Oct 28 22:56:54 2015 No.7622634

There are an infinite number of particles in this universe and once you die, your perception of time stops which means billions or trillions of years will pass by until matter is assembled into the same combination of particles that previously existed in your life in some other universe.

But that's just my hypothesis

Anonymous Wed Oct 28 23:37:03 2015 No.7622727

Too be honest, an "eternal" anything is sort of nonsensical to me. Even in this life, we (as the Buddha may say) die millions of small deaths.

You could live to experience some form of immortality, but consider how drastically different existence would be on that timescale; your existence of today could become unrecognizable 5 years from now, and 500 years from now is unfathomable!

To extrapolate this to death, I, like every other person on Earth, don't know. If it is oblivion, I have my doubts that it is eternal. I feel that if consciousness as an emergent property is correct, then it is pretty arrogant of me to assume there is something so unique about "me" that it would never again be created. This can be viewed as an eternal reccurence-type situation, or, perhaps even a future technology which can simulate the brains of dead humans.

I am hesitant to accept the emergent property hypothesis. Obviously, there is a huge amount of evidence suggesting that many properties of the mind are connected to the brain, but there are equally as many unexplained phenomena.

Although pseudoscientific things aren't much appreciated here, I think that Dr. Ian Stevenson's work is actually respectable and worth considering. Some of you may discard my opinion for it, but I can say that, even having read many of the critiques of his work, I don't feel his findings are unsubstantiated. Unfalsifiable? Yes, and therein lies the problem.

They could have nothing to do with consciousness/survival of consciousness after death, I simply think that our inability to address the fact that such a phenomena would appear in the first place shows how glaring some gaps in our knowledge are.

Furthermore, all of the neural correlates of consciousness fail to address the really core issue of consciousness, to me, at least. Emotions, memories, even personalities and opinions have been affected by interacting with the mind, yet the fundamental nature of experience that is consciousness eludes us.

Anonymous Wed Oct 28 23:43:37 2015 No.7622744

>>7622727
To elaborate on what I mean in this final section, even people who claim to no longer experience a sense of "self" (every major religious figure in history has probably had this feeling) still have a fundamental, unbroken nature of experience. To me, this is very strange.

It is odd to me to consider that I could at some point be let's say 100% machine, and if I remained conscious throughout the entire process, I would still identify as the same unbroken stream of experience. Or, that if I was in a coma for 10 years, I would awaken to a world of experiences that I can connect to the same experiencing entity I was 10 years ago.

I'm sure everyone is well aware of what I am discussing, and it has been discussed in great detail in philosophy, but I feel as though emergentism as a solution is just a cop-out at this point. We do not CURRENTLY have a physical mechanism that explains how this could occur, but science is essentially a history of people being proven incorrect about something at some later date, so it would not come to me as at all of a surprise if we have completely misunderstood the problem.

I don't know if this quells any of your fears about death, but to me, our own ignorance is quite comforting - it encourages me to dig deeper and to further try and unearth these truths.

Also, a Socrates quote to calm you:
“To fear death, gentlemen, is no other than to think oneself wise when one is not, to think one knows what one does not know. No one knows whether death may not be the greatest of all blessings for a man, yet men fear it as if they knew that it is the greatest of evils.”

>>	Anonymous Wed Oct 28 23:50:14 2015 No.7622767 Someone sounds like kierkegaard

Anonymous Thu Oct 29 00:03:39 2015 No.7622794

>>7622727
>Ian Stevenson
I only just googled him now, but it isn't totally implausible to me that something similar to "reincarnation" is possible. I mean, there is no reason why Lamarckian inheritance cannot apply to the brain in principle. I remember some research looking into the possibility that your ancestors' memories can actually influence your own thoughts in a similar way.

I suppose it's not quite the same, but whatever.

>>	Anonymous Thu Oct 29 00:10:01 2015 No.7622806 >>7622627 there is still the problem of why is the automaton aware that it is an automaton, but unable to change anything still

Anonymous Thu Oct 29 00:11:22 2015 No.7622808

>>7620531
I was in the ER a couple nights ago, waiting for some blood test to get back. I started going mad in my room, because the death seemed so close. I was so terrified for the first time in years that I prayed to God.
Fuck what a terrible feeling, the saddest part is how justified it is.

>>	Anonymous Thu Oct 29 00:26:28 2015 No.7622832 awww /sci/ is so cute when they get philosophical

>>	Anonymous Thu Oct 29 00:31:50 2015 No.7622846 >>7622806 I don't see the problem really. Why should noticing a limit to your capabilities nullify it? Does noticing you aren't a millionaire make you a millionaire? Does noticing you have blue eyes change them to brown?

Anonymous Thu Oct 29 00:35:59 2015 No.7622851

>>7622846
Not who you're responding to but the difference is possibility.

Upon acknowledging I am not millionaire, I coild act to eventually make myself a millionaire.

I could act in such a way (at least theoretically) that I could change my eye color.

However, if an automaton realized what it was, are we to think it has not even a possibility to so so? And if it does, what are the implications?

>>	Anonymous Thu Oct 29 00:37:16 2015 No.7622852 >>7622851 *even the slighest possibility to change

>>	Anonymous Thu Oct 29 00:38:08 2015 No.7622853 >>7622852 >>7622851 Okay those things were pretty basic. Lets take conservation of energy on the macro scale. You realise this. Then what?

>>	Anonymous Thu Oct 29 00:39:35 2015 No.7622856 >>7620531 OP I suggest you try LSD and/or DMT and enjoy life

Anonymous Thu Oct 29 00:39:41 2015 No.7622857

>>7620531
tldr the brain is physical, conciousness as we experience it evolved from earlier forms, not just back to single cell organisms but through to basic matter and energy. the universe is a superorganism, we are components that each play a role in it, some parts are defined for us (birth envioronment, genetics aka local context) some we define through choice (uncertainty principle, our experience is one instance, there are probabilities but you ultimately pick the observed result, you are the measurement at the time of your own actions/thoughts/etc aka a measure of choice), you play your own role in realtime. but the role is not you: although it is easy to see ourselves as individual (limited sense organs), the more factual Self is the universe (matter, just as conciousness is emergent from small amounts of matter). just as the lowercase self is an amalgam of different matter experiencing different conciousnesses (your brain, your bacterial colonies, how many organisms exist inside/must exist in order for you tosustain present form?), the universe, being the sum of all matter/energy and associated conciousness, is revealed as the uppercase Self if you can excuse the admitadelly charged analogy.

therefore do what you determine to be true for yourself, yourSelf, in both your local and universal forms, in the moments you experience them. fear of death is utterly closeminded when you think about things like laws of thermodynamics, our matter/energy will persist in new forms, and resultant new conciousness.

as an aside, this line of thinking does tend to look very near nihalism, but i believe that there are universal tendencies that inform what could be thought of as right and wrong, namely synthesis and awareness

Anonymous Thu Oct 29 00:50:49 2015 No.7622874

>>7622853
Very valid point, certain things are so fundamental that our awareness could never change them (at least as our knowledge is currently).

So, conceding that there are certain properties that we cannot really meaningfully effect, the question then becomes why is this one of those things?

Energy conservation has a tremendous amount of evidence behind it, and there have been constant efforts to improve our understanding of it that have all never overturned this principle. Thus, it is easy for me to accept that it very likely is an accurate understanding.

Certainly, this automata situation could fall into a similar category, but what are the characteristics that prevent it from changing? How does the state of being an automata come about and what about it is so unique that it falls into the category of things that cannot be changed?

I don't expect you to answer these, nor am I even necessarily disagreeing with, just trying to help you see where the issue could arise in someone's mind.

Anonymous Thu Oct 29 00:58:41 2015 No.7622886

>>7622874
What I always come back to in these considerations is that we're essentially forced by the constraints of maintaining our resources, physical structure, and reproduction to take on certain proclivities in a broad sense, and this seems like it would apply regardless of our 'form' in this universe.

Even if we managed to evolve into, say, a spacefaring crystalline organism that feeds on interstellar wind we would probably still have to conform to certain physical and behavioural parameters in order to survive.

>>	Anonymous Thu Oct 29 01:05:09 2015 No.7622899 >>7622886 such is the role of a piece. we are not the entire universe

>>	Anonymous Thu Oct 29 02:07:37 2015 No.7623055 Acquire inmortality, OP.

Anonymous Thu Oct 29 02:28:22 2015 No.7623089

>thinking in bed
>feel good
>why does the universe exist
>instead of thinking of it as a silly question that I got on a worksheet I thought about it for realsies
>understand I'm contained in the question and not outside it
>wat fuck
>reminded of that time I took 1000+ug of acid and asked the same thing, except it was much scarier because I couldn't snap out of it for a few hours

I always chalked that shit up to lmaodrugs

But anyways, why the fuck would this be one of the permutations of universes. Why the fuck am I aware at all and what's the point.

>>	Anonymous Thu Oct 29 02:34:11 2015 No.7623102 >>7623089 >Why the fuck am I aware at all and what's the point. Because you're an arrangement of matter that must leverage information about its surroundings to perpetuate its existence.

>>	Anonymous Thu Oct 29 02:38:15 2015 No.7623113 >>7623102 So at what point does an arrangement of parts become conscious, how does scaling up elementary particles produce something which is aware. A lever cannot said to be aware when it is pulled, but how is me reacting to stimulus any different?

Anonymous Thu Oct 29 02:49:36 2015 No.7623158

>>7623113
>A lever cannot said to be aware when it is pulled, but how is me reacting to stimulus any different?
In a sense it is aware, I guess, of the forces acting on it, else it wouldn't move right.
In a very real way, your body relies on the same principle. The receptors in your eye have to be able to react to the light hitting them, and your visual cortex has to be able to react to the signal from your retina and so on. You rely on the ability of inanimate objects to tell you things about the world.

It's all about the ensemble.

>>	Anonymous Thu Oct 29 02:58:30 2015 No.7623187 >>7623158 Are you arguing against the existence of qualia?

>>	Anonymous Thu Oct 29 03:13:20 2015 No.7623232 >Not believing in the eternal creator

Anonymous Thu Oct 29 03:17:42 2015 No.7623245

>>7623187
Sort of. Seems like the sensory field is just a very large memory array which stores values and is updated occasionally.
Like a very large switchboard of 'these switches are on currently'.
And then the sensory experience is just reading from that memory array.

Anonymous Thu Oct 29 04:18:03 2015 No.7623382

>>7620719
I find the easiest way to disprove a christian god (or the current iteration, at least) is to logically prove that it is not possible to be omnipotent in our universe.

Can god heat up a burrito until it becomes so hot that he can't eat it (I favor this over the stone version for comedic effect)?

If you answer yes, he is not omnipotent because he can't eat the burrito.

If you answer no, he is not omnipotent because he can't heat up the burrito till the point where he cannot eat it.

This conclusively proves that omnipotence is impossible in our universe. I have just demonstrated that one of christianity's most basic tenets is false, thus god cannot exist as christians present him.

Arguing that god isn't a part of the universe is nonsensical in this context. Not only is it not possible to interact with a system without interacting with it, the bible clearly states that god has had some hand in the workings of the universe at some point.

Now, anybody that can see reason will most likely agree with me (I would like to hear from those of you who disagree with me why that is--on a logical basis, not on a religious one).

Of course, indoctrinated people won't listen to reason, and from experience most people who are afraid of going to hell or of dying also won't listen to reason, but use religion as some sort of crutch to get by.

At the end, I just want to point out that I am by no means anti-religion. I have no problems with personal religion; believe whatever the fuck you want, no matter how irrational, as long as your beliefs don't negatively impact other people. Organized religion, on the other hand, can blow it out its ass.

Anonymous Thu Oct 29 04:28:46 2015 No.7623397

>>7620531
Redirect some time in your schedule you use for stress busting to meditation.

Not only does it help you unwind you'll eventually (after a month of regular practice) be much more "at peace" with nothingness.

Many people dying describe it as a comforting feeling.

Of course, it sucks when you compare it to the stimulation of conscious thought that appeals to you when you're consciously thinking about it but once you get in "the zone" you realize that there is a certain bliss to it.

Also, it really resets your RAM.

>>	Anonymous Thu Oct 29 04:34:09 2015 No.7623404 Define "consciousness". And don't try to bullshit your way out of this question. If you use the word, then you have a definition for it.

>>	Anonymous Thu Oct 29 05:01:30 2015 No.7623442 >>7623404 Yeah, that's what I thought. You are all a bunch of clueless faggots with a fetish for semantic debates that you pretend are something "more".

>>	Anonymous Thu Oct 29 05:02:30 2015 No.7623444 >>7623382 >prove that it is not possible to be omnipotent in our universe. Of course it's not, that would violate our free will :')

>>	Anonymous Thu Oct 29 05:03:18 2015 No.7623445 well, my unprovable theory is that your soul is like the ROM, and your brain is like the RAM the soul acts like a firmware and stays when you die but the brain is erased

Anonymous Thu Oct 29 05:06:19 2015 No.7623448

>>7623404
>Define "consciousness".
I don't understand why you think this is some kind of a trump card. A definition, strictly speaking, is just a description of how a word is used.

In this case, consciousness is 'defined' as: "A person's awareness or perception of something."

>>	Anonymous Thu Oct 29 05:10:12 2015 No.7623452 >>7623448 That definition doesn't fit the way the OP uses it.

>>	Anonymous Thu Oct 29 05:25:04 2015 No.7623461 >>7620531 Yeah, that's pretty much how it is. So what? If there was nothing conscious there would be nothing to even perceive the universe. Oh well.

>>	Anonymous Thu Oct 29 05:29:21 2015 No.7623462 >>7620531 Conciousness is a symptom of the soul. /thread.

>>	Anonymous Thu Oct 29 06:55:03 2015 No.7623513 >>7620531 These feelings crop up daily for me, usually when I am sitting in traffic and realize the absurdity of existence. Just have to compartmentalize them.

>>	Anonymous Thu Oct 29 07:28:59 2015 No.7623538 It's called biology... this thread makes me laugh

>>	Anonymous Thu Oct 29 07:53:10 2015 No.7623562 >>7620531 You can obviously only be stuck to one body. But why you're stuck to that one? You were not plugged to it, your body is the one that forms "you" and that "you" arose in. Why is this not obvious? What more are you looking for?

Anonymous Thu Oct 29 08:37:56 2015 No.7623601

>>7620531
Kek, you moronic twat, get back to your studies and get your head out of your ass. Isn't it convenient that unanswerable questions about "meaning" and death always seem to crop up when you have more important things to do? Do your fucking work you procrastinating cunt, you're wasting fucking time.

>>	Anonymous Thu Oct 29 08:40:58 2015 No.7623605 >>7622634 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4sXGzFuoF8g I agree. I've always favored this idea.

>>	Anonymous Thu Oct 29 09:04:38 2015 No.7623626 >>7620531 You'll get rid of this problem if you eat 5 grams of potent psilocybin mushrooms. I'll promise. Just do it.

>>	Anonymous Thu Oct 29 09:26:35 2015 No.7623649 >>7623538 You know, considering /sci/ shits on biology constantly they know very little about the subject

Anonymous Thu Oct 29 09:40:20 2015 No.7623666

This is my two cents:
I've done some psychedelics where my state of mind is not in its regular mode of perception and sometimes completely cut off from stimuli - it can be scary, but pain free and inevitable.

Being born on this floating rock of organisms and happening to be born sentient is so mindfuckingly unlikely that it just makes me not give a fuck about anything. Knowledge is dope - learning helps me make sense of this world. I guess that's why I've made it this far. Overall, though, I don't give a single fuck about anything because for all I know this is just a mind expanding salvia trip.

Anonymous Thu Oct 29 09:42:34 2015 No.7623671

>>7620531
>Even if you say that what we "feel" is purely a function of biological processes, why does that imply that I am stuck to this body and not another? How was this selected?

This is exactly what I could never wrap my head around either. I understand that I'm pretty much a product of my DNA, my experiences, the environment and other factors and that my body tricks me into feeling things, such as by means of Seretonin.

But why exactly is it that I experience this from the point of view that I do? For all I know, I could very well be the guy above me. But here I am typing this. Makes no sense.

>>	Anonymous Thu Oct 29 10:26:10 2015 No.7623729 >>7623382 Does God actually claim to be infinitely powerful within the Bible, or did people just assume it?

>>	Anonymous Thu Oct 29 10:37:51 2015 No.7623736 Get into Buddhism. As long as you think "I was born", you're ignorant still.

Anonymous Thu Oct 29 10:47:39 2015 No.7623744

>>7620531
It was not selected. "You", in the sense of your consciousness which lives in your body, do not exist. Consciousness is an illusion created by electrochemical processes in your brain. This illusion makes you wonder why you are you and not someone else, but it doesn't really matter. It's all just informatics, yet in a lot more complex level than today's computers.

Anonymous Thu Oct 29 11:07:25 2015 No.7623765

>>7620531
>"consciousness" is purely a function of the brain

I hate those kind of conclusions, science knows barely anything about the universe and life and yet we grip this thought so tightly, it makes me so mad.
What happened to you mathematicians? I can't believe that me a student of physics looks at the world and man more abstractly than a mathematician!?
Who says that "consciousness" is purely a function of the brain? The human experience? Fuck the human experience if you will apply it across the universe as the absolute truth or as a general rule of how things work.
And also what if "consciousness" IS purely a function of the brain? Can a brain or intelligence or life for that matter not manifest itself without biology? How can you not look at something as a brain purely as a mathematical structure which manifested here as a biological organ because such are the laws for the manifestation of intelligent life here?
How can you not look at a "state of mind" mathematically, or the universe and its dimensions as such? What about parallel dimensions, higher levels of consciousness? What kind of a mathematician will you be? The one that works in a bank?
Sorry for the rant don't take it personally but I'm so mad about you mathematicians nowadays.
I swear to god I'm starting to think that a new Hitler, but one who would target biologists, is a good idea. Biology has became a new world religion.

Anonymous Thu Oct 29 11:13:11 2015 No.7623775

>>7623382
Actually the easiest way to disprove a christian god is to actually read about "him", then you would find parallels with Seth - the desert god of war and YHVH, a demiurge who tricked moses (the highest rank in a babylonian cult of the snake) that he was god and they should spread his word and ways to every corner of the earth.

>>	Anonymous Thu Oct 29 11:55:04 2015 No.7623826 >>7620700 Like the Simpsons? Then your life would just be as stale and boring as the Simpsons.

>>	Anonymous Thu Oct 29 17:15:34 2015 No.7624392 >>7622856 LSD when you're depressed sounds like a recipee for short term disaster.

>>	Anonymous Thu Oct 29 17:21:06 2015 No.7624404 If you can't express something with formal wording, it's nonsense.

Anonymous Thu Oct 29 17:38:15 2015 No.7624436
File: 15 KB, 580x486, 1445887521608.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]

Why are you asking a Logical question if you can't verify/understand the answer? So you can't be really asking it, you are just Telling sci that you think about it. Well, okay then, cool story. Will you come back when you have the answer?

Anonymous Thu Oct 29 20:17:34 2015 No.7624834

>>7620531
I asume we share these assumptions: "there is no god to imbune me with unarguable, inherent value" and "I exist because things like me can make more things like me."

Under these assumptions you should realize that value is entirely arbitrary. Nothing you do means anything. You will probably die and be entirely forgotten by 2150 if not sooner. Your best shot is to do something extremely beneficial for other humans so that you get your name in textbooks and your picture turned into a meme so that people can make fun of you after you've died.

Decide what is valuable to you and do that. Personally, I want to try to get my name in a textbook, start writing an autobiography when I turn 50, and aside from that just have a good time while I can.

>>	Anonymous Thu Oct 29 21:00:07 2015 No.7624972 File: 19 KB, 347x346, Brain.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google] >>7620531 Just join the CogSci/Neuroscience/Psycho thread >>7624928 >>7624928 >>7624928 >>7624928

>>	Anonymous Thu Oct 29 21:05:23 2015 No.7624980 >>7623626 Why would someone suffering from OP's condition not decide to do this? Psychedelia is the only way of getting lots of comprehension and perspective on the topic very acutely. It's forced and inevitable when it happens.

Anonymous Thu Oct 29 21:19:01 2015 No.7625013

The only two meaningful long-term choices in life are

a) trying to live forever or
b) accepting oblivion either through a proxy like religion and certain philosophies (which let you evade the problem of death by pretending it's not that big of a deal), or just dealing with it up-front.

I picked A.

Anonymous Thu Oct 29 21:23:58 2015 No.7625031

>>7623626

Did this. Fun for a bit and then I experienced ego loss for a few hours, while I wasn't even experiencing any other effects or visuals.

Turns out that's my personal interpretation of Hell. It was, for me, the absolute worst thing I've ever experienced, and worse than anything I can imagine.

Anonymous Fri Oct 30 14:28:11 2015 No.7626332

>>7623382
your argument doesn't really acknowledge the subtleties here. the basic problem your argument has is whether or not omnipotence includes the ability to do things that are logically impossible, and it obviously doesn't.

if it doesn't include being able to do impossible things, then there is no problem he cant do it, because he doesnt have to.

if for some ridiculous reason you think it should include things that are logically impossible then your faced with these possibilities :

a hot burrito that cant be eaten by an omnipotent thing is nonsense , from the definition of omnipotence.

>omnipotence does require god to do things that are logically impossible and he can eat the burrito
then by the definition of omnipotence, he can eat it and since were disregarding logic, by allowing logically impossible things, we cannot say there is a problem here logically. if he is omnipotent, and doing logically impossible things is a prerequisite to omnipotence, he can do it.

>omnipotence does require god to do things that are logically impossible and he cant eat the burrito
again since we've disregarded logic there is no problem, we cant argue it violates the definition since this is another logically impossible thing that he should be able to do, along with an infinite amount of other, contradictory things.

asking god to make a stone he cant lift is similar to asking someone to move forwards and backwards simultaneously or demanding someone draws a square circle. and god cant multiply two positive numbers and get a negative one either, it can't be done because in fact there isn't anything for him to actually do. its a poorly formed demand, and that lies in the fault of the asker, not of god.

none of this is an argument for god, just a refutation that your argument disproves an omnipotent god, logically.

>>	Anonymous Sat Oct 31 02:22:01 2015 No.7627674 souls m8 its what separates a living creature from an ultra-intelligent machine

Anonymous Sat Oct 31 02:25:41 2015 No.7627678

>mfw we would all get worried if we found out that the earth will get sucked into a black hole in 60-80 years and wonder what would happen to us in that void and what we'd see and feel (if anything)
>tfw we don't realize that all our lives are going to end in around that time period anyway, and we will enter the void, of no thinking, seeing, hearing

Anonymous Sat Oct 31 02:48:32 2015 No.7627694
File: 696 KB, 2560x1920, please-don't-die.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]

Of course you won't like the void, although you won't dislike it either. You literally do not exist anymore. You literally have no concept of friends, family, obligations, emotions, thought, happiness, sadness, worry, the future, etc. Actually, being upset over it is completely irrational.

Imagine a computer freaking out about being turned off one night. It's just wasting its function. I'd prefer to just indulge in human activities and allow my brain to thrive in the way that brains thrive.

>>	Anonymous Sat Oct 31 03:43:58 2015 No.7627739 >>7627694 What is that image from?

>>	Anonymous Sat Oct 31 03:55:22 2015 No.7627750 >>7627739 Genki 1 Japanese Workbook

Anonymous Sat Oct 31 05:33:01 2015 No.7627817

>>7620639
Exactly this
Once you are in that endless void, you won't even be conscious. Its just like an eternal sleep but no dreams. If somehow you are reincarnated, you won't have any of your memories of past life. It'd be more interesting if just like a certain movie, this world is just a simulation and our dreams are memories of what happened pre-simulation.

>>	Anonymous Sat Oct 31 05:48:08 2015 No.7627826 >>7620531 This is easily the one thing I have read on the internet that makes any sense to me. This is one of the main reasons that study science as a young adult.

Anonymous Sat Oct 31 20:23:58 2015 No.7629124

When we die, we will be resurrected in the plains of purgatory (possibly on Mercury, with our bodies enhanced so that we can survive in that atmosphere, and tolerate that much heat, but still feel uncomfortable in it)

Then we will be judged on account of all the things we did during our life on Earth. Accordingly we will be sent to either Hell or Heaven

While it is true the idea of infinite mortality in heaven seems monotonous, in a way we won't understand, it won't be.

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