Faith in permanent death

[Penumbra]

Well, say your right and we didn't exist prior to being born here. Where did we come from? We can just as easily go backwards in time prior to our birth as we can after our death. In either case, we don't exist. Yet, the possibility is there that we can be alive, say, as a human or maybe something else. And then poof! Your born!

Yes, I was born. It had something to do with two cells joining and then multiplying like crazy.

Suppose it were to happen two times within the same time stream- the exact specification of atoms and whatnot. Would that imply that both people are the same being? Do they share the same consciousness, and is it continuous? I say, I don't see why it would.

Suppose we entertain a similar scenario, where two identical physical scenarios occur simultaneously. That is, two pairs of cells, each being atomically identical to the other pair, unite in an atomically identical way, producing two separate and yet identical zygotes in the same world at the same time. If those zygotes grow up into people, do those people share a consciousness, or are they separate? Does being identical imply oneness? I don't see why it would.

 

[Otherright]

You're assuming that computers hundreds of years from now would be comparable to our current ones. What leads you to believe they should share any or all of these characteristics?

Your argument for why computers cannot have real consciousness is along the lines me claiming that since I cannot slam dunk a basket ball, nobody can, because it's a fundamental impossibility for my body to do it.

Your using simile for your argument, not fact. Solve the first problem, then we'll move to the next. They aren't the same, not even remotely. All I can tell you, is you need to bone up on your neurology.

Also, many people are confusing consciousness as a computational aspect, it isn't its emergent.

 

[St Giordano Bruno]

I think atheism is much more about faith in suffering no eternal damnation for say being punished by a being so vain he took offence for using his name in an expletory just only once in your life because you stubbed your toe.

 

[Penumbra]

Your using simile for your argument, not fact. Solve the first problem, then we'll move to the next. They aren't the same, not even remotely. All I can tell you, is you need to bone up on your neurology.

The problem would be worth solving if it was actually a problem.

Stating that some current PC is different from the brain is an obvious statement, rather than an argument that no computer could ever sustain real consciousness. You're made a pretty absolute statement that you have yet to back up with any substantial argument:

As much as I would love to see genuine AI, it isn't going to happen.

Using examples of clocks or digital/analog systems has nothing to do with the claim that AI is never going to happen. It relies on assumptions such as,
-Computers in the future will be a lot like our current ones.
-There is only one way to produce consciousness.

In the future, who knows what sorts of computers we could have, or how similar they might be to what a biological brain is like.

Also, many people are confusing consciousness as a computational aspect, it isn't its emergent.

Emergent based on what?

Emergence and computation are not contradictory. Windows 7 is emergent from my computer hardware specifically because of computation.

 

[839311]

Suppose it were to happen two times within the same time stream- the exact specification of atoms and whatnot. Would that imply that both people are the same being? Do they share the same consciousness, and is it continuous? I say, I don't see why it would.

Suppose we entertain a similar scenario, where two identical physical scenarios occur simultaneously. That is, two pairs of cells, each being atomically identical to the other pair, unite in an atomically identical way, producing two separate and yet identical zygotes in the same world at the same time. If those zygotes grow up into people, do those people share a consciousness, or are they separate? Does being identical imply oneness? I don't see why it would.

Im certain it wouldn't. You would be you only if the stuff that your consciousness is made of would become part of another being. 2 hydrogen atoms may be identical to eachother, but they aren't the same atom.

In any case, I just think your flat out wrong to dismiss the possibility that you may be alive in the future. We've already discussed this though, thoroughly, and I don't want to go over the same things again. I just have one more thing to say. Your wrong and Im right!

 

[Penumbra]

Im certain it wouldn't. You would be you only if the stuff that your consciousness is made of would become part of another being. 2 hydrogen atoms may be identical to eachother, but they aren't the same atom.

In any case, I just think your flat out wrong to dismiss the possibility that you may be alive in the future. We've already discussed this though, thoroughly, and I don't want to go over the same things again. I just have one more thing to say. Your wrong and Im right!

This thread of yours reminded me that I haven't responded to your latest PM from however many weeks ago. I'll have to do that one of these days, perhaps this week.

 

[Otherright]

The problem would be worth solving if it was actually a problem.

Stating that some current PC is different from the brain is an obvious statement, rather than an argument that no computer could ever sustain real consciousness. You're made a pretty absolute statement that you have yet to back up with any substantial argument:


Using examples of clocks or digital/analog systems has nothing to do with the claim that AI is never going to happen. It relies on assumptions such as,
-Computers in the future will be a lot like our current ones.
-There is only one way to produce consciousness.

In the future, who knows what sorts of computers we could have, or how similar they might be to what a biological brain is like.

Emergent based on what?

Emergence and computation are not contradictory. Windows 7 is emergent from my computer hardware specifically because of computation.

Do you know how the brain processes its input? Do you know how a computer processes its input? They are completely opposite. No close, not kind of, completely opposite. This has nothing to do with a timeline or doing it faster, or adding more RAM. They simply do the opposite.

 

[Penumbra]

Do you know how the brain processes its input? Do you know how a computer processes its input? They are completely opposite. No close, not kind of, completely opposite. This has nothing to do with a timeline or doing it faster, or adding more RAM. They simply do the opposite.

This is still the same two assumptions Otherright. This has already been said.

-That conscious can only be produced one way, the brain's way (which is quite an assumption seeing as how it's not even well understood).

-That future computers would be even remotely similar to current ones.

Drop those assumptions and you'll likely drop your absolute claim.

 

[St Giordano Bruno]

I don't believe it is possible to be aware that you can be dead for a start no matter what scale of time one uses. Like for instance there is estimated to be 13.7 billion years from the event of the Big Bang to your birth but you had no sense of impatiently waiting on the sidelines to get born as you were totally oblivious to that scale of time. Same applies after death - even an eternity. So I think we will are destined to eternally exist out of anthropic necessity because it is only through the emergence of complex matter that one can have any perception of time. Experiencing your life is like watching an old movie that you have seen for the first time but has already been laid out by nature.

 

[Otherright]

This is still the same two assumptions Otherright. This has already been said.

-That conscious can only be produced one way, the brain's way (which is quite an assumption seeing as how it's not even well understood).

-That future computers would be even remotely similar to current ones.

Drop those assumptions and you'll likely drop your absolute claim.

You still aren't getting it. There isn't even an inkling of intellect in computers. Not even close. Its not something we're striving for, or getting close to, or getting better at figuring out.

Its very simple; a computer can add a sum. But it can't say, this sum doesn't work, so I'll go ahead and add this one on my own and do it all by itself.

It takes the information you have put into it, and gives an output. It does this by breaking down the information into useless 1s and 0s, then it uses a program, either a compiler or parser, to recompile that information and give an output.

That is all it does, and all it has ever done. That is all it is capable of doing. It may look magical, and may be able to fool you into thinking its doing something it isn't, but its not.

Your brain isn't anywhere close to that, not even remotely.


You're right, consciousness isn't fully understood. The best, most testable theories to date are quantum emergence. But since we're on the subject of consciousness, outside of quantum emergence, how can consciousness be created? It isn't just computational power.

 

[idav]

This is mostly for atheists, but open to anyone who believes that once we are dead, we're dead. That's it. We will never be alive again for the rest of eternity. We simply cease to exist, completely and permanently.

I come across this belief quite often among atheists. I view this belief as faith-based. Its also one of the most pitiful faith-based positions that I have ever come across. It strikes me as a bleak, doomed, hopeless reality.

With all of the possibilities out there which suggest eternal life, including.....

1) That there are god like beings who plan to take care of us beyond death.
2) That this reality of ours is a computer simulation, and after our lives here we will move on to different programs. Simulated reality - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
3) The idea of eternal return. Eternal return - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
4) An idea similar to eternal return, but where the system is not closed and our consciousness energy floats around through infinite space and once in a while becomes part of a living being.
5) Seeing as how consciousness is so little understood, we can speculate as to the nature of this energy:

a) It is indestructible and survives physical death, so you will continue to experience being alive, perhaps in a very basic way, with no thoughts or senses, just this rudimentary awareness. This might actually not be a pleasant thing, but I suppose its possible, maybe. Eventually, your consciousness may become part of another living being and you'd get back higher senses and intelligence.
b) An idea where there is a cosmic consciousness. Cosmic consciousness - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

​

.....why have you decided to put your faith in the idea that when we die we permanently cease to exist?

When atheists try to explain the attractiveness of atheism to others, some of this attractiveness is lost in the fact that so many atheists believe in permanent death. A religious person might say, "I believe theres an afterlife, this gives me comfort. But your telling me that when we're dead thats it? That sucks!" And thats true. Its a defeatist, hopeless belief. Atheism would be far more attractive to people if it acknowledged the possibility of life after death. I think the rate of deconversions would increase if people were instead comforted with the possibility of life after death even if there is no God.

I would agree, believing that the death of our body is The end is an assumption. Still there are things we can eliminate as possibilies.

There are things going against the soul hypothesis based on what we know about the brain. If you have brain trauma and your cells die you lose who you are and your conciousness becomes less keen.

However I have a problem based on the fact that a brain is not needed to have awareness because I believe a plant is aware somehow since it percieves. So the problem I have is that we don't know the level of awareness of matter anymore than knowing the awareness of a plant. The essence of our life may not be the end and it does go on as matter and energy are not really destroyed so we are part of this system to the end. Where perception begins and ends is a big question. I kinda get the feeling that matter can percieve naturally otherwise how would matter end up using energy to it's benefit to the point of concious awareness.

 

[Copernicus]

Do you know how the brain processes its input? Do you know how a computer processes its input? They are completely opposite. No close, not kind of, completely opposite. This has nothing to do with a timeline or doing it faster, or adding more RAM. They simply do the opposite.

Otherright, computers are very different from brains, but you do not seem to understand very much about either. AI researchers and cognitive scientists have actually built up a considerable amount of knowledge about cognition that you are completely unaware of. So you have advanced what is known as an "argument from incredulity" here. You have assumed that, because you don't know how self-awareness works in brains and you cannot imagine how it would work in machines, it is impossible in principle to build self aware machines. However, we can link self-awareness to the prefrontal cortex of the brain, and we can program computers to exhibit some aspects of self-aware behavior. We haven't actually had powerful computers for more than a handful of decades, and science is really still just beginning to get a handle on how to approach the question of developing human-like cognition in machines. There are no know technical barriers to making that happen, just our ignorance of how to bring it about.

 

[Copernicus]

However I have a problem based on the fact that a brain is not needed to have awareness because I believe a plant is aware somehow since it percieves...

What do you mean by "perceives"? Plants react to their surroundings, but that doesn't mean that they are actually "aware" of their surroundings any more than a billiard ball hit by another billiard ball is "aware of" a collision.

 

[St Giordano Bruno]

I just think consciousness is an emergent property of complexity and the brain just happens to be the most complex entity known to us. Your sense of self could have just as easily emerged in someone else's brain instead if you current parents had never met for instance. You don't need to exist as any one certain brain but any brain selected at random just out of random cosmic natural selection. There could even be a parallel universe where our sense of self has swapped bodies and you could be me and I could be you with the exchange of words being identical.

 

[idav]

What do you mean by "perceives"? Plants react to their surroundings, but that doesn't mean that they are actually "aware" of their surroundings any more than a billiard ball hit by another billiard ball is "aware of" a collision.

I'm not sure but I do know that matter also reacts at an atomic level. The difference with the plant it is is actually able to utilize energy where a billiard ball only reacts to forces of energy and isn't actually utilizing it. Humans are merely a more complex mix of matter that actually gives the matter ability to spread information with other matter which would be the cell. How matter even has the ability in the first place to utilize energy giving rise to abiogenesis to the point of a conscious creature is a very intriguing question. Essentially matter eventually became conscious of itself with the use of energy.

 

[LuisDantas]

I never found attractiveness in the idea of an afterlife, myself.

 

[Quagmire]

It's irrational to assume it isn't. It's irrational to assume anything - even if it makes you feel warm and cozy.

Now smug on the other hand.....

 

[Otherright]

Windows 7 is emergent from my computer hardware specifically because of computation.

Windows 7 is not an emergent property of your computer.

 

[Penumbra]

You still aren't getting it. There isn't even an inkling of intellect in computers. Not even close. Its not something we're striving for, or getting close to, or getting better at figuring out.

Its very simple; a computer can add a sum. But it can't say, this sum doesn't work, so I'll go ahead and add this one on my own and do it all by itself.

It takes the information you have put into it, and gives an output. It does this by breaking down the information into useless 1s and 0s, then it uses a program, either a compiler or parser, to recompile that information and give an output.

That is all it does, and all it has ever done. That is all it is capable of doing. It may look magical, and may be able to fool you into thinking its doing something it isn't, but its not.

Your brain isn't anywhere close to that, not even remotely.

You're right, consciousness isn't fully understood. The best, most testable theories to date are quantum emergence. But since we're on the subject of consciousness, outside of quantum emergence, how can consciousness be created? It isn't just computational power.

-Can you show a source for testable quantum emergence?

-What do you think intellect is? Can you define it in a way that makes you sure humans have it, and that computers never will?

I'm still just seeing assumptions here.

 

[Kilgore Trout]

What is logic? What is a coherent argument? What is an idea?

Ah, point well taken. It is unreasonable to expect a logical, coherent argument from someone who doesn't understand what either of those things are.