After death.

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ryan93
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16 May 2011, 6:16 pm

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What are you - what makes you YOU, and not another person? Answer: your genes (your DNA) and your memes (your ideas). The rest - the physical body - merely regenerates. Most of your cells regenerate every few months. What we call death is just a stage in regeneration.

Answer; my Subjective Consciousness.

There's more than one answer to that question, not all of which are mutually exclusive.

Quote:

If you have children then your DNA continues regenerating through them. If you have no children then your DNA survives through your extended family. It's the exact same DNA, more or less (maybe 1% different, that's al). Some DNA is billions of years old and will continue indefinitely (assuming we colonize other planets before our species becomes extinct).

DNA incompletely regenerates; it accumulates mutations, leading to cancer, and telomeric shortening. In any case, the argument is akin to saying that I am a star, because I'm a largely carbon-composed creature; there are better ways to define yourself that the recipe from which you are derived.

I will die, because my consciousness will cease. My ATGC's will pass on.

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trappedinhell
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16 May 2011, 6:34 pm

ryan93 wrote:

Answer; my Subjective Consciousness.

There's more than one answer to that question, not all of which are mutually exclusive.

Agreed. But we could debate what consciousness is, how conscious we are, and the question of identity.

I would argue that memes and consciousness are identical, if we take "consciousness" as meaning "what we are conscious of." I would thus argue that consciousness survives death because memes survive. As for the question of identity and transference, my own consciousness today has more in common with my parents' consciousness than it does with my body's consciousness when I was first born.

ryan93 wrote:

there are better ways to define yourself that the recipe from which you are derived.

Agreed. That's why I place equal emphasis on memes.

ryan93
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16 May 2011, 6:50 pm

trappedinhell wrote:

ryan93 wrote:

Answer; my Subjective Consciousness.

There's more than one answer to that question, not all of which are mutually exclusive.

ryan93 wrote:

there are better ways to define yourself that the recipe from which you are derived.

Agreed. That's why I place equal emphasis on memes.

Perhaps memes are the units of consciousness, but they are non-transmissible in the sense that memes are not actively shared, but rather data is outputted, sensory data is taken in, and a distinct, but similar meme is formed. My subjective experience does not hop to others, and I suspect it will die with my brain.

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trappedinhell
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16 May 2011, 7:27 pm

ryan93 wrote:

My subjective experience does not hop to other

I'm not so sure about that. Experience, even a particular point of view such as a memory of an image or a sound, is just information, and information can be shared.

It is true that the other person may experience it a little differently, just like a movie is different on a cinema and on an iPhone. Information is fluid, but that is true even within the individual. Every time I see the same object myself I see it in a slightly different way, and when people remember things it is common to change the memory slightly, hence memories can be wrong when we check.

Subjectivity is fluid, and changes anyway, so I don't see a problem with the small changes that occur when experiences are shared.

TheBicyclingGuitarist
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16 May 2011, 7:45 pm

Henbane wrote:

TheBicyclingGuitarist wrote:

The following lyrics are from the last part of a song I wrote called
Death (Copyright ©1995 to The Bicycling Guitarist)

When you die are you no more or will you somehow live forever,
passing through some secret door beyond your life to where you never
hurt or sicken or grow old, never fear the loneliness,
never feel the heat or cold, living free and happy in the

loving arms of God's amazing grace,
talking with the friends you thought were lost,
free from all regrets and all disgrace,
at what a cost!

To believe this would be nice:
if you read the Bible,
it says Jesus paid the price.

But if there is no afterlife, it doesn't matter when I get there.
I won't feel the stress or strife. I will be completely unaware
as I am food for worms, turning back to dust I am made from.
I won't miss my parents then. I won't know a thing and so I

figure it's o.k. either way.
Death is part of life after all.
It will find each of us someday,
and when it calls, we all must fall.

I like this a lot, thankyou.

thank YOU. I appreciate being appreciated. I have many songs with great lyrics even if I'm not the best singer, but then I am not known as The Bicycling Singer. Most of my best stuff has not yet been recorded at all, and none of my stuff has yet had a decent recording made. I haven't heard of Chris Wood, but I haven't really followed anyone else's music the past thirty years or so. I have my own songs in my head all the time.

I badly need to be recorded (as opposed to being recorded badly, which is all that's happened so far) before my talents fade. Please help spread the word about "The Bicycling Guitarist" to anyone and everyone that might help me get "discovered" before I get too much older. thanks

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ryan93
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16 May 2011, 8:00 pm

trappedinhell wrote:

ryan93 wrote:

My subjective experience does not hop to other

Quote:

I'm not so sure about that. Experience, even a particular point of view such as a memory of an image or a sound, is just information, and information can be shared.

It is true that the other person may experience it a little differently, just like a movie is different on a cinema and on an iPhone. Information is fluid, but that is true even within the individual. Every time I see the same object myself I see it in a slightly different way, and when people remember things it is common to change the memory slightly, hence memories can be wrong when we check.

Subjectivity is fluid, and changes anyway, so I don't see a problem with the small changes that occur when experiences are shared.

It's a claim big enough to require evidence. In any case, there isn't a one to one mapping of sense to meme (people see edges, for example, but not all the detail inbetween), and there is no reason to assume anything is transferred rather than cloned. We don't understand enough about consciousness to make assumptions as it is.

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trappedinhell
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17 May 2011, 1:42 am

ryan93 wrote:

We don't understand enough about consciousness to make assumptions as it is.

Why should consciousness be complicated? We are only conscious of what we are conscious of: the six or seven items in short term memory. These things are all information: connections between neurons. Any significance derives from an evolved preference to survive. Applying Occam's razor, what else are we looking for? Consciousness seems pretty straightforward to me, unless I am missing something.

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17 May 2011, 8:45 am

trappedinhell wrote:

ryan93 wrote:

We don't understand enough about consciousness to make assumptions as it is.

Why should consciousness be complicated? We are only conscious of what we are conscious of: the six or seven items in short term memory. These things are all information: connections between neurons. Any significance derives from an evolved preference to survive. Applying Occam's razor, what else are we looking for? Consciousness seems pretty straightforward to me, unless I am missing something.

ROFL.

This + your drivel in L&D really makes me think you're my logic professor come to retest me on the List of Common Fallacies sheet we received on the first day of class.

:lol:

jrjones9933
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17 May 2011, 10:22 am

Some theories in quantum mechanics suggest consciousness affects everything. Also, consciousness seems to act to limit the information on which we focus, rather than positively choose what information we receive. We absorb a lot more than we notice. Morphic field theory (see www.sheldrake.org) demonstrates connections among consciousness that act in a way our current theories of information exchange cannot explain.

For every answer, another question arises.

Last edited by jrjones9933 on 17 May 2011, 11:58 am, edited 1 time in total.

ruveyn
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17 May 2011, 10:24 am

jrjones9933 wrote:

Some theories in quantum mechanics suggest consciousness affects everything. Also, consciousness seems to act to limit the information on which we focus, rather than positively choose what information we receive. We absorb a lot more than we notice. Morphic field theory (see sheldrake.org) demonstrates connections among consciousness that act in a way our current theories of information exchange cannot explain.

For every answer, another question arises.

Is there any empirical corroberation of morphic field theory?

ruveyn

jrjones9933
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17 May 2011, 11:57 am

ruveyn wrote:

jrjones9933 wrote:

Some theories in quantum mechanics suggest consciousness affects everything. Also, consciousness seems to act to limit the information on which we focus, rather than positively choose what information we receive. We absorb a lot more than we notice. Morphic field theory (see sheldrake.org) demonstrates connections among consciousness that act in a way our current theories of information exchange cannot explain.

For every answer, another question arises.

Is there any empirical corroberation of morphic field theory?

ruveyn

I find it hard to take that question as a serious and openminded inquiry, nothing personal I assure you. Determined skeptics like to move the goalposts. Here's the link from Rupert Sheldrake's site. Or, you could try some of the experiments for yourself, here.

I like that you engage me in discussion, ruveyn, and hope that we can grow to see each other as worthy opponents, even if we continue to disagree. :wink:

trappedinhell
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17 May 2011, 12:25 pm

ValentineWiggin wrote:

This + your drivel in L&D

Could you be more specific? Could you pinpoint a line you did not follow?

CaptainTrips222
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17 May 2011, 1:03 pm

Master_Pedant wrote:

On a side note, I find the Catholic belief of "suicide as always sinful" repulsive, dangerous, self-righteous, and harmful.

It's brutal and sick and ignorant. But this isn't exclusive to Catholics. Protestants and Baptists believe this as well. In fact, if you want to take the Bible at its word, they all should believe as much.

I wish they'd reform a lot of things in the tenants, or just start looking the other way. It's not they haven't done that with practically the entire old testament.

trappedinhell
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17 May 2011, 1:19 pm

CaptainTrips222 wrote:

Master_Pedant wrote:

On a side note, I find the Catholic belief of "suicide as always sinful" repulsive, dangerous, self-righteous, and harmful.

It's brutal and sick and ignorant. But this isn't exclusive to Catholics. Protestants and Baptists believe this as well.

Which is odd, as Jesus committed suicide. If he was the son of God then he did not have to die, but chose to. Even if he was not the son of God, calling yourself the messiah in a nation where blasphemy carried the death penalty is a form of suicide. when he rode on the back of a donkey into Jerusalem he knew how it would be seen, and on the night of the last supper he knew what would happen and embraced it. He chose to die, just as surely as if he had taken pills.

jrjones9933
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17 May 2011, 3:23 pm

trappedinhell wrote:

CaptainTrips222 wrote:

Master_Pedant wrote:

On a side note, I find the Catholic belief of "suicide as always sinful" repulsive, dangerous, self-righteous, and harmful.

It's brutal and sick and ignorant. But this isn't exclusive to Catholics. Protestants and Baptists believe this as well.

Suicide by Centurion?

Authority figures always say "do as I say, not as I do," don't they...

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17 May 2011, 3:35 pm

CaptainTrips222 wrote:

Master_Pedant wrote:

On a side note, I find the Catholic belief of "suicide as always sinful" repulsive, dangerous, self-righteous, and harmful.

Because of the centralized nature of the Church, Catholics have a lot more uniformity when it comes to those beliefs and this makes matters worse. In terms of effectiveness, Catholics seem to be the best at advancing social barbarism (conservatism).

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