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Thread: For Those Counting on An Afterlife...

  1. #1

    Default For Those Counting on An Afterlife...

    Reading the below article reminded me of Alberjohns and arguing with him that copying your memories to a computer simulation would not be the same as becoming immortal... sigh. I did see the Netflix movie referenced in the article. It was okay. I do think if the extended discovery shown at the end of the film were made public, many many people would, uh, "opt out."

    Anyway, I agree with the author that you can't move what you think of as "you" out of your brain. Your brain is you in fundamental physical ways. You could copy you into something else, perhaps. But that's the best possible outcome.

    Finally, from the article, I liked this bit: "What does it mean? Life is not some temporary staging before the big show hereafter—it is our personal proscenium in the drama of the cosmos here and now.

    Anyone here biding their time, waiting for "real" living in the hereafter?

    Why the “You” in an Afterlife Wouldn't Really Be You
    Memories, points of view and the self

    The Discovery is a 2017 Netflix film in which Robert Redford plays a scientist who proves that the afterlife is real. “Once the body dies, some part of our consciousness leaves us and travels to a new plane,” the scientist explains, evidenced by his machine that measures, as another character puts it, “brain wavelengths on a subatomic level leaving the body after death.”

    This idea is not too far afield from a real theory called quantum consciousness, proffered by a wide range of people, from physicist Roger Penrose to physician Deepak Chopra. Some versions hold that our mind is not strictly the product of our brain and that consciousness exists separately from material substance, so the death of your physical body is not the end of your conscious existence. Because this is the topic of my next book, Heavens on Earth: The Scientific Search for the Afterlife, Immortality, and Utopia (Henry Holt, 2018), the film triggered a number of problems I have identified with all such concepts, both scientific and religious.

    First, there is the assumption that our identity is located in our memories, which are presumed to be permanently recorded in the brain: if they could be copied and pasted into a computer or duplicated and implanted into a resurrected body or soul, we would be restored. But that is not how memory works. Memory is not like a DVR that can play back the past on a screen in your mind. Memory is a continually edited and fluid process that utterly depends on the neurons in your brain being functional. It is true that when you go to sleep and wake up the next morning or go under anesthesia for surgery and come back hours later, your memories return, as they do even after so-called profound hypothermia and circulatory arrest. Under this procedure, a patient's brain is cooled to as low as 50 degrees Fahrenheit, which causes electrical activity in neurons to stop—suggesting that long-term memories are stored statically. But that cannot happen if your brain dies. That is why CPR has to be done so soon after a heart attack or drowning—because if the brain is starved of oxygen-rich blood, the neurons die, along with the memories stored therein.

    Second, there is the supposition that copying your brain's connectome—the diagram of its neural connections—uploading it into a computer (as some scientists suggest) or resurrecting your physical self in an afterlife (as many religions envision) will result in you waking up as if from a long sleep either in a lab or in heaven. But a copy of your memories, your mind or even your soul is not you. It is a copy of you, no different than a twin, and no twin looks at his or her sibling and thinks, “There I am.” Neither duplication nor resurrection can instantiate you in another plane of existence.

    Third, your unique identity is more than just your intact memories; it is also your personal point of view. Neuroscientist Kenneth Hayworth, a senior scientist at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute and president of the Brain Preservation Foundation, divided this entity into the MEMself and the POVself. He believes that if a complete MEMself is transferred into a computer (or, presumably, resurrected in heaven), the POVself will awaken. I disagree. If this were done without the death of the person, there would be two memory selves, each with its own POVself looking out at the world through its unique eyes. At that moment, each would take a different path in life, thereby recording different memories based on different experiences. “You” would not suddenly have two POVs. If you died, there is no known mechanism by which your POVself would be transported from your brain into a computer (or a resurrected body). A POV depends entirely on the continuity of self from one moment to the next, even if that continuity is broken by sleep or anesthesia. Death is a permanent break in continuity, and your personal POV cannot be moved from your brain into some other medium, here or in the hereafter.

    If this sounds dispiriting, it is just the opposite. Awareness of our mortality is uplifting because it means that every moment, every day and every relationship matters. Engaging deeply with the world and with other sentient beings brings meaning and purpose. We are each of us unique in the world and in history, geographically and chronologically. Our genomes and connectomes cannot be duplicated, so we are individuals vouchsafed with awareness of our mortality and self-awareness of what that means. What does it mean? Life is not some temporary staging before the big show hereafter—it is our personal proscenium in the drama of the cosmos here and now.”

    This article was originally published with the title "Who Are You?"

    ABOUT THE AUTHOR(S)


    Michael Shermer is publisher of Skeptic magazine (www.skeptic.com) and a Presidential Fellow at Chapman University. His next book is Heavens on Earth. Follow him on Twitter @michaelshermer
    https://www.scientificamerican.com/a...really-be-you/
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  2. #2
    I'm not going to comment on the question of whether there is an afterlife, but I will say that his argumentation was irrelevant. He makes some obvious assumptions early on - primarily, that our 'self' or identity is physical in nature - rooted in biology. AIUI most religions argue for some form of dualism, where the 'self' or mind is not tied to a physical object. Certainly our biology may reflect our mind and memories, but these are also stored in a non-physical form - a soul, for lack of a better word.

    Thus all of his hand-wringing over continuity of self is silly; it doesn't matter that one's physical body has died if the 'soul' has continuous (and, indeed, immortal) existence. New instantiations - in resurrected bodies or some spiritual existence in an afterlife - are not discontinuities at all.

    That's not to argue that such a dualism exists or indeed suggests there is an afterlife, but it does mean that his arguments are pointless.
    "When I meet God, I am going to ask him two questions: Why relativity? And why turbulence? I really believe he will have an answer for the first." - Werner Heisenberg (maybe)

  3. #3
    Quote Originally Posted by wiggin View Post
    I'm not going to comment on the question of whether there is an afterlife, but I will say that his argumentation was irrelevant. He makes some obvious assumptions early on - primarily, that our 'self' or identity is physical in nature - rooted in biology. AIUI most religions argue for some form of dualism, where the 'self' or mind is not tied to a physical object. Certainly our biology may reflect our mind and memories, but these are also stored in a non-physical form - a soul, for lack of a better word.

    Thus all of his hand-wringing over continuity of self is silly; it doesn't matter that one's physical body has died if the 'soul' has continuous (and, indeed, immortal) existence. New instantiations - in resurrected bodies or some spiritual existence in an afterlife - are not discontinuities at all.

    That's not to argue that such a dualism exists or indeed suggests there is an afterlife, but it does mean that his arguments are pointless.
    Clearly his most basic premise is that a super-natural soul -- mind/body duality in general -- does not exist. So the basis of your criticism of his hand-wringing is entirely outside the bounds of his assumptions. This quote pretty much says it all, from his POV:

    "If you died, there is no known mechanism by which your POVself would be transported from your brain into a computer (or a resurrected body). A POV depends entirely on the continuity of self from one moment to the next, even if that continuity is broken by sleep or anesthesia. Death is a permanent break in continuity, and your personal POV cannot be moved from your brain into some other medium, here or in the hereafter."

    You could respond to him with "But continuity is maintained by the soul" and he would dismiss any soul-like thing as mythology and therefore irrelevant.
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  4. #4
    He's offering a critique of 'quantum consciousness', which he explicitly defines as a sort of dualism, and then his critique ignores the very possibility of dualism (I actually don't think his definition is correct - I think quantum consciousness is indeed believed to be rooted in the physical world). His argument should instead have been summed up as, "I haven't seen any evidence of dualism, so I don't believe in it" rather than give us this irrelevant run-around assuming that dualism doesn't exist and then destroying a straw man.

    If he's preaching to the converted, fine, but it seems like he's trying to convince a population that probably has no issue with dualism per se. It was a pathetic attempt to do so.
    "When I meet God, I am going to ask him two questions: Why relativity? And why turbulence? I really believe he will have an answer for the first." - Werner Heisenberg (maybe)

  5. #5
    Quote Originally Posted by wiggin View Post
    He's offering a critique of 'quantum consciousness', which he explicitly defines as a sort of dualism, and then his critique ignores the very possibility of dualism (I actually don't think his definition is correct - I think quantum consciousness is indeed believed to be rooted in the physical world). His argument should instead have been summed up as, "I haven't seen any evidence of dualism, so I don't believe in it" rather than give us this irrelevant run-around assuming that dualism doesn't exist and then destroying a straw man.

    If he's preaching to the converted, fine, but it seems like he's trying to convince a population that probably has no issue with dualism per se. It was a pathetic attempt to do so.
    I think the essence of his argument, however poorly stated, is more like "No evidence has been found for dualism, which is the only means for continuity between your brain and any other existence, so therefore (because continuity cannot be maintained) nobody can have an immortal existence."

    And I agree with you that anyone who believes they have an immortal soul isn't going to be impressed by anything this guy has to say.
    The Rules
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  6. #6
    Quote Originally Posted by EyeKhan View Post
    I think the essence of his argument, however poorly stated, is more like "No evidence has been found for dualism, which is the only means for continuity between your brain and any other existence, so therefore (because continuity cannot be maintained) nobody can have an immortal existence."

    And I agree with you that anyone who believes they have an immortal soul isn't going to be impressed by anything this guy has to say.
    Why this whole run-around with discussing connectomes and memory and continuity? None of it addresses his initial charge, that the dualism argument he sees in society is wrong. Just who is he trying to convince? Sure sounds from his argumentation that he's trying to argue with followers of Nikolos Daru Ede or some weird transhumanist collective rather than the actual group he explicitly took issue with.
    "When I meet God, I am going to ask him two questions: Why relativity? And why turbulence? I really believe he will have an answer for the first." - Werner Heisenberg (maybe)

  7. #7
    Quote Originally Posted by wiggin View Post
    Why this whole run-around with discussing connectomes and memory and continuity? None of it addresses his initial charge, that the dualism argument he sees in society is wrong. Just who is he trying to convince? Sure sounds from his argumentation that he's trying to argue with followers of Nikolos Daru Ede or some weird transhumanist collective rather than the actual group he explicitly took issue with.
    LOL, I can't answer those questions. But I agree with you, he's using a lot of words to say something that's relatively simple.

    Edit: Thinking about the transhumanists, I recall Alberjohns didn't care about continuity. Pointing out that his mind in a computer would at best be just a copy running on a simulation, he responded so what. He was fine with his immortality being lived by a separate being. If that's the POV in transhumanism at large, it also pulls the rug out from under this guy's arguments.
    Last edited by EyeKhan; 07-11-2017 at 04:28 PM.
    The Rules
    Copper- behave toward others to elicit treatment you would like (the manipulative rule)
    Gold- treat others how you would like them to treat you (the self regard rule)
    Platinum - treat others the way they would like to be treated (the PC rule)

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