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 Never Say Die: Why We Can't Imagine Death
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Randy
SFN Regular

USA
1990 Posts

Posted - 10/25/2008 :  09:18:31  Show Profile Send Randy a Private Message  Reply with Quote
Beyond our last gasp...an interesting article from Sci.Am.

Key concepts
* Almost everyone has a tendency to imagine the mind continuing to exist after the death of the body.
* Even people who believe the mind ceases to exist at death show this type of psychological-continuity reasoning in studies.
* Rather than being a by-product of religion or an emotional security blanket, such beliefs stem from the very nature of our consciousness.

....read on:
http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=never-say-die

"We are all connected; to each other biologically, to the earth chemically, to the rest of the universe atomically."

"So you're made of detritus [from exploded stars]. Get over it. Or better yet, celebrate it. After all, what nobler thought can one cherish than that the universe lives within us all?"
-Neil DeGrasse Tyson

filthy
SFN Die Hard

USA
14408 Posts

Posted - 10/25/2008 :  10:55:31   [Permalink]  Show Profile Send filthy a Private Message  Reply with Quote
An interesting article, if long. I suppose it means that we will not get to see the look on Jerry Falwell's face as he stumbles though Oblivian, the Lamp of Diogenes held high, searching for the fundi-Christian's sterile version of 72 virgins. Well, I never planned on it anyway.

Anyone who has had general anesthesia knows at least somewhat about what death is like. My last spine surgery took some 15 hours, but to my consciousness it was less than an eye-blink. Those 15 hours were exactly nothing throughout their span of time and for all practiclal purposes, that part of 'me' was dead.

Thanks for the read.




"What luck for rulers that men do not think." -- Adolf Hitler (1889 - 1945)

"If only we could impeach on the basis of criminal stupidity, 90% of the Rethuglicans and half of the Democrats would be thrown out of office." ~~ P.Z. Myres


"The default position of human nature is to punch the other guy in the face and take his stuff." ~~ Dude

Brother Boot Knife of Warm Humanitarianism,

and Crypto-Communist!

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Siberia
SFN Addict

Brazil
2322 Posts

Posted - 10/25/2008 :  11:42:10   [Permalink]  Show Profile  Visit Siberia's Homepage  Send Siberia an AOL message  Send Siberia a Yahoo! Message Send Siberia a Private Message  Reply with Quote
Originally posted by filthy

An interesting article, if long. I suppose it means that we will not get to see the look on Jerry Falwell's face as he stumbles though Oblivian, the Lamp of Diogenes held high, searching for the fundi-Christian's sterile version of 72 virgins. Well, I never planned on it anyway.

Anyone who has had general anesthesia knows at least somewhat about what death is like. My last spine surgery took some 15 hours, but to my consciousness it was less than an eye-blink. Those 15 hours were exactly nothing throughout their span of time and for all practiclal purposes, that part of 'me' was dead.

Thanks for the read.





Aye. It's like those hours never existed. Not bad, not good, not anything.

Good read, though.

"Why are you afraid of something you're not even sure exists?"
- The Kovenant, Via Negativa

"People who don't like their beliefs being laughed at shouldn't have such funny beliefs."
-- unknown
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furshur
SFN Regular

USA
1536 Posts

Posted - 10/26/2008 :  17:24:41   [Permalink]  Show Profile Send furshur a Private Message  Reply with Quote
I figure you die and it is like a dreamless sleep from which you never awake. Seems kinda peaceful if you ask me. If people really thought about it the worst thing I can imagine would be living for ever. 1000 years would be nice but you would tend to start getting bored. After living 100 of those thousand year periods I would think that you would be going out of your mind with boredum. After about 100 trillion years you would be begging to end your existence. The thought of living forever scares the crap out of me. I enjoy life now, shit that's plenty for me!

If I knew then what I know now then I would know more now than I know.
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Dave W.
Info Junkie

USA
26020 Posts

Posted - 10/26/2008 :  17:46:12   [Permalink]  Show Profile  Visit Dave W.'s Homepage Send Dave W. a Private Message  Reply with Quote
Well, after mastering day trading, and then chess, badminton, stock-car racing, TV advertising, nematode biology, Newtonian physics and knitting, I figure I'll be ready to learn gourmet cooking, transmission repair, golf course design, cell phone manufacture and whatever else comes along.

It's said that to master a skill takes about ten years of hard study. Above, I've scheduled the first 120 years of my eternity. There will always be new things to learn, and if you find something you really enjoy, 10 years will be too short. Hell, there will probably never be a lack of need for new software, so I've got tons of time left on my current career before I'll even want to start something different.

- Dave W. (Private Msg, EMail)
Evidently, I rock!
Why not question something for a change?
Visit Dave's Psoriasis Info, too.
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Ricky
SFN Die Hard

USA
4907 Posts

Posted - 10/26/2008 :  21:15:23   [Permalink]  Show Profile  Send Ricky an AOL message Send Ricky a Private Message  Reply with Quote
furshur, if heaven is a paradise like many Christians say it is, then yes, I will get bored. If I could just wish myself all the mathematical knowledge possible, the knowledge itself would be pointless. But I agree with Dave that there are far to many things that I am interested or could be interested that I really don't honestly think that I will exhaust all of them.

Why continue? Because we must. Because we have the call. Because it is nobler to fight for rationality without winning than to give up in the face of continued defeats. Because whatever true progress humanity makes is through the rationality of the occasional individual and because any one individual we may win for the cause may do more for humanity than a hundred thousand who hug their superstitions to their breast.
- Isaac Asimov
Edited by - Ricky on 10/26/2008 21:17:21
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Dave W.
Info Junkie

USA
26020 Posts

Posted - 10/26/2008 :  22:47:27   [Permalink]  Show Profile  Visit Dave W.'s Homepage Send Dave W. a Private Message  Reply with Quote
I'd really like to be able to say something like, "well, it's been a thousand years since I performed neurosurgery, so I think someone who's more 'fresh' should do it, but I'm flattered you asked for me. Now, if you had needed a replica Conestoga wagon, I'd be your guy. Except that I've got a Foosball championship next month, so I've gotta practice, practice, practice."

- Dave W. (Private Msg, EMail)
Evidently, I rock!
Why not question something for a change?
Visit Dave's Psoriasis Info, too.
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bngbuck
SFN Addict

USA
2437 Posts

Posted - 10/26/2008 :  23:00:53   [Permalink]  Show Profile Send bngbuck a Private Message  Reply with Quote
Dave......

Hell, mastering the roundworms alone should take about 800,000 years, by the ten year rule, so you'll have a toehold on eternity right there!

Larry Sanger's Citizendium tripled in the previous ten months and doubled in the last one hundred days, and that was a full year ago. There have been estimates that the total knowledge base of mankind doubles every five years!

Even if you were dead forever you never could catch up!
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chaloobi
SFN Regular

1620 Posts

Posted - 10/27/2008 :  08:18:35   [Permalink]  Show Profile  Send chaloobi a Yahoo! Message Send chaloobi a Private Message  Reply with Quote
Immortality might be boring but I'd sure like to give it a try. The universe is a big place - lots to see and do. Now, I understand the classic scifi story about the guy that couldn't die, in all its variations, but in the universe I'm familiar with, death, even with spontaneous super-healing, is just a blast furnace away (or something similar). So if it gets too bad in a thousand millenia, there's always definitve suicide. In fact, in my version of Utopia, the only way to die is suicide (barring very catastrophic accidents) - freedom, that's what I'm talking about.

-Chaloobi

Edited by - chaloobi on 10/27/2008 08:23:26
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pleco
SFN Addict

USA
2998 Posts

Posted - 10/27/2008 :  08:26:52   [Permalink]  Show Profile  Visit pleco's Homepage Send pleco a Private Message  Reply with Quote
I want immortality with the option to choose when to die.

That is all. Get to work on it.

by Filthy
The neo-con methane machine will soon be running at full fart.
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Hawks
SFN Regular

Canada
1383 Posts

Posted - 10/27/2008 :  08:33:34   [Permalink]  Show Profile  Visit Hawks's Homepage Send Hawks a Private Message  Reply with Quote
I wonder if the motto "why do it today if you can do it tomorrow" would be used all too frequently if one was to live forever...

METHINKS IT IS LIKE A WEASEL
It's a small, off-duty czechoslovakian traffic warden!
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chaloobi
SFN Regular

1620 Posts

Posted - 10/27/2008 :  09:52:20   [Permalink]  Show Profile  Send chaloobi a Yahoo! Message Send chaloobi a Private Message  Reply with Quote
Originally posted by Hawks

I wonder if the motto "why do it today if you can do it tomorrow" would be used all too frequently if one was to live forever...
I put off everything near and dear to my heart and I know I'm going to die. The only difference from immortality is that the time will come much sooner when I'll never be able to do what I've put off.

I'm sad now. Thanks.

-Chaloobi

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bngbuck
SFN Addict

USA
2437 Posts

Posted - 10/27/2008 :  10:58:47   [Permalink]  Show Profile Send bngbuck a Private Message  Reply with Quote
"Why we can't imagine death"

There are those of us approaching the end of double digits that can indeed imagine death, and we imagine it as merely "the end".

I am one that falls into that category! I am currently in the anger stage of the denial of death.

And it does cause some problems!

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