272 replies to this topic

[brokenportal]

No eternal reward will forgive us for wasting the dawn. - Jim Morrison

Indefinite reward however, will have no problems with everybody who applies their entrepreneurial aptitudes to the cause in the dawn.

This Morrison quote and quotes like it insinuate that living fast and dying might be great. Im not sure that riding a motorcycle fast off a cliff is ever going to take precedence over riding rocket ships fast through the galaxies with your seat belt on.

Edited by brokenportal, 31 March 2009 - 09:21 AM.

[fatboy]

No eternal reward will forgive us for wasting the dawn. - Jim Morrison

Indefinite reward however, will have no problems with everybody who applies their entrepreneurial aptitudes to the cause in the dawn.

And still, no eternal reward will forgive us for wasting the dawn.

[LET ME GET EM!]

Death can be whatever anyone assumes it may be considering their positions in general. Moreover, death of course could mean the end of something or someone in which can also be the beginning of something or someone. A brief example could be ImmInst... ImmInst could bring a psychological death to false assumption for those who had that deeply embedded idea that man-kind was intended to die while at the same time delivering life on a psychological level who has embraced the "we were created to die" meme... that can be an example of life after death. But death itself can be clearly seen as termination, nonexistent, done, no-life, Stopped, not active, disabled etc.,. Before death can be permitted life had to exist.. for humans, we have learned that death has existed and currently exist while at the same time the goals of hindering it's termination process has been challenged by the many beliefs and authorities that exist. Death itself means THE END, GAME OVER.

[Esoparagon]

How about 'the end of biological and neurological activity beyond repair'

It's not difficult.

Edited by Esoparagon, 07 June 2009 - 02:34 AM.

[brokenportal]

Death is bull shit, can we add that option?

[xEva]

Death is also a welcome escape hatch from existence that has become unbearably miserable. Life would be very, very cruel without it. I've learned that kind of hopelessness and despair not that long ago and it did elucidate the topic for me substantially.

So given a choice, I'd rather take my chances with the unknown than have my brain defrosted and attached to a machine some hundred years from now. I doubt I'd be happy in that state.

Edited by Lex, 04 September 2009 - 07:15 PM.

[VictorBjoerk]

Death is never a solution to mankind's problems although we like to think so..

Death is not the right way to go....

Death is something that a civilized society should try to prevent as much as possible.. That's the base of a civilized society.

[msied]

Death is the end of a long streak of improbable entropy. It is the norm in the universe. Life is merely the struggle against it.

[brokenportal]

Death is the end of a long streak of improbable entropy. It is the norm in the universe. Life is merely the struggle against it.

Youve got it partially right, or so it seems to me. Youve pointed out a norm, and pointed out struggle but,

struggling against the odds is the new norm.


Victor, exactly, I say the same thing. No matter how painful, there is always a way around the pain. I dont blame some people for giving in to the pain though of course, Im sure I would find myself in a precarious predicament in a choice between life and death in many painful situations too, but in he end if a person can bear it then thats what they should do. For example, a person gets into a car crash, is mangled up, nobody finds them for 3 weeks. They are in excruciating pain, they would kill themself in an instant if they could, they are begging with hysteria to die, but 3 weeks later they are saved, now they are climbing mountains in Brazl with Margaritas at night, I mean...

Death is a black hole of no you, you need you.

[msied]

Death is the end of a long streak of improbable entropy. It is the norm in the universe. Life is merely the struggle against it.

Youve got it partially right, or so it seems to me. Youve pointed out a norm, and pointed out struggle but,

struggling against the odds is the new norm.

In the universe, life is not the norm, new or old. Don't let your eyes fool you!

[fatboy]

Death is the end of a long streak of improbable entropy. It is the norm in the universe. Life is merely the struggle against it.

Me likey.

[rapier]

Death means I can no longer thrill at the sight and voices of my children and grandchild.

[karen]

We've all (in a fashion) experienced death - the billions of years prior to our existence. That's what it will be like after - like how it was before.

[Akagi]

We've all (in a fashion) experienced death - the billions of years prior to our existence. That's what it will be like after - like how it was before.

Yep. It's a return to the state which was the case prior to you having cognitive functions, perception, and awareness; which was the case in all the time preceding your existence.

[fatboy]

"I had seen birth and death but had thought they were different." - Some crazy-ass philosopher masquerading as a poet.

[Vgamer1]

We've all (in a fashion) experienced death - the billions of years prior to our existence. That's what it will be like after - like how it was before.

Yep. It's a return to the state which was the case prior to you having cognitive functions, perception, and awareness; which was the case in all the time preceding your existence.

Ah, but what if we existed in a different form before our current existence? It may just be that we don't remember it or aren't aware of it. Not saying this is the truth, just saying that it is just as likely as oblivion.

For most of my life I have believed that death was oblivion, but over time that opinion changed. In this poll I voted "I honestly don't know." And that should be everyone's answer.

Edited by Vgamer1, 25 September 2009 - 09:05 PM.

[forever freedom]

We've all (in a fashion) experienced death - the billions of years prior to our existence. That's what it will be like after - like how it was before.

Yep. It's a return to the state which was the case prior to you having cognitive functions, perception, and awareness; which was the case in all the time preceding your existence.

Ah, but what if we existed in a different form before our current existence? It may just be that we don't remember it or aren't aware of it. Not saying this is the truth, just saying that it is just as likely as oblivion.

Just as likely as oblivion? Why is that? Just because the human mind has a thing for believing in the supernatural/spiritual doesn't mean that these are any more likely than a magic cup floating around Saturn.

When people say that God has a 50/50 chance of existing i laugh; where do they come up with this. It appears that people believe that anything the human mind imagines and can't be neither proved nor disproved has a 50/50 chance of existing which is obviously not true.

[Vgamer1]

Just as likely as oblivion? Why is that? Just because the human mind has a thing for believing in the supernatural/spiritual doesn't mean that these are any more likely than a magic cup floating around Saturn.

When people say that God has a 50/50 chance of existing i laugh; where do they come up with this. It appears that people believe that anything the human mind imagines and can't be neither proved nor disproved has a 50/50 chance of existing which is obviously not true.

My point is that we just don't know what lies beyond. So to say that any one possibility is more likely than another doesn't seem right to me. I think you're saying the same thing. I never laid claim to a particular possibility, only that we can't know which possibility is "correct"

Edited by Vgamer1, 26 September 2009 - 05:02 PM.

[brokenportal]

I hear that if you jump backwards in to a volcano at dawn wearing red shoes, with a frog in your pocket that you are transported to a cloud which you then have controls of and you are granted the power of invisibility.

We know for sure that life provides life, but we can not say the same for death.

[Berserker]

I Honestly Don't Know. I never been dead, and I think nobody here have been dead, so we really don’t know what came after. That’s why I would like cryonics to work, and then we can ask then how was the experience...

[brokenportal]

I Honestly Don't Know. I never been dead, and I think nobody here have been dead, so we really don’t know what came after. That’s why I would like cryonics to work, and then we can ask then how was the experience...

Its more than that. Saying we dont know if there is anything after death is kind of like somebody asking a person if they think that a car will run after it is smashed in a compactor, and then the person saying, "I dont know, it could run." Anything is possible, but when asked the question you wouldnt say that, you would say "no."

If somebody said, "Do you want to gamble your life on the lottery? If you win with this power ball ticket then you get to live and you get 100 million dollars, if you dont then you die."

Would you do it? No, why? because the odds are so freaking horrible its unbeleivable. To anybody that thinks there may be a smidge of a possibility we will live after death, its like that, except the odds are way way worse. Instead of 1 in 1 million the odds are more along the lines of 1 in 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,00
0,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000

Would anybody here take that same lottery deal with those odds?

[Teixeira]

I Honestly Don't Know. I never been dead, and I think nobody here have been dead, so we really don’t know what came after. That’s why I would like cryonics to work, and then we can ask then how was the experience...

Its more than that. Saying we dont know if there is anything after death is kind of like somebody asking a person if they think that a car will run after it is smashed in a compactor, and then the person saying, "I dont know, it could run." Anything is possible, but when asked the question you wouldnt say that, you would say "no."

If somebody said, "Do you want to gamble your life on the lottery? If you win with this power ball ticket then you get to live and you get 100 million dollars, if you dont then you die."

Would you do it? No, why? because the odds are so freaking horrible its unbeleivable. To anybody that thinks there may be a smidge of a possibility we will live after death, its like that, except the odds are way way worse. Instead of 1 in 1 million the odds are more along the lines of 1 in 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,00
0,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000

Would anybody here take that same lottery deal with those odds?

Your questions leave me in a terrible position! I have to say something but how can I do that without going too far? Let me see if I can handle the situation.
In the first place, people talk about death that ends up in the graveyard. But it´s that the only possible death available? That is certainly the common death but is it impossible to existe annother kind of death? (in my classes of theorie of probability, I use to say to my pupils that there is an enormous difference between an impossible event and a very improbably one). So it is enough that the chances for a second type of dead are not equal to zero and it can happen, right?
To differentiate the two types of death I called the second one an "Active Death". This is like so because in the first case, death cause the body to end up working, but in the second case, death is caused by the mind in a very special process. Because there is nothing wrong with the body, after a moment, you are alive again!! (what happens in that moment we'll leave it to some other time, because we will had to utilise mathematic concepts like imaginary time, infinit dimensions and things like that).
The problem that we have now is this: are the two death´s equal? My answer is yes. Again, I have no time to give better explanations on the subject. But I don´t resist to tell tou this: the reason why they look so different as to do with the time: for the dead person the time is not of the same nature as the time for the living people around. The living people are in "real time" and the deads are in "imaginary time". So, it happens this amasing thing: one moment for the deads can mean 1000 years for the living! (remember what Christ say to the thief? "today you will be in paradise with Me?" But paradise didn´t happen until today, 2000 years latter!). But because they were going to died, paradise was tomorrow!
I would be happy if I gave you some new ideas to think about.

Edited by Teixeira, 21 November 2009 - 01:03 AM.

[Cyberbrain]

But is that the only possible death available? That is certainly the common death but is it impossible to exist another kind of death? (in my classes of theory of probability, I use to say to my pupils that there is an enormous difference between an impossible event and a very improbably one). So it is enough that the chances for a second type of dead are not equal to zero and it can happen, right?

There are an infinite number of possibilities to alternate scenarios of existence after death. All of them have an equal yet infinitely small possibility of being true. For me that probability is too risky.

The problem that we have now is this: are the two death´s equal? My answer is yes. Again, I have no time to give better explanations on the subject. But I don´t resist to tell tou this: the reason why they look so different as to do with the time: for the dead person the time is not of the same nature as the time for the living people around. The living people are in "real time" and the deads are in "imaginary time". So, it happens this amasing thing: one moment for the deads can mean 1000 years for the living! (remember what Christ say to the thief? "today you will be in paradise with Me?" But paradise didn´t happen until today, 2000 years latter!). But because they were going to died, paradise was tomorrow!

No offense but this just sounds like christian science or a new age theory and we get a lot of those around here. I find no evidence or reasoning to suggest that once one dies their consciousness splits off to exist in an alternate time line independent of the spacetime continuum. As far as science is concerned nothing happens to you when you die. The brain shuts down due to the lack of oxygen and blood flow, and the body slowly begins to rot (even though minor cells continue to exist like in the nails or hair). At death you black out and loose consciousness. It's impossible for the mind to go elsewhere due to the simple fact that the mind is based on physical phenomena. The only thing we can do is to utilize technology to prevent us from dying.

Edited by Cyberbrain, 21 November 2009 - 02:25 AM.

[Teixeira]

But is that the only possible death available? That is certainly the common death but is it imp youossible to exist another kind of death? (in my classes of theory of probability, I use to say to my pupils that there is an enormous difference between an impossible event and a very improbably one). So it is enough that the chances for a second type of dead are not equal to zero and it can happen, right?

There are an infinite number of possibilities to alternate scenarios of existence after death. All of them have an equal yet infinitely small possibility of being true. For me that probability is too risky.

The problem that we have now is this: are the two death´s equal? My answer is yes. Again, I have no time to give better explanations on the subject. But I don´t resist to tell tou this: the reason why they look so different as to do with the time: for the dead person the time is not of the same nature as the time for the living people around. The living people are in "real time" and the deads are in "imaginary time". So, it happens this amasing thing: one moment for the deads can mean 1000 years for the living! (remember what Christ say to the thief? "today you will be in paradise with Me?" But paradise didn´t happen until today, 2000 years latter!). But because they were going to died, paradise was tomorrow!

No offense but this just sounds like christian science or a new age theory and we get a lot of those around here. I find no evidence or reasoning to suggest that once one dies their consciousness splits off to exist in an alternate time line independent of the spacetime continuum. As far as science is concerned nothing happens to you when you die. The brain shuts down due to the lack of oxygen and blood flow, and the body slowly begins to rot (even though minor cells continue to exist like in the nails or hair). At death you black out and loose consciousness. It's impossible for the mind to go elsewhere due to the simple fact that the mind is based on physical phenomena. The only thing we can do is to utilize technology to prevent us from dying.

I didn´t make myself clear probably. I´m not worried about labels but with facts. If I say that in an Active Death you are dead for a couple of seconds is because your mind is occupeid by an "injection of information",you have no control on your own mind. you cannot think with your own mind because it´s occupeid by an outside force. That state is a state of death because I am completely separeted from my mind. Meanwhile, my body is in perfect conditions. So, when that process stops, I come back to life, controlling my own brain I can think with my brain which was not possible in those two seconds. I don´t know if I made myself clear.
But in this case we can afford the luxury to forget about death. Let´s just supose it was a very important process (whatever it was).And why? Because only a very important process can justified the fabulous consequences that have been detected afterwards! So, we can forget about the cause and concentrate on the consequences. And you know what? Nobody have any idea of how to explain all those consequences regardless of the cause! So, we have a non-human nature that didn´t came out of a death state, but came out of...what?? Something bigger or something smaller?
With death or no death, this is something big. So far, too big for most of the people...

[Cyberbrain]

If I say that in an Active Death you are dead for a couple of seconds is because your mind is occupeid by an "injection of information",you have no control on your own mind. you cannot think with your own mind because it´s occupeid by an outside force. That state is a state of death because I am completely separeted from my mind. Meanwhile, my body is in perfect conditions. So, when that process stops, I come back to life, controlling my own brain I can think with my brain which was not possible in those two seconds. I don´t know if I made myself clear.

This sounds exactly like quantum afterlife where once you die your mind or soul jumps from the body and into a younger version of your body either in this world or another.

Either way there is no evidence or logic to support this.

But in this case we can afford the luxury to forget about death. Let´s just supose it was a very important process (whatever it was).And why? Because only a very important process can justified the fabulous consequences that have been detected afterwards! So, we can forget about the cause and concentrate on the consequences. And you know what? Nobody have any idea of how to explain all those consequences regardless of the cause! So, we have a non-human nature that didn´t came out of a death state, but came out of...what?? Something bigger or something smaller?
With death or no death, this is something big. So far, too big for most of the people...

This literally makes no sense, I can not understand your English.

[kakker]

My hunch is oblivion, but of course there is no way to know that for sure, so I voted "I honestly don't know."

This reiminds me of something funny a read in a zen book somewhere, but I can't remember where I read it. It goes something like this:

Student: What happens when we die?

Zen Master: I don't know.

Student: But you are a zen master.

Zen Master: True, but I'm not a dead zen master.

[Keanu X Knight]

The simple words "The End"

[ds2227]

I've been thinking of death in terms of comparing the relationship that both an Ant and Humans have w/ existence. As far as we know, Ants don't have an understanding of their own existence...they just live. To themselves, I'm sure they're on the top of the chain and they have no clue that humans are above them. Sure, they avoid us I suppose, but they'll still walk on you, build nest in your house etc. My point here is that they just don't have the ability to understand what a human is, and how we imagine, feel pain, anger, happiness and all these other thoughts. Maybe death is to us, what humans are to ants. It's something that exist, we just don't have ability to comprehend it. Yet, there it is, right in front of us each day. In a sense, this doesn't prove that there is something after death, but it at least shows me that there are concrete examples of how one species just doesn't have the ability to know something, that does indeed exist. I guess I'm now taking solace in knowing it's ok to not have the answers.

[Shannon Vyff]

....painful. My last living grandparent had a stroke last night, and is back from the emergency room in her home today--my sweet Grandmother who always had a special cupboard filled with toys for me when I visited as a child, who helped me make special treats like the magical carousal birthday cake for my seventh birthday, complete with plastic horses, straws for pillars and a plastic tent top stolen from a parachute toy now, the snow falls around me in my warm English cottage-I'm getting ready to take my children on a hike into the Narnian woods and its all I can do to not start crying again, I can hardly quell the lump in my stomach when I think of how my Grandmother now can't move half her face, is thousands of miles away across an Ocean--I can only call her and hope she will be able to talk, my father said she was having a hard time remembering things and speaking...god it hurts that I can't help her...we lose our loved ones...my husband just noticed tears in my eyes again (I cry rarely) and gave me a hug and told me he loves me, my rant here is done--I will go put 5 layers of clothes and my wellies on for the woods...death is heartbreaking.

[solbanger]

....painful. My last living grandparent had a stroke last night, and is back from the emergency room in her home today--my sweet Grandmother who always had a special cupboard filled with toys for me when I visited as a child, who helped me make special treats like the magical carousal birthday cake for my seventh birthday, complete with plastic horses, straws for pillars and a plastic tent top stolen from a parachute toy now, the snow falls around me in my warm English cottage-I'm getting ready to take my children on a hike into the Narnian woods and its all I can do to not start crying again, I can hardly quell the lump in my stomach when I think of how my Grandmother now can't move half her face, is thousands of miles away across an Ocean--I can only call her and hope she will be able to talk, my father said she was having a hard time remembering things and speaking...god it hurts that I can't help her...we lose our loved ones...my husband just noticed tears in my eyes again (I cry rarely) and gave me a hug and told me he loves me, my rant here is done--I will go put 5 layers of clothes and my wellies on for the woods...death is heartbreaking.

Death is insensitive.