(outline of eternity) Hi Meta...your 'catch up questions'...

[GarrettQ]

Note to reader: some may wish to skip ahead to 'CONTINUATION'


School: I have my current class and my next class and I will be done with my second AA degree(this time in education, probably to at least start out as a math teacher). I intend to also become a psychologist and then keep on learning for the rest of my life.

Family(some possibly old news): After my mom died from a stroke, my dad moved out from California and now lives with my best friend and I. He continued strong in fundamentalism for about at least another year, and then after tons of careful thought and research became an atheist. Not to worry, like Tiny Thinker and Quantum he's definitely one of the good guys. For many months after this change he struggled with being horrified by the thought of being dead for ever and wondering how life could have meaning. He resolved this by deciding that he was responsible to give his life meaning by how he lives it, and by concluding that if one no longer exist, then they aren't around to notice thus all we will ever experience is the time that we are alive and how we are living it.

My philosophical situation: Whether or not death is an illusion, I believe the ideal approach is to embrace the continuation of life not out of fearing death but out one's life being worth living and more than mere existence. I have such reasons to live, so many answers and even questions to seek, and insane dreams to achieve. I want my dad to be there and wish that he were ready to join me.

Whether or not God exist, living forever and maybe even reality being ultimately good are theoretically possible. But the same in both cases may even apply to whether death is permanent oblivion AKA 'real'.

On ever closer inspection, spatial reality on the grandest scale is looking more and more like the most minding blowing infinite fractal -an infinite recursion of all finite worlds and all finitely describable infinite worlds logically conceivable containing order within chaos and chaos within order.
I've recently proven that it is a logical impossibility to randomly pick from an infinite set of natural numbers in such a way that each has an equal chance of being picked. But for now there does not appear to be any logically necessary finite probability for any given natural number getting picked, thus even those probabilities would have to be randomly determined, but then a new recursion is required since those next probabilities would be in the same situation as the original natural numbers, hence a probability fractal. Now if you replace each natural number and its probabilities in that probability fractal with a logically conceivable world then you would get the mathematical model of an ultimate reality of nondeterministic chaos being the final source of all multi-verses and what combination of them exist.
To determine whether the model is logically consistent we would need a way to prove that given any possible model state that all other equally possible model states could have existed, or conversely to prove inconsistency show that given a possible model state there would be at least one equally possible model state that could not have existed.

******************************************************************************************
CONTINUATION:
******************************************************************************************

Here is an outline of my insane cosmic plan for eternity while also enjoying and living life now:

As a teacher I will help in the social cause of creating an intelligent educated electorate. When people know what laws are good and why at least most are even in their selfish interest then there is a huge majority needed to create those laws and make society good.

In only about a decade from now good meat will be inexpensively grow-able from cell culture (this project was originally initiated for longer distance space travel to Mars for example), and the factory/farming and slaughter of conscious beings for food will become politically unacceptable and abolished. Similar technology developments in organ culture (scientist have recently cultured a fully functional heart) and even the brainless clone technology we already have will provide alternatives that will have a similar political effect of animal experimentation.

In about 25 to 45 years by other advances in addition to the ones just recently already made, aging will be reversible and cured by periodic treatments every decade or so(Dr. Grey). In computers power and memory will keep doubling by Moore's Law and by another similar known law construction resolution will increase so that the first nano-bots will be built by 2050 with replicators soon to follow. And continuing to build on current prosthetic, nanowire brain interface, and memory chip brain implant technology, there well be better WWW interfacing, 'cyborging' on the one side and reverse engineered AI's approaching from the other to meet in the middle and merge(Kurtzweil). The first cryogenics patients will probably be revived by 2060 due to nanotech.

Here philosophers are relevant to technologies of mind transfers and mind copying. Questions of whether it will really be you instead of a data clone or even just a machine/zombie cannot be ignored. This will be one area of research where the subjective must be included. We've heard of the Turing test, and Roger Penrose's Godal theorem insights offer further ways of scientifically testing for whether an AI is conscious. I have gone the extra step of devising experiments/tests for judging not just the consciousness of an AI copy of you but also whether an AI copy of you is really you -possessing the same unique first person subjectivity- or just a new conscious person with merely your attributes of personal identity!

From here the next project of interest is that people who've acquired synthetic brains and those who were born with them could easily at regular intervals have backup mind files updated. Also by existing as multiple copies a person could live parallel existences and be many places at once. If a copy died and could not be revived, the person would suffer permanent amnesia of the actions and experiences they had in that part of their life, while reintegrations of multiple copies into one would allow their consciousness access to their unified memories.

This would mean that leaving the safety of earth would not increase their mortality (although significant thrill factor would still remain as one naturally would want to succeed at making it back with these memories instead of it ending being as though it never happened). And on earth the web of nano computing memory capacity and decentralized backup mind filing would mean that life expectancy world pretty much be identical with the life expectancy of earth. But of course then that would increase as individuals venture out to the other planets and stars and see how much life and sort of life is out there.

Now backing up to look at societal development; The run away exponential growth of technology is largely powered by the feverish competition of people advancing even just to keep their current standard of living. But this age will be replaced when this finally leads to replicator technology giving people the option of independently manufacturing whatever they need so that they no longer need to compete. It will be their choice whether to change or stay the same because they like where they're at. The future then will no longer be that which seems or is forced upon us by mindless economic and evolutionary forces beyond our control but seen as and will be what we create of our own choosing because it is beautiful and serves a life affirming existence.
This is where the society I described would come about, where people freely exit or create communities of any economic or governmental structure they choose, The WWW makes it easy for people to find and get together even instantaneously by telepresence or eventually mind file transfer. And the sole basis of all secular law is the world government only enforces the law to do no harm. Ethically the rest should be by persuasion in a corresponding free market of ideas that goes hand in hand with the free market of communities.
Postmodern technology won't need to look gray boxy and ugly. There can be mega cities and 60 mile tall buildings for those who love these things, but also such micro tech could easily grow with the fractal beauty of biology or blend into the environment out of sight, And its room temperature efficiency would leave the skies pristine clear again.
As for the diversity of tastes from mega city to nature lover, and technofile to Luddite, Part of the value of spreading out to other planets would be to support freedom of an every greater diversity of these and other possibilities and creativity.
Finally the most revolutionary part yet, is that it isn't just technology and people merging into one (accept for Luddites), but also all conscious forms of life merging into one species. Human brains aren't the only brains that can be augmented, Animal brains could also be augmented to human and post-human levels of awareness. Even better it goes both ways. When you dream, at your lowest and most altered states of consciousness you are still you. Someone could be a human one day and a soring eagle the next, or through co-existing copies be the eagle a nature loving human and forest ecosystem of life all at once to reintegrate later. When this is done we can finally for all life replace the painful death trial and error of natural evolution with intelligent design by each self-directed-evolving conscious being.

Over the next trillion or so years without intervention most sun like stars will die out and living off Hawking radiation and final slow entropy death or the Big Rip lurks beyond. Frankly we've been around way too short an instant of time to be jumping to the conclusion that we can't find a way around entropy. Scientific knowledge is provisional, and the most reasonable alternative to the jump the gun defeatist mentality is that we optimistically keep searching for the solutions while making the most of what we have in case the search doesn't pan out. Instead of singularity mind bubbles devouring the universe at the speed of light, we should appreciate diversity, reserving force only for when necessary to enforce 'do no harm'. The options of spreading through space, and even the universal spatial expansion itself, means that we can preserve some natural planets and stars for their wilderness value instead of whole sale busting everything up for building material -especially if we take with us our soon to be acquired intelligent population management.

Next stage in the out line plan is that an entropy loop hole for producing new energy and thus matter is found so that now we have an open ended future and needn't bust up existing worlds to build new things. Free choice of development can again be preserved as some may stay while others will travel deep into voids between galaxies for the next step.
The universal spacial expansion means that the new community can grow larger indefinitely without ever growing beyond the void. There the ultimate of mega-construction in this universe will begin; The loop hole would allow a new kind of programmable matter to grow. Many quintillions of years from now, its ‘elementary’ particles would be clusters of self-replicating robotic planetoids whose programmable symphony of interactions form on a grander scale worlds whose physical laws are whatever their inhabitants want them to be even though of course the original forms of matter at the bottom level of this substrate still operate by the same laws that they do now.
The goal to have accomplished by this stage of civilization is that the fundamental laws of the entire substrate are the embodiment of the highest governments’ sole purpose of enforcing ‘do no harm’. These would be alterable only if a sufficiently vast majority approves it. All other possible laws that are consistent with those highest laws would then be determined freely by any individuals wanting to make new ‘communities’.
That stage of society is still purely at the mercy of whether this universe is left in peace or ultimately wiped out by a larger multi-verse event.
The contingent laws of causality not only allow part of the world to effect and change another part, but can themselves potentially be altered through other laws of causality. Through such ‘higher’ causalities, some universes and even the activities of unknowing worms or people within them alter physics laws elsewhere –changing, creating, and sometimes even accidentally destroying other universes. Different universes come with vastly different potentials: Many can’t produce life, Some produce life but not technological civilizations, Some seem like our universe and are doomed to entropy, Others are consistent with the plan I’ve described thus far, But some have the right mix of physics laws and the right success of intelligent life. The other defenseless universes can be expected to eventually be wiped out in much the same way that they came to exist, But in this last universe type in the list, the inhabitants succeed at finding a Rosetta Stone and exploiting it to create a tool kit of physics laws with which they can eventually create any other laws of physics they choose. And with this they gain the ability to look beyond their universe and see and stop coming destruction that would have killed them. While never absolutely immortal, their mortality would exponentially decrease so that they have a finite chance of literally living forever that approaches 100%.

Now the way that even an atheistic reality might be ultimately ethical is this:
1) In this sort of reality I described, the ultimate origin of any life we’d call life will virtually in a 100% of cases be the product of evolution instead of the virtually impossible product of blind chance. Likewise the majority of societies that manage to expand beyond their universe’s equivalent of a planet, and even more so those that achieve the supreme creation of a potentially eternal multi-verse will be ethical.
2) In the worse-case scenario, on average these ethical multi-verses will be just as powerful as their evil counter parts. But every evil counter part including the one’s that manage to murder a google-plex of ethical multi-verses and torture that many beings for that many years will always sooner or later if by nothing else first, in its own time be stopped, crushed and destroyed by one or more of its ethical counter parts. And since the ethical variety are the majority, they are the only ones with the potential to literality last forever amidst the growing web of new multi-verses.
3) What ever it is that makes you uniquely you, in the infinite whole of this reality everyone is reborn as many times as it takes to succeed at ‘immortality’. To each their own, some may simply grieve move on and connect with new people when their loved ones die, and some might have no interest in going to the meta-archeological trouble of uncovering their past and restoring memories of it. But the most passionate personalities will with iron devotion and effort no matter how much unimaginable time it probably will take, keep developing and using ever more fantastic technologies to search and travel tangled webs of multi-verses universes worlds and time in trillions of spatial dimensions to find the one or ones they love, risk that they’re not interested, restore their memories and take them home.
4) Maybe because of the effort, when you lose someone to death you’ll probably never see them again, and if you die it’ll probably forever be as though all the life that you know never happened. But we are not victims; all combinations of risk taking, living passionately, or spending even eternity playing it safe, committing suicide, or having an ever deepening empty existence are our choice. We cannot even be forced by the law of averages to ever be a Hitler; we eventually form habits of character and personality that stand a growing chance of lasting forever. If we love dealing with reality instead of trying to escape it, and if we want to, then after some indeterminate time we will spend eternity free of virtual reality, being the personification of perfect love, living with an ever growing community of like charactered people and loved ones who never are lost, including all of these from your entire past whose answer was ‘yes’.
5) We not only will not run out of new things to learn and do, but won’t even run out of radically new experiences and things to do. Even on a two dimensional visual canvas new forms of corresponding concepts we can’t image can become knowable by increasing the resolution say a trillion fold –every natural number of pixels literally possible for visual consciousness. We could also add completely new primary colors we’ve never seen. And by having a three dimensional visual canvas we can experience the three dimensional images of a four dimensional world. In that sort of world there are a six platonic polyhedrons and one of those has an astonishing 600 sides. I look forward to seeing that with my own eyes. The number of dimensions we see, feel, and hear in can always be increased. I used to think that the complexity would get sickening and thus never be pleasing like the elegance of a sunset, but this is not true. Complexity is in the eye of the beholder. When you see 3 or 5 things you instantly see three-ness or five-ness without counting, some autistic people can even see eighty-ness, the number of objects whose quantity you can instantly see the same way you do with 3 or 5 can always increase, so that even your google-plex dimensional sunset can be elegantly beautiful in your eyes even though possessing far greater possible range of variety.

Now the only way that a reality like this might still contain an eternal evil, is that:
1) All living beings could achieve everything except that they will never get to actually know for certain that the world they experience or that any of their loved ones are not just a very good simulation –only that they should always believe that they are real until proven otherwise, and that they should never worry about such real possibilities.
And 2) some beings would start out as victims; welcomed into their first instance of life by a horrible world beyond their control which they thus gave no form of consent to.

But since these are also true in Christian and many other theistic concepts of reality, whether these are in fact evil should give pause to any of these adherents who would claim that an atheistic cosmos would inherently be an eternally empty evil hopeless surrealist living nightmare. As hopefully demonstrated above, even if God as these conceive of God does not exist, the whole of reality might at least be every bit as good as if God as they conceive of God does exist. And no matter what, for how we treat one another and live, we need no excuse from the stars above any way; because kindness is not about God or the stars –it is about each other, it is about love, or else it is fake and void.

Conclusion (finally)

So that is the outline of eternity for all from all traditions and backgrounds to help accomplish as far as it can in what ever possible world we find ourselves in. Your kindred are found equally in all backgrounds like different examples of you born into different cultures and non/religions.

As for meta-cosmology, I know of one theoretically possible reality in which getting to finally know reality would be possible. Naturally as to whether that one is reality is a puzzle I’ve struggled with for at the very least four years and continue working on to this day. Such is part of the fun of being alive.

Garrett

[Metacrock]

I see. well I'm glad he's thinking. I'm glad you are in school and working toward a goal.

stick around buddy let's do some modal logic. I've had so many tussels with atheists on the OA and I learned so much about it. have you ever read Godel's argument?

[GarrettQ]

I read in The Emperor's New Mind by Roger Penrose. I also read The Age of Spiritual Machines by Ray Kurtzweil who simply denies Roger's claim that humans can determine the truth of Godelian propositions. As for me I know some simple geometric truths absolutely so that these could not have been false beliefs due even to flawed neuro-circuitry. We at least have the capacity to grasp these propositions, and if all of some set of 5 axioms can be written in the same formal language yet one of them cannot be derived from the other 4(being that it is an axiom) then it would seem that that axiom is a Godelian proposition of that formal system which only uses the other 4 axioms. So it looks like Roger's right about humans having that ability, however I see no good reason for agreeing with him that conscious brains have to be carbon based. In fact I am a dualist and see there is no logical reason why it would follow androids won't someday be conscious in the same sense that the current flesh and blood androids are conscious. Did this have any thing to do with your thoughts, or is it off topic?

[Metacrock]

I read in The Emperor's New Mind by Roger Penrose. I also read The Age of Spiritual Machines by Ray Kurtzweil who simply denies Roger's claim that humans can determine the truth of Godelian propositions. As for me I know some simple geometric truths absolutely so that these could not have been false beliefs due even to flawed neuro-circuitry. We at least have the capacity to grasp these propositions, and if all of some set of 5 axioms can be written in the same formal language yet one of them cannot be derived from the other 4(being that it is an axiom) then it would seem that that axiom is a Godelian proposition of that formal system which only uses the other 4 axioms. So it looks like Roger's right about humans having that ability, however I see no good reason for agreeing with him that conscious brains have to be carbon based. In fact I am a dualist and see there is no logical reason why it would follow androids won't someday be conscious in the same sense that the current flesh and blood androids are conscious. Did this have any thing to do with your thoughts, or is it off topic?

In what sense are you a daulist? do you mean property dualist? do you believe in sprit?

I have forgotten most of the theology I knew when I first met you. I would love to see the old posts I used to write because I think my appreoach has changed so much since then that I wonder what they were like.

I have changed in many ways. I no longer believe in hell at all. I see the spirit as mind and I am not what mind is. I see "reality" as a thought in the mind of God. whatever that is.

[GarrettQ]

modes of existence or substance. But in the context at hand I refer to substance dualism; Forms are primary properties of spatial extension, hot qualia are primary properties of another substance I call consciousness. Our minds reduce to combinations of both of these and causality(the third kind of substance).

[Metacrock]

modes of existence or substance. But in the context at hand I refer to substance dualism; Forms are primary properties of spatial extension, hot qualia are primary properties of another substance I call consciousness. Our minds reduce to combinations of both of these and causality(the third kind of substance).

yes but ultimately I think it's all consciousness.

[GarrettQ]

yes but ultimately I think it's all consciousness.]

This is impossible by the following modality argument:

1) If something is a contradiction, then we cannot imagine it.
Therefore: A) If something can be imagined then it is not a contradiction.
B) If something is not a contradiction, then it is actually possible.
C) Spatial extension (not just imaginary space) is imaginable.
Therefore: Spatial extension is actually possible.

[Metacrock]

yes but ultimately I think it's all consciousness.]

This is impossible by the following modality argument:

1) If something is a contradiction, then we cannot imagine it.
Therefore: A) If something can be imagined then it is not a contradiction.
B) If something is not a contradiction, then it is actually possible.
C) Spatial extension (not just imaginary space) is imaginable.
Therefore: Spatial extension is actually possible.

being consciousness doesn't make space un real. it just means that our experince of space is within a certain understanding that is ultimately a product of mind. We examine what is in the fabric of the mental construct. there's no way to prove that's really what space is because you have nothing to compare it to.\

but argument is not that reality is unreal because it's the product of mind. I am just saying mind is makes it real. I don't mean I our minds, I mean the mind of God.

[GarrettQ]

?

[QuantumTroll]

This is my first time reading the thread. Interesting stuff going on here, really

However, my contribution to this thread starts off purely negative. I do not like this argument:

1) If something is a contradiction, then we cannot imagine it.
Therefore: A) If something can be imagined then it is not a contradiction.
B) If something is not a contradiction, then it is actually possible.
C) Spatial extension (not just imaginary space) is imaginable.
Therefore: Spatial extension is actually possible.

What is premise 1) based on? Maybe I misunderstand what is meant by "imagine". I see people imagining contradictions all the time - the naive picture of God is a prime example. Jesus was 100% God but also 100% man, God is omniscient and omnipotent but feels it is necessary to punish people for eternity, etc etc. "This sentence is false" is another contradiction that I imagined and even wrote down. So I don't see where this argument is coming from, really.

Furthermore, this argument doesn't actually disprove what Metacrock said. Your argument says that spatial extension is possible under the considerations you've given. There is nothing that says that spatial extension must exist independently from consciousness, since the argument itself is based on the power of imagination.

Lastly, this argument proves the possibility of something. Clearly, the wording implies that this something may not exist for some other reason, even if it's possible. Like it is possible that I have a sandwich in my pocket, because I have a sandwich and I have a pocket. But I do not have a sandwich in my pocket, it is on a small green dish. Similarly, spatial extension is possible, but turns out to be false for whatever reason.

Personally, of course, I hold that both your argument and Metacrock's response are most likely complete nonsense. The universe is essentially a 4-dimensional blob of space, in which a number of fields vibrate. These vibrations are called particles, and each person is an intricate process sustained by the flow of these particles. This intricate process does some cognitive tasks, one of which is imagination. Trying to figure out the properties of the big blob of 4D space by examining our faculty of imagination is clearly difficult and fraught with error. At least, this is the cognitive processes housed in the bit of universe called "my brain" interpret things, but this is really a topic for another thread

Tell us more about your 4 irreducible substances. That sounds very interesting.