Not with that attitude.
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I’ve never really had that feeling of safety, for at least two reasons, one of them being that there’s worse fates than death.
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You know, it’s funny, but people keep saying that, year after year… but none of the people who make that claim have been dead. Oh, you may have had a body shut-down and had to have a back-up you activated… but the you saying it? Still not dead. So… how do you know it’s worse than death? Maybe death is all of that ‘worse than death’ stuff, all at once.
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Being dead is a lack of existing. The concept of not-existing is terrifying to most living things.
Can’t imagine why.
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It might be, sure. That’s my personal expectation. The Amarr believe that if you’re bad, truly terrible things happen to you for all of the rest of time. So who knows?
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People believe a lot of things.
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They do. The Achura widely believe in a spirit world that works almost just the same as this one does, with a sort of celestial bureaucracy overseen by various greater spirits or gods, and where dead humans even end up holding down jobs and so on. Particularly wicked people sometimes return from this world as nightmares, to trouble the living; particularly good ones can return as guardians, to ward the nightmares away.
Some Amarr I’ve met-- notably Mr. Nauplius-- do definitely believe in a “Hell,” but it seems like the idea of the “Abyss” (that is, being cast into unbeing) is wider-spread. Although, I did have one Amarrian Cleric, mildly chagrined to learn I didn’t much mind the idea of oblivion, respond, “Well, I don’t know-- a Hell might await you yet.” Either way, they don’t see it as a good thing-- but, I guess, it’s a little hard to think of unbeing as something other than totally terrifying.
I’m not sure it’s really “not-existing” that most living things fear, but, humans seem to get a little accustomed to being part of this world. They don’t want their experience of it to end.
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So, concerning the Achuran belief, how do we know that we’re not in that spirit world already?
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There is a Hell and I’ve been there.
I will never again personally scout a retail outlet during a holiday sale prior to an investment. Interns are cheap and replaceable.
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Well … so, you’ve just summarized the plot of I think at least a few bits of popular media.
In the popular conception, though: (1) what do you eat, how often, and how is it presented? (If you’re basically eating warm feelings and the occasional offering of food and sweets, you’re probably dead.)
(2) Is your boss a god or greater spirit? No, really. . . . (You might be the greatest administrator of your generation. You’re probably not the greatest of all generations, though, much less of beings that exist more as abstract personifications of “good governance,” and, that’s your competition. Welcome to the celestial bureaucracy, entry level.)
(3) Can those around you die? (Beliefs on this differ some, but, remember that a good spirit is a ward against evil spirits-- not a hunter of them. Destroying a spirit doesn’t seem to be an easy thing.)
Probably there’s more; that’s just what came immediately to mind.
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Can’t say I ever understood that fear. Not existing wasn’t problematic, unpleasant or undesirable before I was born so I don’t see why it should be any more of an issue after I’m gone. It’s kind of implied in the whole notion, if you don’t exist anymore you aren’t exactly going to be around to feel anything about the situation.
Perhaps focusing a tad more on the evils and cruelties going on between those two points would be a bit more productive than wasting so much time committing those evils and cruelties in the name of some entirely imaginary afterlife, no?
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In general, people are more afraid of losing something once they’ve got it.
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Yeah, but by definition, nonexistence doesn’t suck. It doesn’t anything.
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It’s not rational, though. It doesn’t have to be. It’s bone-deep, animal-deep-- “I don’t want to die.” Even someone who has a lot of reason to hate this world might say such a thing.
As an aside, I’m not sure why people find the idea of backup clones so comforting. Unless you believe in a soul that transfers from the active “you” to the backup along with legal rights to personhood, it doesn’t matter to “you” whether there’s a backup or not. Your identity has a future, sure. So do most of your memories, but your timeline is concluding. Subjectively, there’s no difference between that and death. “You” will just end.
… hm. Maybe both the dread of ending and the comfort in “continuity” are irrational, though?
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You’d be surprised how many people don’t claim to espouse any belief in a supernatural element to their existence who still somehow insist that cloning and burn-scanning conveys a continuity of experience, just because they aren’t aware of any gap in awareness. (Because, of course, any gap in awareness is just skipped over.)
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That too is just so nonsensical to me. Yes, this one instance of me ends, another begins from perfectly identical conditions. For all intents and purposes, this means I continue on undeterred. It’s like making an issue out of falling asleep and waking up later. It’s as much continuity as there has to be. I die and live again, my infomorph which is pretty much the entirety of what and who I am goes on, possibly with some memory loss.
How ridiculously insecure do people have to be in their own identity and selves if they find the idea of a back-up clone or even just pod death to be meaningful in some way. That you somehow “die” when you demonstrably get right back up and go on.
… hm, that actually does sound right, in the end. Thinking about it, it’s always those who over-compensate or have insecurity issues that spend the most time insisting on back-up clones and pod deaths to mean that they die and someone else comes along with their meat puppet and memories.
It’s just so nonsensical. Have some grasp on your own identity and be secure in who you are, people.
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It’s not a matter of security in who you are, but in continuity of experience. My experience doesn’t stop when I go to sleep. I dream. My subconscious continues. When you die… you stop, and someone just like you begins, and takes your place.
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And there’s still no reason why ‘continuity’ is somehow relevant. Yeah, one instance of me might stop and another instance of me fires up. It remains me, whether there’s continuity or not. It’s downright nonsensical how ‘continuity’ somehow is supposed to matter.
Conscious, unconscious or subconscious continuity is and will remain entirely irrelevant. That woman who died in a podding a while back? She was me. The one who back-up cloned and woke up losing a chunk of memory? Me. The one who died outside the pod and had to revert? Still me.
Continuity of experience even remains intact with podding. This is all just a ridiculous over-attachment to the meat puppets in the end.
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Obviously, I disagree. There’s no indications that the mind is anything more than an emergent property of the brain’s electromagnetic field. Sure, you can duplicate it, like a copy of a piece of music, but the recording is only a copy. It’s not the original performance.
While you may see my position as a ridiculous over-attachment to the meat puppet, I kinda see yours as a ridiculous over-attachment to the deeds of others. I can’t take credit for anything a prior version of me did, nor can I expect to be responsible for the actions of future iterations. There’s just me, now. To try to lay claim to the lifetimes of other people seems… grasping, arrogant… maybe desperate.
I’ll die. Probably soon. And I’m ok with that.
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And yet, said mind ‘emerges’ in the next meat puppet, and the next, and the next, ad nauseum. A perfect copy of me is for all intents and purposes me, no matter how many of those copies exist. There’s no real difference until there’s been enough experiences to change that mind, and even then the ground state remains the same.
It’s telling though, that you’re thinking of ‘taking credit’ for the deeds of ‘others’. I on the other hand am not going to shed the responsibility for the actions I have taken or will take, in previous, current or future meat puppets.
It remains a sign of severe weakness of character and identity as far as I’m concerned.
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