Death

[Koen]

Hi everyone,

I’m a 28 year old guy from Belgium and there is something that is bothering me for a while now.

I think we can all agree that for the most part the atheistic, secular and scientific community believe that nothing happens after death, death is the end and there is no afterlife. To quote one of the most respected of this and the previous century Stephen Hawking: "I believe we have this one life to appreciate the grand design of the universe, and for that I am extremely grateful"
Growing up in an atheistic family I also used to believe this. This all changed about 6 years ago.

I’ve been interested in science and philosophy from a young age, and during my adolescence I became increasingly interested in thinking about a whole array of philosophical questions. Do we have free will? What is morality? Etc.
At a certain point I discovered an afterlife theory which made perfect logical sense. This theory blew my mind for two reasons: the theory itself, but also the fact that I had never heard about it before.

All my life I thought that we lived in an intellectual world. I thought the scientific community knew basically everything, or that they could solve basically every question. I was wrong.
The scientific and atheistic community is for the most part only interested in materialistic science. Death, like many questions, are not of this nature. They fall under the label philosophy, and to quote Stephen Hawking: “Philosophy is dead”.

I have written an explanation of the theory. It took me a really long time and I know it’s not perfect, but I honestly believe that if you take the time you will understand it.
I understand that I’m just a random guy from the internet so some of you will be like “This guy is probably a moron, I’m not going to take the time to read his explanation”.

Like I said, the theory is based on pure logic and as a result all over the world people have discovered it on their own, this includes scientists.
Robert Lanza, a stem cell scientist, wrote a book called Biocentrism in which he made the same conclusion as me. The explanation you will find bellow is in 100% agreement with Lanzas Book. You can also simply read Biocentrism, but it is 223 pages vs only 4 pages of my explanation.
Here are a couple of critiques of other scientists on Biocentrism:

“Like “A Brief History of Time” it [Biocentrism] is indeed stimulating and brings biology into the whole. Any short statement does not do justice to such a scholarly work.”- Donnall Thomas, 1990 Nobel Prize winner in Physiology and Medicine

“It’s a masterpiece — truly a magnificent essay. Bob Lanza is to be congratulated for a fresh and highly erudite look at the question of how perception and consciousness shape reality and common experience.” - Michael Lysaght, Professor of Medical Science and Engineering, Brown University and Director of Brown’s Center for Biomedical Engineering

“So what Lanza says in this book is not new. Then why does Robert have to say it at all? It is because we, the physicists, do not say it—or if we do say it, we only whisper it, and in private—furiously blushing as we mouth the words. True, yes; politically correct, hell no!’” —Richard Conn Henry, Professor of Physics and Astronomy, Johns Hopkins University

“I downloaded a digital copy of [biocentrism] in the privacy of my home, where no one could observe my buying or reading such a “New Agey” sort of cosmology book. Now, mind you, my motivation was not all that pure. It was my intention to read the book so I could more effectively refute it like a dedicated physicist was expected to. I consider myself to be firmly and exclusively entrenched in the cosmology camp embodied by the likes of Stephen Hawking, Lisa Randall, Brain Greene, and Edward Witten. After all, you know what Julius Caesar said: Keep your friends close and your enemies closer.” I needed to know what the other camps were thinking so I could better defend my position. It became necessary to penetrate the biocentrism camp.
The book had the completely opposite effect on me. The views that Dr. Lanza presented in this book changed my thinking in ways from which there could never be retreat. Before I had actually finished reading the book, it was abundantly obvious to me that Dr. Lanza’s writings provided me with the pieces of perspective that I had been desperately seeking. Everything I had learned and everything I thought I knew just exploded in my mind and, as possibilities first erupted and then settled down, a completely new understanding emerged. The information I had accumulated in my mind hadn’t changed, but the way I viewed it did –in a really big way.”- Physicist Scott Tyson

At last I want to say this: I do not know whether or not this theory is true, what I do know is that it should be on top of our list of hypothesis concerning death next to the 'yolo' theory.

A little introduction before we start:

The majority of this text exists out of thought experiments, for anyone who isn’t familiar with these I want to make it clear that it isn’t necessary for these experiments to be practically, or even theoretically possible. They are just there to draw conclusions from.
A simple example: Einstein used to do quite a lot of thought experiments in order to discover new theory’s. In one of them (related to relativity) he imagined what it would be like to travel “on” a photon away from a clock. When the clock says it is 12:30 PM and you’ll travel and hour – from a first person perspective- the clock still says it is 12:30 PM. This experiment is neither practically or theoretically possible but we do can draw a conclusion from it.
The experiments in this explanation are similar in the sense that we will try to draw conclusions from the first person perspective.



PART 1: THE SELF

1.1 First set of thought experiments

I invite you to think about the following thought experiments for a while, at the end I will make two conclusions about them.

1. Teleportation:


If we teleport a human, will the same ‘person’ experience the conscious experiences created by the brain before and after teleportation?

Let’s say we have Bob. Bob is frightened to use the teleport but is forced to. He will travel from Earth to Mars. When Bob steps out of the teleport on Mars, the first thing he thinks is “Thank God it worked!”, however a minute or so later he realizes that it might not have worked, and that in fact he might just got ‘born’ a minute ago. He seems to remember his childhood memories, and remembers stepping in the teleport, and the next thing he knew he was right there on Mars. But did ‘he’ actually experience ‘his’ childhood? Was it ‘he’ who stepped into the teleport? Or was that 'somebody' else?

Physicist Michio Kaku addressed this topic on the YouTube channel “Big Think”:
“So it raises a question: Are we nothing but information? Is the soul, the essence of who we are, nothing but information? Well I’m a physicist. We don’t know the answer to that” [1]

2. Caterpillar-butterfly

In case you didn’t know: “In the cocoon, a caterpillar doesn’t “grow wings onto its body”, but rather dissolves its whole body into a mush of cells which then reform into a butterfly.” –Tim Urban [2]
Are the butterfly and the caterpillar the same person? In other words, are the experiences of the caterpillar and the butterfly experienced by the same ‘experiencer'?



3. Conscious robots

It’s the far future and humans are capable to create conscious robots. We have a robot which is conscious just like you and me. It has a bunch of sensors as input signals and multiple mechanic arms and tripod like legs as output possibility’s. Its central ‘brain’ processes the input signals and creates a proper output to guide it through the world, in much the same way our brains logically processes their incoming signals (from our senses) to generates a proper output (to our muscles) to guide its biological robot though the world.

Off course the scientists want to make sure that throughout time, all the conscious experiences are experienced by the same ‘person’ or ‘experiencer’, but at which point do they kill one? Can they turn of the robot overnight, and turn it back on the next day? Are they allowed to alter the robot, and in which way?


Conclusions:

I think we can make the following conclusions:
1) from a third person perspective, we are unable to materialistically determine whether we are talking about the same ‘person’ in any of experiments. You could say that we are unable to see the ‘experiencer’ which experiences the conscious experiences.
2) From a first person perspective, there is a significant chance that the feeling of an ‘I’ or ‘self’ is created related to the past. I will explain this feeling better but first I want to present a very relevant quote of a neuroscientist on this topic.

1.2 The self

The following quote is from neuroscientist and philosopher Sam Harris:

“I’m not arguing that consciousness is a reality beyond science or beyond the brain or that it floats free of the brain at death. I’m not making any spooky claims about Its metaphysics . What I am saying however is that the self is an illusion. The sense of being an ego, an I, a thinker of thoughts in addition to the thoughts, an experiencer in addition to the experience. The sense that we all have of riding around inside our heads as a kind of a passenger in the vehicle of the body. That’s where most people start when they think about any of these questions. Most people don’t feel identical to their bodies. They feel like they have bodies. They feel like there inside the body. And most people feel they are inside their heads. Now that sense of being a subject, a locus of consciousness inside the head is an illusion. It makes no neuro-anatomical sense. There’s no place in the brain for your ego to be hiding. We know that everything you experience – your conscious emotions and thoughts and moods and the impulses that initiate behavior – all of these things are delivered by a myriad of different processes in the brain that are spread over the whole of the brain. They can be independently erupted. We have a changing system. We are a process and there’s not one unitary self that’s carried trough from one moment to the next unchanging. And yet we feel that we have this self that’s just this center of experience.” – Sam Harris- Neuroscientist [3]




The feeling of the self

Although the ‘experiencer’ in addition the experience, the ‘person’ is materialistically invisible we can logically deduct at which point the feeling of a self will emerge:

Information:

‘Bob’ has an experience (A) in which he thinks about what he ate yesterday (B)
This experience (A) is conscious experience that exists. In it is visual and other information encoded recorded by (B).
(A) also knows that the recording of this information was coupled with conscious experience.
Naturally (A) will think it also experienced (B) and the feeling of a common self emerges.

When we teleport a human, then naturally the experiences created after teleportation will have the feeling of a common self with the experiences before teleportation, given the information within them.

Simply put: Conscious experiences which share information (similar to (A) an (B)) will naturally have the feeling of a common self.



The body:

The most logical way for consciousness to be created in a law based universe is in the form of life.
Because of this, conscious experiences that share information are (basically) always found in the same group of cells or evolution thereof. We are therefore inclined to identify with our body’s.

Take for example the caterpillar-butterfly question. If butterflies had any decent thinking ability, it wouldn’t be unnatural for them to have the feeling that ‘they’ used to be a caterpillar, since we are talking about the same group of cells or evolution thereof.
The same probably counts for you; sure ‘you’ were also the baby your mother gave birth to all these years ago, ‘you’ experienced it’s experiences.

In question 3: Conscious robots. It wouldn’t really matter whether or not if the scientist accidentally kill the ‘person’. As long as there is an overlap in information there will be a sense of a ‘self’. The fact that the experiences are created in (roughly) the same robot will only strengthen this feeling.

Simply put: Conscious experiences which are found in the same ‘body’ or evolution thereof will naturally have the feeling of common self.

1.3 Conclusion of part 1:

I want to end this part with an overall conclusion.
EVERY time (sorry for the caps but I have to stress this), LITERALLY EVERY TIME that the feeling of an ‘I’, a ‘self’ is created in this universe or in the multiverse. That feeling will come from the reasons I mentioned above. NOT because our bodies carry some sort of (material) soul.

Part 2: Death

2.1 Second set of thought experiments.

I want you to think about the first 2 experiments, and how they compare with the last experiment. Visualize yourself the first person perspective.
At the end I will make three conclusions about them.

Experiment 1:

We have scientists who create ten conscious robots. They let them live for a while, and then from time to time they destroy some of the robots, and from time to time they create new ones.
(you can also do this experiment with humans if you want)

Experiment 2:

An incredibly powerful computer simulates a world in which ten people live in. The people are conscious and unaware that they live in a simulation. From time to time one of them will die, and from time to time someone new will be born.

Experiment 3 : The apartments thought experiment.

Introduction:

I will start with a small introduction to set the stage.

When a person consumes a high amount of alcohol in a short amount of time, there is a chance that he will wake up remembering nothing from the day before. Now imagine that scientist developed a drug which, after taking it, will make sure the memories will come back (can be handy in investigating crimes).

Now let’s replace the alcohol with a drug as well. When you take the drug, you won’t remember anything from that day unless you take another drug which allows you to regain that memory.

The experiment:

We have drugs who are capable to regulate to ‘which part of the brain’ memories are written and read.
We put Bob in the following building; It consists of a central room with a bed, and surrounding it are 10 different apartments which Bob can access from the central room.
Each of these 10 apartments are different, and has different things to do in them.

We will label the apartments with numbers 1,2,3 etc.
Bob will live a day in apartment 1, then goes to sleep in the central room, after which he spends a day in apartment 2 and again sleeps in the central room.
He does this with all the apartments after which he starts again with apartment 1 and continuous this loop during the experiment.

Depending in which apartment Bob will live in the next day, he will be given the correct drug so that he can read/write the memories of that specific apartment. Memories of different apartments are not saved in the same part of the brain.
Because of this when Bob participates with the experiment, he appears to be experiencing the life of only one apartment.
When he lives a day in apartment 1, and goes to sleep, the next thing he knows is that he once again needs to go to apartment 1.
When Bob experiences apartment 5, it seems to him that he only experiences apartment 5. When apartment 5 is boring or has bad living conditions he can say it was just bad luck that ‘he’ ended up in apartment 5.

Also when Bob participates with the experiment, it seems there isn’t a chance that he is going to die doing it. It is not that because there could’ve been 11 apartments, 10/11 of him will survive, and there is a 1/11 chance that Bob will die and be in some sort of ‘nothingness’ because apartment 11 does not exist. In essence it seems that Bob can’t end up in a non-existing apartment.

We can also expand the experiment:

Bob can communicate with the different apartments via email and we could give each apartment a different job, for example Bob from apartment 1 is a mailman, apartment 2 is a cashier, apartment 3 a taxi driver etc. Each will have different salaries, coworkers and friends. In essence Bob from each apartment will have its own life.
As a last addition, the scientist who run the experiment will let the original ten apartments live for a while, after which from time to time they end some apartments from existing*, and from time to time they create new apartments.

*The specific drug isn’t given anymore

2.2 Conclusions:

1) Once again, in neither of the experiments is it materialistically possible to determine which ‘person’ experiences the experience.
2) Although the experiencer is invisible, it is clear that in all 3 experiments multiple ‘selves’ are created, feelings of a self to be more precise.
3) If our bodies do not contain a material soul, and what Sam Harris said is true, then the different experiences of the first two experiments are just as much experienced by the same/not the same 'person' as the experiences of the last experiment.

2.3 Final word

First of I want say that my conclusions do not say what happens after death. It could be that everybody is the same person or, like Michio Kaku said:
“So it raises a question: Are we nothing but information? Is the soul, the essence of who we are, nothing but information?" [1]

Time

Just to make it complete, I will end with a couple of quotes from physicists concerning time:

“If you believe the laws of physics, there is just as much reality to the future and the past as there is to the present moment” –Sean Carroll – California institute of technology [4]

“The past is not gone, the future isn’t non existent. The past, the future and the present are all existing in exactly the same way”- Max Tegmark – MIT [4]

“Just as we think of all of space being out there, we should think of all of time being out there as out there too. Everything that has ever happened, or will happen, it all exists” -Brain Green - Colombian University [4]

“the distinction between past, present and future is only an illusion” –Albert Einstein [4]



REFERENCES
---------------

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KcivmBojzVk
[2] https://waitbutwhy.com/2014/02/why-bugs ... thing.html
[3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fajfkO_X0l0
[4] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vrqmMoI0wks

[Zennozen]

From the perspective of the mind/consciousness of an individual human like us (or animal? ), after the moment of death that mind/consciousness of the individual ceases to exist and it is as if nothing ever existed, but from the broader view of the universe as a whole (or the God's view), everything just goes on and as things keep changing here and there is more ways than one, which we human beings experience as time.

[Atla]

2.3 Final word

First of I want say that my conclusions do not say what happens after death. It could be that everybody is the same person or, like Michio Kaku said:
“So it raises a question: Are we nothing but information? Is the soul, the essence of who we are, nothing but information?" [1]

There is no such thing as information, it's just a dimensionless, abstract concept created in the 20th century.

The sense of self is illusory, but technically it's still always "made of stuff" such as brain tissue (thoughts, neurons, EM fields etc.), or computer circuits etc.

Nothing happens to "you" after death because there is no "you" now either. There are only the thoughts etc. that create the illusion of a "you" being there. The "real you" is reality itself which is eternal, but the "human" you is a part of reality that will be scattered after death. It will kinda be like before you were born.

It's also pretty meaningless to ask whether you are the same person after teleportation, because when we look at the "stuff", in the strictest sense, "you" aren't even the same "you" that started reading this sentence.

[barbarianhorde]

Say there is afterlife. I wonder only one thing. Sure a bunch is lost, and something prevails. So whats that choice God makes. Whats really important enough that it survives.

They said in the past it was Faith.
But what they meant may be devotion.

[Veritas Aequitas]

DNA wise all humans are embedded with an algorithm of an existential crisis, i.e. all humans are program to avoid premature death with threats and fears.
But at the same time to prevent anxiety and fear paralysis, humans also are also programmed with an algorithm of inhibitors to manage and module this fear of death program.
These two programs must be kept in balance.

But for the majority the fear death program leaks at the subliminal level thus generate an unspecific existential crisis that drive the majority to religions and god to soothe the existential pains.

Whatever things that are speculated to exist after death are merely illusions and act as defense mechanisms, security blankets to deal with the existential crisis.
The downsides of these defense mechanisms, e.g. religions, drugs, various activities are net-negative to humanity in the longer run.

The solution is to understands, get to the root causes and resolve the existential crisis.

Your theory above is merely a diversions as defense mechanism to feel good. There is nothing practical therein to deal with the existential crisis.