What do you think happens after death?

[weltweit]

I like the idea of Karma but there doesn't seem any evidence it exists.

I am also taken with the idea that nothing happens, like the nothing that seems to have happened in the generations before one's birth.

I do wonder if there might be an aura of life which is somehow used again for new life, there are hippies who claim they can see people's aura (which apparently resembles a halo) and that its condition indicates the health of the person. Still can I believe hippies?

I once heard from a witch that all living things have auras, plants and animals. At the time I was a bit susceptible to hippie ideas though, since then my scepticism has taken hold again.

What is undoubtedly the case is that our present lives will come to an end, what that means as to how we should conduct ourselves in this short life I am not completely sure but I think that might be key to fulfillment and happiness in this life.

 

[Gimigimi]

I was thinking about this this week even before I saw this thread, since yesterday I was looking up Roko's basilisk to see if I thought it was as stupid as it sounds at first (spoiler: it is), and I'm reading "The Quantum Thief" which deals constantly with continuity of consciousness, uploading brains to computers, etc. I'm almost totally a philosophical materialist, and if I was absolutely a materialist I suppose I would have to believe that consciousness and my sense of self is an emergent property of a particular arrangement of particles in the physical world. Since one's time-sense is linked to one's consciousness, after death I guess a functionally infinite amount of time would pass until that particular arrangement came into being again (via quantum fluctuations, or a new big bang, or something who had the ability to recreate you in some way), or some other arrangement which generated the same effect. Thus, you'd never really die, or at least, your consciousness would never end in your experience. I think Nietzsche called this the "eternal return".

I have a lot of issues with this belief, though. It seems to presuppose the self and consciousness as some sort of unitary thing, which... kind of goes against materialism in some way, somehow? I have a hard time explaining this, but I'll try. I'm me, I have this consciousness that seems to be here, and that's based on an arrangement of particles. Fine. Why would another arrangement in some other place and time continue this particular consciousness? I don't (directly) experience the consciousness of others. Why would "I" experience the consciousness of another brain like mine that was recreated trillions of years in the future, even if the arrangement was identical? Doesn't that kind of imply the existence of something beyond matter which is being transferred between the two? Since we're dealing with infinite periods of time and matter arrangement, what if two identical brains were to come into existence at the same time? Which one would be "me"?

Of course, you might ask the same kinds of questions about going to sleep on a dreamless night, or anything else that interrupts the experience of consciousness. I can't remember who said it, but I recall reading Borges quoting someone who said something along the lines of "Yesterday's [person] dies in today, today's dies in tomorrow." Try not to think about that before bed.

Here's another thing to not think about. Given a purely materialistic understanding of the universe and consciousness, and an understanding of random thermodynamic fluctuations, what's more likely: that our lives are actually what we think they are, or that we're just a fucking brain floating in space imagining shit? Ludwig Boltzmann came up with the general parameters of the argument, which I don't particularly feel like thinking about much lest I go insane like he did. Suffice to say, I find it a depressingly realistic possibility. Even if we are actually here, after death it might be more likely that we come back as Boltzmann Brains trillions of times, experiencing who knows what. Hopefully something good! Maybe just everything.

Anyway all these issues and a few others related to the measurement problem, which I don't claim to fully understand, as I only have enough education in quantum mechanics to fuck up solving one particle Hamiltonian equations on my pchem tests, have led me to qualify my materialism. I think there's something else going on here, even if I don't have any idea what it is.

I mean, I hope so. I don't want to be a Boltzmann brain, I don't think "nothingness" is a meaningful concept, and I'm not about to start believing in some religion or something. That would be crazy, unlike the concept of a floating brain identical to my own randomly coming into being via thermodynamic fluctuations, which is completely sane and normal. Anyway, I picked reincarnation.


this post is really pretentious and i'd like to apologize to anyone who read it. what the fuck am i doing thinking about dying on a saturday night. i wish i was in one of the quantum universes where i have a girlfriend

 

[Reno]

We're eaten up by these when we die.

These are earthworms and they only eat plants.

We get eaten by maggots:




I find the thought that it’s all over after death soothing. I certainly don’t want to take my chances with the reincarnation lottery or some heaven/purgatory/hell-deal. I’m also not sure that our consciousness or energy is precious enough to pass on to something else. Just look at what we are doing to this planet and each other. It’s not worth keeping.

 

[farmerbarleymow]

These are earthworms and they only eat plants.

But maggots can't get to us if we're buried - we'd rot down aided by bacteria and fungi, and the worms would eat us up, as in Ilkley Moor.

 

[Detroit City]

I sincerely intend to return to earth via a range of handy decomposers (ranging from beetles down to single cell microlife) replenishing the soil in my wood. An eternal cycle of death and rebirth, growth and decay.

with worms going through your eye sockets

 

[farmerbarleymow]

with worms going through your eye sockets

I've always thought it would be ace to have worms waving from my eye sockets, like a bargain basement Medusa.

 

[Detroit City]

I've always thought it would be ace to have worms waving from my eye sockets, like a bargain basement Medusa.

indeed

 

[campanula]

Very likely, Detroit City - they can dig deeper than the (advised) depth required for safe burial. However, to pass from one state of existence into another, contributing a net gain to the rhizosphere, is both transformative and deeply satisfying...unlike wasteful cremation. I would consider this a privilege.

 

[farmerbarleymow]

Very likely, Detroit City - they can dig deeper than the (advised) depth required for safe burial. However, to pass from one state of existence into another, contributing a net gain to the rhizosphere, is both transformative and deeply satisfying...unlike wasteful cremation. I would consider this a privilege.

I agree - cremation is wasteful, unless it done courtesy of a volcano*. I like the idea of human composting. An appropriately green way to be disposed of.

* I'd like my corpse to be tipped into a lava lake. That would be a natural and fiery end, becoming part of the lithosphere.

 

[Reno]

But maggots can't get to us if we're buried - we'd rot down aided by bacteria and fungi, and the worms would eat us up, as in Ilkley Moor.

Maggots get to us before we are buried, they hatch from the eggs of flies. It’s a mixture if things though and if the corpse hasn’t been exposed for too long, much of it is bacteria. Earthworms have nothing to do with it though.

Life after death: the science of human decomposition

 

[farmerbarleymow]

Maggots get to us before we are buried, they hatch from the eggs of flies. It’s a mixture if things though and if the corpse hasn’t been exposed for too long, much of it is bacteria. Earthworms have nothing to do with it though.

Life after death: the science of human decomposition

I don't care - I just like the idea of worms wriggling out of my eye sockets.

 

[farmerbarleymow]

Read an interesting book about disposal of bodies* and it talked about the various funerary methods, including composting. Apparently composting is quite tricky as you need the right amount and type of covering material, and specific humidity levels to make it work properly. Otherwise there is a risk that you end up with a mummified or partly decomposed corpse.

* not for nefarious reasons, before you ask.

 

[teuchter]

We live on in other people's memories - sometimes I have dreamt about people I know that have died so vividly I woke up feeling like I'd had a good conversation with them.

But when the last person who remembers you dies, then I think you're gone forever.

This is why it's important to build up a massive postcount on some internet boards, annoying as many people as you can in the process.

Start some threads that are likely to get bumped indefinitely. They are a good approximation for immortality.

Don't bother so much with memorably irritating other posters who are older than you. You need to concentrate on the younger ones who will outlive you for a bit. So I guess that boards that are just full of old people are a waste of time, even though they are the ones that are easiest to get all wound up and indignant. Actually now I'm wondering why I spend any time on urban75. Need to rethink some life priorities.

 

[Pickman's model]

Actually now I'm wondering why I spend any time on urban75. Need to rethink some life priorities.

how's that going?

 

[Argonia]

It's amazing how belief in a God or gods and in an afterlife has declined over the centuries. Nowadays the broad consensus is that once we die that's it, kaput, nothing else happens. I used to believe in an afterlife for a while but lost my belief in it so I have joined the serried ranks of the 'nothing happens, we just die' brigade.

 

[ChrisC]

I'd love to think there is something beyond death, but alas I cannot bring my self to that un logical comfortable solution. I think the brain is like a computer CPU. Once the powers gone or even if entropy gets it in the end. All the information it possesses is gone. However, I have the nagging un justifiable with no proof feeling that something beyond our human comprehension is going on. Not sure what just a feeling.

 

[N_igma]

Hello darkness my old friend...

 

[Kevbad the Bad]

Wouldn’t it be awful though if there was life after death? Boris Johnson for all eternity. It doesn’t bear thinking about.

 

[Pickman's model]

It's amazing how belief in a God or gods and in an afterlife has declined over the centuries. Nowadays the broad consensus is that once we die that's it, kaput, nothing else happens. I used to believe in an afterlife for a while but lost my belief in it so I have joined the serried ranks of the 'nothing happens, we just die' brigade.

soz where are you drawing this 'broad consensus' from?

 

[two sheds]

We merge back into the universe, aka rot.

 

[danny la rouge]

Hello darkness my old friend...

I believe in a thing called love.

 

[Pickman's model]

We merge back into the universe, aka rot.

back to the mud, as joe abercrombie puts it

 

[Pickman's model]

Wouldn’t it be awful though if there was life after death? Boris Johnson for all eternity. It doesn’t bear thinking about.

perhaps boris johnson would find there was death after death

 

[bellaozzydog]

We're eaten up by these when we die.

Scoffed by worms who are then tempted out the ground by dancing seagulls and shart out over the sea for the filter feeders to consume

After death we become 20 quid of Moules marniere Digested by an unhappy social media content curator from London.

What a life

 

[nogojones]

I sincerely intend to return to earth via a range of handy decomposers (ranging from beetles down to single cell microlife) replenishing the soil in my wood. An eternal cycle of death and rebirth, growth and decay.

I want to be chopped into little bits and cast to the seaguls

 

[bellaozzydog]

But it's not like your conscience is alive somewhere... Your physical body may get reused, if you're buried. However if you're cremated not so much. I would like to be buried - for my body to be absorbed by the earth, insects, maggots. However, that's just too expensive.

BUT physics

It’s all gets reused unless you know something physics doesn’t

 

[Kevbad the Bad]

perhaps boris johnson would find there was death after death

So is there life after death after death?

 

[Pickman's model]

So is there life after death after death?

let's kill boris johnson several times to check

 

[Argonia]

soz where are you drawing this 'broad consensus' from?

From the highly scientific Urban75 poll of course! Currently at 85.7%,

 

[Pickman's model]

From the highly scientific Urban75 poll of course! Currently at 85.7%,

yeh there are obvious statistical problems with a) the size of the sample and b) the composition of the sample. outside the urban bubble a great number of people do believe in some form of next life.