I don't get why I'm human or why I'm in the body that I am...

[Cyco]

Actually, you're in a coma. I have been sent here to send you one message. WAKE UP!

 

[sportage]

When u think that we came from nothing, millions trillions of years of nothing, then poof here we are. You should think along the lines that it could happen again, and it could have already happened before. You could have already been a bird, or maybe a bird next time around. So going from a nothing into a something? Something had to kick-start the process and if it can happen once who's to say it will not happen again and again and again. Seeing how the physical involves the mind and brain and memory and recognition, it's impossible to think that the next time around you will remember anything about this time around, and this time around you can not possibly remember the previous time before. SO I guess it really doesn't matter if your rich or famous or a pauper or homeless or male or female or white or black, brown or yellow. Next time around you could be a Chinese Geisha girl married to a fat rich Chinese millionaire living in China and speaking Chinese and believing in Buddha. Or, was that the last time around?

 

[pmv]

Actually there are many parallel universes in constant motion with our own!
Somewhere out there another you is probably a turd floating around in a cess pool.....
But take heart in another universe you might be the king of the Jungle!!
So all is not lost but to truly be one with the universe that you are currently in you must immediately sell everything you have! Give away the kids and get rid of the wife! Then you need to go lout into the Sierras and find a big Redwood tree and set up camp and sit with your legs crossed while yuo become one with the universe!! Good luck!!

This is why I wonder if it's possible none of us die.

In that many-universes theory to which you refer (first postulated by the physicist dad of that guy out of the band Eels), the idea is the universe constantly bifurcates into different universes, each time a concequential quantum-event occurs (it's said that as an intepretation of quantum mechanics it's "cheap on assumptions, but expensive on universes").

Now, while I see people die all the time, my hope is that when it comes to me and my personal consciousness, things are arranged such that for each individual, whenever a potentially-lethal event occurs, their subjective consciousness continues in a recently split-off universe where chance determined that that individual is still alive. When you see others die, that's just in _this_ universe. There's another one split off somehow where they are still alive. From the point-of-view of one's subjective concisouness (rather than your external perspective) one just continues on in that other split-off universe, oblivious to the fact that in the parent universe, one is dead.

Now, admittedly, while still alive in the newly-spawned universe, your life may nevertheless be pretty awful. In fact, as spawned universes get increasingly improbable, in terms of the chance events required to keep you still alive in perpetuity, things may just get worse-and-worse in increasingly far-fetched ways. It does feel as if that's what's been happening, in fact.

 

[VirtualLarry]

This is why I wonder if it's possible none of us die.

In that many-universes theory to which you refer (first postulated by the physicist dad of that guy out of the band Eels), the idea is the universe constantly bifurcates into different universes, each time a concequential quantum-event occurs (it's said that as an intepretation of quantum mechanics it's "cheap on assumptions, but expensive on universes").

Now, while I see people die all the time, my hope is that when it comes to me and my personal consciousness, things are arranged such that for each individual, whenever a potentially-lethal event occurs, their subjective consciousness continues in a recently split-off universe where chance determined that that individual is still alive. When you see others die, that's just in _this_ universe. There's another one split off somehow where they are still alive. From the point-of-view of one's subjective concisouness (rather than your external perspective) one just continues on in that other split-off universe, oblivious to the fact that in the parent universe, one is dead.

Now, admittedly, while still alive in the newly-spawned universe, your life may nevertheless be pretty awful. In fact, as spawned universes get increasingly improbable, in terms of the chance events required to keep you still alive in perpetuity, things may just get worse-and-worse in increasingly far-fetched ways. It does feel as if that's what's been happening, in fact.

Look up Wikipedia, "Quantum Hell". I may be living exactly that. Maybe you're all part of it...

 

[Maxima1]

General anesthesia experience at least once, right? Time flies! Once you die, somewhere in a universe, the atoms will organize in just the precise manner to bring you back. For some, this will suck. For others, it will rock. This is because you are a certain quale, so you can only be you, mmmkay.

 

[pmv]

Look up Wikipedia, "Quantum Hell". I may be living exactly that. Maybe you're all part of it...

Oh, wow. Haven't looked up that exact article yet, but just searched for the general topic and found this wiki article

Quantum suicide and immortality - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Which seems to say that Hugh Everett (famous as the dad of "E" out of Eels) actually came up with the exact same idea himself. Damn - one day I'll have an original thought, I'm sure of it.
(Same thing happened with my thought that 'if you kill yourself it's equivalent to massacaring everybody in the world' - turned out Nietzche said that exact thing long before I thought of it...though I expect he said it in German so does that really count?)

Eugene Shikhovtsev's biography of Everett states that "Everett firmly believed that his many-worlds theory guaranteed him immortality: his consciousness, he argued, is bound at each branching to follow whatever path does not lead to death"

Same article also gives a reasonable case against the idea, unfortunately.

Max Tegmark suggested that the flaw in that reasoning is that dying is not a binary event as in the thought experiment; it is a progressive process, with a continuum of states of decreasing consciousness.

 

[Mai72]

Screw all these haters. I've thought about the same exact thing - what the heck is consciousness? Why am I who I am? I could just as easily have been some starving person in Africa. When I die, will "I" be somebody else?

Your I will die just like every person before you. BTW, the I that you talk about is your ego. Maby people think that they are at the center of the universe. Listen to how they talk. It's mostly centered on their interest. Their beliefs.

 

[JEDIYoda]

So you could say we are stuck with Trump either way.....