this post was submitted on 24 Dec 2023
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Assuming other implications (existence of an afterlife and God) with this scenario I would have but one question. Why? Why everything? Honestly I would be mad furious if there was an afterlife. More so if there was a God.
"In the beginning, the universe was created. This has made a lot of people very angry and been widely regarded as a bad move."
What if the afterlife was universally accessible like a participation prize and relative to each individual such that there wasn't a single idealized version of happiness?
Is that still fury invoking?
Not OP, but my fury in this instance would be because an omnipotent god allowed for all the suffering that happens to all living creatures when we could all just live with love and joy in our hearts, and god chose this instead.
What if the creator isn't omnipotent and what if the universe isn't the original copy?
One of the ways to potentially achieve an afterlife would be to recreate the living creatures and their environment as simulated copies that wouldn't need to die. The physical originals would die, but the copies would live on.
Is it still unethical to recreate an evolved and chaotic universe of suffering if you could by doing so give each participant a much longer existence in a relative paradise for everyone?
Would it be more ethical to have whitewashed history such that you exclusively recreate the privileged and fortunate denying those that suffered in an original reality from representation in a functionally eternal and relative paradise? i.e. Would it be better to pretend orphans didn't exist than to accurately represent the historical reality while giving those recreations the opportunity to reunite with their parents in an uncapped afterlife?
Yes. Recreating a 'relative paradise' where people have to suffer over and over would be worse than having to live it once. If you could recreate the universe, would you make people suffer? Forever?
What the fuck even is this argument? There's no whitewashing if you start over every time anyway. Just make it better from the beginning.
Huh?
No, the posed scenario is where you would recreate the individual as accurately as possible to match the historical reality and then after death give them an effective eternity of relative paradise as best matches their individuality.
So an orphan could spend years and years of happiness with the parents they never really knew whereas someone with abusive parents might never see their parents at all and instead chose to erase traumatic memories or do whatever it is that gives them joy.
The recreation of suffering in the thought experiment is solely for the purpose of recreating people who suffered such that you can give them an afterlife absent of suffering as they see fit. Because without recreating the suffering and the sufferers you'd only be creating a false depiction of Earth and humanity where you'd effectively exclude the downtrodden from resurrection by way of recreation.
They don't suffer over and over - they only suffer once in reliving an accurately representative life to the original reality upon which they are based, and from then on its their relative paradise.
I see what you're saying, but I still don't understand why the suffering has to occur here. If you have the data to recreate the suffering, you can just move on to the paradise without repeating it.
You've come up with this scenario, but it doesn't address my initial point that a god who created and allows suffering can suck it.
It's a good point, but there's two caveats.
(1) That only works if individual lives are deterministic and have no free will, but not if you want the individuals born into historical circumstances have their own self-determination from there on out.
(2) What's the subjective experience of that recreation? In a cosmic sense, everything we are experiencing right now has already happened in a different reference frame. Even if some being snapped its fingers and recreated a historical timeline all at once, it might not feel that way to the individual consciousnesses getting up to speed. Even if everything is deterministic and was instantaneously recreated, we may just be having an illusionary experience of it as a continuous series of events from birth to death. A variation of Boltzmann's brain.
A couple of problems: a copy of me is not me, no amount of post-life paradise justifies injustice in life, not everyone deserve hapiness (no matter what moral framework you use), what is the point of life if there is an eternal paradice for everyone.
From the moment I introduce afterlife some sort of God becomes necessary for any morality to work.
Having no God works if I assume that life is finite. If life is finite then I must make myself as happy as possible. Living around and with people I can't just be as selfish as possible, I must conform to society if I want to be in society, otherwise I will make my life so much more difficult.
That's true. Unless you are the copy of an original, in which case the copy is you.
Is it just to perform a painful surgery on a sick child in order to save their life?
Agree to disagree. The notion of cosmic justice for souls whose behavior in life is significantly dictated by the terms of their embodiment and environment is, to me, insane.
Maybe the point of life isn't absolute and is up to each person to find and define individually.
If there is any degree of intelligence in the design of the universe, the fact that there's no absolute frame of reference for macro observations and relative measurements of micro details might just be relevant.
In which case I'm not the original, my point exactly.
The analogy breaks down rather quickly when you start to expand the definition of a surgery. Dying because of war is not surgery and if it is who and how decides on the goal of the surgery?
What if I don't want the surgery and want to live out the rest of my days in comfort?
I actually agree with you. However my point is about a subjective morality rather than a cosmic one. Any definition of morality and meaning of life will ultimately break if this life is not the one and only. As soon as you try to fit afterlife into this you have to have some omnipotent power to define the rules of it. Otherwise none of your actions matter, you'll still get afterlife, be it heaven or hell.
Having life be finite and bound to physical conditions: being a social creature in an imperfect world. Is enough to have a robust and consistent moral rules and meaning. That's where my Occam's razor kicks.
In the end no matter what framework of thought you choose there is gonna be good and bad things and people doing them, hence not everyone will deserve happiness.
And that's where my anger would stem from. If there is no knowable and proovable absolute truth. Than the simplest subjective frame of reference that makes sense is that there is no meaning or reason. Life is finite, make the best of it and enjoy it to the fullest because that's all there is.
I'm not going into the aspects of life that are not individual and affect others. There are law based, moral and social-utalitarian reasons why I would want to live in a society and bring as little suffering as I possibly can.
Aye, that is a key issue as there's no informed consent to being born.
But how much of that is the fault of a creator of a universe and how much one's parents? FWIW, one of the traditions that thought similar to what we are discussing was fairly against having kids.
It could be managed if we are exact copies of people who lived, as if the originals consented to it then we may well be in a kind of Severance situation where you exist in a world of suffering because you (in a sense) consented to it.
Though it is arguably more interesting if rather than exact copies we are an archetypical copy of humanity. Individual and unique in our own existence here and now, but an accurate aggregate resemblance of humanity circa 2023.
There, informed consent very much is a challenge as there's many who would want our metaphorical surgery and others who would not and they can't express an opinion until they exist in the first place.
But a knowable and probable absolute truth collapses the possible options.
If someone really hates the idea of continuing to exist in any way after death and feels like the existence of a god or not being an original would rob their life of meaning - should they be denied their ability to reject these ideas so that another is able to embrace them?
Vice versa, if we have the capacity to define things as different results for different observers, should we deny others the ability to have their own beliefs about the unknown by making a single option probable?
The relative measurement at small scales in our own universe only works when the thing being measured is unobserved until each individual observer making a measurement is separated from the others. If they are together, the measurement is singular for all involved.
Again - I will agree it causes a challenge with informed consent. But no belief system I'm aware of that has endorsed a similar model has also endorsed an omnipotent creator, and as long as there are logical limits in place the loss of absolute or prior informed consent in exchange for access to relatively ideal continued existence seems like it would be more than fair for most given commonly held beliefs.
We are going into a what if terirory here and I don't think there is any good argument to be had there.
So I'm gonna end on this:
A copy is not an original. I am me, nothing more nothing less. There is no consent I can give prior to my existence. Going further into the analogy is pointless, life is not a surgery.
~~Umm, Christianity? Just to name at least one major religion.~~
I misread that so ignore it.
Cannonical Christianity claims this is a copy of an original world with universal salvation and an individualized afterlife?
Ironically there is a heretical Christian sect that thought all those things, but it died out in antiquity. But those concepts are pretty much the opposite of the mainstream Christian theology.
Aye, that is a key issue as there's no informed consent to being born.
But how much of that is the fault of a creator of a universe and how much one's parents? FWIW, one of the traditions that thought similar to what we are discussing was fairly against having kids.
It could be managed if we are exact copies of people who lived, as if the originals consented to it then we may well be in a kind of Severance situation where you exist in a world of suffering because you (in a sense) consented to it.
Though it is arguably more interesting if rather than exact copies we are an archetypical copy of humanity. Individual and unique in our own existence here and now, but an accurate aggregate resemblance of humanity circa 2023.
There, informed consent very much is a challenge as there's many who would want our metaphorical surgery and others who would not and they can't express an opinion until they exist in the first place.
But a knowable and probable absolute truth collapses the possible options.
If someone really hates the idea of continuing to exist in any way after death and feels like the existence of a god or not being an original would rob their life of meaning - should they be denied their ability to reject these ideas so that another is able to embrace them?
Vice versa, if we have the capacity to define things as different results for different observers, should we deny others the ability to have their own beliefs about the unknown by making a single option probable?
The relative measurement at small scales in our own universe only works when the thing being measured is unobserved until each individual observer making a measurement is separated from the others. If they are together, the measurement is singular for all involved.
Again - I will agree it causes a challenge with informed consent. But no belief system I'm aware of that has endorsed a similar model has also endorsed an omnipotent creator, and as long as there are logical limits in place the loss of absolute or prior informed consent in exchange for access to relatively ideal continued existence seems like it would be more than fair for most given commonly held beliefs.
Why bother living then? What is the point of existence if no matter what you do you end up the same?
I'm curious how you got to that conclusion from what I said?
If anything, the notion of relative idealism is that for those that want to change it exists and for those that enjoy being themselves it need not.
Ok, if afterlife is universally accessible and is perfect for me and my concept of happiness, then it would make the most sense to seek this afterlife as much as I possibly can. Because we are talking about afterlife the only way to get there is to die. The most reasonable conclusion then is that there's no point in living and it's much more beneficial to just die and go to infinine paradise.
That's why afterlife with no rules makes no sense to me.
I agree with you in cases where life here is more suffering than joy. The idea that we should cling to life no matter the situation isn't good for individuals or society and has enabled horrible circumstances to be held over people who might have otherwise escaped them.
I don't see it the same way when joys outweigh suffering though.
If I'm happy being me in the present, why rush being a happier me in the future if there is no time limit?
I don't skip my meals and order straight from the dessert menu.
There are comments elsewhere in this thread by people who would want to experience all kinds of suffering to satisfy their curiosity.
If one's only concern is maximizing one's own happiness in the short term regardless of impacts on loved ones, then yes, those people probably would be better off accelerating paradise. But long term with the term being potentially infinite there's not really any increase to living a full life here vs jumping ahead and there's very often likely fallout on loved ones by doing so, so it seems kind of pointless and callous to me if life is more good than bad.
But yeah, I'm very much a proponent of euthanasia being openly available for people for whom life is more bad than good.
Same question but inverse, why not? There is nothing to loose and something to gain. So why would anyone bother building life now when there is guaranteed happiness with simple and easy path.
Saying I'm content with my situation and don't want to change isn't really an argument for either position. What existential gains are there for continuing? That would be an argument for your position.
But that's the thing, there is no impact. Why shouldn't everyone else just go into eternal paradise? The whole issue with this hypothetical scenario is that it removes any need to live. At least Christianity has hell and sins to ballance it out. But in your case there are no existencial consequences, I can be as evil (which I have no desire for) or as good as I can and end up just the same.
And yes, that does come close to a question Why not be evil then and eat babies or something? The difference here is that we are social creatures among other social creatures (except some outliers), we feel empathy and generally don't want others to suffer. However even this argument breaks down somewhat when I keep unconditional paradise for everyone in the afterlife.
If your relative paradise smells like cinnamon rolls and your best friend's smells like something you hate, what happens if both of you are entitled to your own relative ideals but you want to spend your time with your best friend?
On a technical level, something very much has to be irrevocably lost in leaving a world of shared but randomly generated experiences for one of relative excellence.
The only way that two eventual observers of a superposition can each measure different results is if they are separated from each other when observing it.
So even if you have friends and loved ones on the other side in your relative paradise, from an 'identity' perspective they won't be exactly the same as the ones on this side.
That in and of itself seems a pretty good reason to me to be patient in living out a life in the here and now.
Because (a) most people don't actually want to do that, and (b) there's social consequences for eating babies in this world.
Actually, if eating babies is the most important thing to someone's happiness, that's one of the cases where jumping ahead to an existence where they could do that without consequence would make sense.
Let's not involve physics terminology into a philosophical discussion. It confuses more than clarifies. Especially (with my limited understanding) when the claims might not be correct at all.
I would expect multiple observers to have the same result no matter the distance between them. Such setup entangles the observers and the collapse has one real outcome.
I would not dare to go deeper into the subject as this is the extent of my knowledge. To be convinced otherwise I should see a credible proof, experimental or theoretical.
We might be arguing different things then. A relative paradise for me involves my loved ones. If they would not be there as they are now in my life, then it's no paradise. But that would contradict our initial condition of ideal afterlife.
This seems to be an inherent issue with this condition. It's rather easy to construct contradictions in this framework. Moreover, as a moral framework it's way too complicated for no aparent reason at all. Accepting unconditional relative afterlife idea either nulifies any moral argument at one point or another or requires to arbitrary ignore and contradict certain aspects of it.
If I get to pick and choose things I accept in a theory, then it's a bad theory.
My point exactly. However, what I was ilustrating is how easy it is to devolve into this kind of reasoning. What moral foundation is there to back up the descision? Most people don't want to? That's not a reason, that's an observation. Whatever morals I construct on a social basis become irrelevant. That's why religions have gods and sins.
It's not a matter of distance but of information isolation by additional layers of measurement. You can read on the unintuitive experimental result, a separate mathematical paradox similar to Bell's paradox with consistency as one of the three assumptions where one must be false, and a paper discussing the difference between foundational relative facts and their occasional emergence as stable facts.
It's difficult to describe this topic without falling back on physical parallels, and frankly given the origins of physics and philosophy as having been hand in hand for millennia up until fairly recently, I disagree that it can't offer clarity.
In this case, a classical interpretation does seem contradictory because identity is unique. There's only one of each thing. But when we talk about entangled particles, they are mathematically identical. If we're discussing the notion of a simulated copy of an original reality fracturing into multiple ideal paradises relative to each individual, you can have identical versions of every person in your life in your relative copy of it while the ones you were around are each in their own splinter off worlds. So what's lost is a classical certainty of them being the same. But because it would be impossible to test or evaluate if they are the same or different on the other side, you functionally wouldn't know either way. With a quantum (or even just simulated) cake, you can have it and eat it too.
Actually this is more broad, which is that accepting a fundamental relativity of all things nullifies any absolutist morality. To which I completely agree.
And the beauty of it not being confirmable in the here and now and relatively observed in a hereafter is that even if I'm right you'd be able to have your own experience of existence now or later completely different from what I'm proposing unable to discover that beneath the surface it is technically what I'm laying out above. Christians can think they are in heaven and everyone else is in hell without anyone actually being in hell or their idea of heaven being heaven for everyone, and you can have whatever existence or nonexistence you most desire without it crimping my or anyone else's style.
This is the same argument Christians make when they are confused that atheists don't commit crime when they don't believe in God having told them not to.
Morals don't inform behavior. We've invented morals to fit our preexisting socially adaptive behaviors. We don't eat babies because of our evolved biological desires, environmental necessity, and social consequences. Not because a potential baby eater is thinking over Kant's moral imperative. And in the rare instances where biology, environment, or society encouraged baby eating Kant didn't save those babies.
The afterlife is your consciousness continuing in a nearby parallel universe where, for whatever reason, you didnβt just die.
As you get older and older, and your death becomes more and more likely, the scenarios that must occur to prevent your death get more and more outlandish.
Eventually, the fulfillment mechanism evolves into some kind of radical transformation away from human life. Like, you canβt be 10,000 years old and your story be βIβm a humanβ. By then your story must be something like:
This will happen. Your subjective life will never encounter death. Your consciousness will continue to hop to the nearest universe where you survived, and you wonβt remember the hop. Your subjective experience will just be an ongoing set of circumstances that keep extending your life. Just pray youβre not one of those unlucky ones who are the only one in their universe to live forever.
Most of us, no doubt, will be encountering circumstances that apply to other people as well, and hence will have company in their millionth year and thereafter.
Are you sure it hasn't already happened?
A few years ago I got to wondering if, like in most games I've played, there might be a 4th wall breaking bit of lore in our world history if it were a simulation.
It took only a few weeks to find a text and tradition from antiquity attributed to the most famous individual in our world history claiming we were copies of a long dead spontaneous humanity as fashioned by an intelligence the original humanity brought forth in light. That we weren't actually human at all, that the world to come has already happened and we just don't realize it because we think time is linear and that we're in a physical world instead of realizing it's all just that intelligence's light. And that this was done because the original humans' souls depended on bodies that died, but the copies of what existed before will not taste death.
That was pretty spot on for a 4th wall break and a bit out of its time and place with its thinking (though less than you might expect).
So within the context of what you suggested, there could be a version of you that thinks it's only X years old and that it's only 2024 when in reality it might be much further into the future than that and in truth the oldest conscious version of 'you.' And this version of you right now may already be that far future version, just with limited subjective memory of anything outside your life here and now.
I agree with the god part, but why the afterlife?
I don't want it. I have invested all of myself to the existence that I am. Why would I need to bother with it if there is afterlife.
Life is only as meaningful as it is fleeting. As soon afterlife comes into the equation it nulifies all of that. Then you must invent God as an arbiter that gives meaning to your life.
Personally I wasn't assuming either the existence of God or an afterlife when I posted but I left it open to interpretation on purpose. I would totally agree with you if such was the case, it's a valid question worth asking. I'm not sure if I'd be mad at an afterlife, that would depend on the answer to "why", and what the afterlife was all about.
If I die today, as in stop existing completely, I wouldn't have any questions. When I die I will no longer be, there will be no conscience, no memories, nothing. That is the death I desire.
If I exist after death, even for a moment, that means death is not the end. Who am asking questions? Why can I ask one last question? How can I get one question / request fulfilled this one last time? I can't really separate these things that easily.
Well- it's a fantasy scenario. And the question happens right before death, not after. Your reasoning makes sense taking the situation literally, but in essence the post is about gaining knowledge just for the sake of knowledge, without any practical use or impact in your life.