[extropy-chat] Death is irreversible v.1.0

Heartland velvet977 at hotmail.com
Mon May 8 00:51:44 UTC 2006


I. Terms and definitions:

Subjective experience - Collective sense of perception and/or cognition.
Process/activity by which mind experiences reality.

Death/Nonexistence - Subjective experience of nothingness. Absence of that part of
mind process which is responsible for producing subjective experience. (A type of
subjective experience one would have if one did not exist at all).

Life - Subjective experience of being in the present moment. It is the presence of
that part of mind process/activity which is responsible for producing subjective
experience.

Mind object (or just "mind") - An object in time and space consisting of all
matter, but only that matter which is presently and actively involved in producing
the mind. It is a process consisting of chain of activity of matter and energy in
time and space.

Brain object (or just "brain") - An object in time and space that consists of all
matter that currently does not make up mind object but is necessary to support its
existence.

Trajectory of an object - Space-time path of matter making up that object. It is a
list of all present space-time locations of all matter that currently makes up the
object.

Identity of an object - Unique trajectory of the object in time and space.

Type - A category of things that share some characteristic. For example, apples and
oranges are types of fruit. In this case "fruit" is the type.

Instance of a type - Individual object that belongs to the same type. For example,
an apple is an instance of fruit type and an orange is also an instance of fruit
type.

------
II. The argument:

1. Instances of the same type are distinguishable.

Assuming that instances of an object contain energy, each instance has its own
unique trajectory in time and space that is parallel to a trajectory of any other
instance, including an instance of the same type. At no point all four space-time
coordinates for all particles of matter that make up the object will be equal which
gives an objective observer the ability to distinguish between instances, including
instances of the same type.

1a. A single break in the trajectory produces two instances that are different and
distinguishable.

1b. Instances are always isolated from different instances, including instances of
the same type. Two different instances cannot occupy same space and time.

2. Activity itself cannot be stored in information.

Someone throws a baseball. Series of cameras record this event. Measurement
equipment precisely traces trajectory of flight of the ball and the values of 4-D
coordinates are being stored in a file. Another file stores a complete molecular
structure of the ball. Extrapolation of this measurement process could result in a
state where everything that can be known about this event could be translated into
information. But is this information the event itself? For that to be true the fact
of existence of information itself would have to cause the event. But even if I
replay the tape, look at the coordinates of a trajectory or inspect a molecular
structure of the ball, this won't cause the event to occur.

No amount of information about the activity can store that activity itself. (It is
perhaps because information is dimensionless and matterless while activity occurs
in dimensions of space and time and requires matter. It is impossible for an
activity itself to exist in the form of information.)

3. Activities based on the same information about the activity are distinguishable.

Each activity is an instance so the rules of instances apply to activities. Each
activity of matter in space and time has a unique trajectory so that it is
distinguishable from any other activity (1).

4. Subjective experience is an activity so it is also distinguishable from any
other instance of subjective experience, including any duplicate instance of the
same type of subjective experience (3).

5. An absence of subjective experience activity marks the end of an instance of
that subjective experience (1a).

Conclusion:
A new instance of that subjective experience is verifiably different from the old
one (4), so since (5), (1b), (2), the old instance experiences nothingness instead
of whatever the new instance experiences. Death is irreversible despite the
existence of any amount of information about the mind.

S.



More information about the extropy-chat mailing list