Korean Job Discussion Forums :: View topic

Speak Korean Now!

Teach English Abroad and Get Paid to see the World!

Korean Job Discussion Forums
"The Internet's Meeting Place for ESL/EFL Teachers from Around the World!"

FAQ

Memberlist

Usergroups

Profile

The Afterlife
Goto page Previous 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 Next

Korean Job Discussion Forums Forum Index -> Off-Topic Forum

View previous topic :: View next topic

Author

Message

Steelrails

Joined: 12 Mar 2009
Location: Earth, Solar System

Posted: Wed Mar 10, 2010 8:41 pm Post subject:

The fact that this thread is still alive is indicative of supernatural powers having control of mortality.

machinoman

Joined: 12 Feb 2010

Posted: Wed Mar 10, 2010 9:32 pm Post subject:

Steelrails wrote:

The fact that this thread is still alive is indicative of supernatural powers having control of mortality.

The real question is, when this thread eventually dies, where will it go? Will it be purged to nothing? Or will it run free with its thread friends in message board heaven?

Enrico Palazzo
Mod Team

Joined: 11 Mar 2008

Posted: Thu Mar 25, 2010 6:43 am Post subject:

Street Magic wrote:

itaewonguy wrote:

wont be long now when this thread turns into a religious debate, I know that Fox is trying hard to keep it from heading that way. but this thread can not survive without the mention of God...

I give it by the end of the week. this thread is booted!

Really? I don't think God has much to do with anything we're discussing since that interpretation's pretty straightforward.

To put it another way:

A) We assume God exists-- anything goes with omnipotence so there's no point in even trying to tie it down to any particular description of what is

B) We assume death is the end-- this is assumed only for the sake of argument (meaning we aren't telling religious people they're wrong) and we have the exact same discussion we've been having.

I think it'll be fine.

Fox wrote:

Street Magic wrote:

You can think of all those ideas in terms of duration. For example, a mild pain person would have experienced pain from X% of his pain receptors for Y minutes in addition to having experienced pain from (100%-X%) of his pain receptors for 0 minutes.

% of pain receptors active is not a durational figure. There is a impacting factor here beyond simple duration. That % is of huge importance to me, not simply the duration which that % operates for.

I'm gonna start off with this quote 'cause I think you really missed what I was getting at here.

To put it more clearly, there's no factor beyond duration because everything is already "happening" since what "isn't happening" can be rephrased as happening for a duration of zero units. Let's say we live in a universe where instead of trillions upon trillions of imponderable happenstances we can measure the duration of, there are only ten possible happenstances:

*--------
*----
*
*
*
*---
*
*
*----------
*

Happenstances 1,2,6, and 9 have each lasted certain spans of time, as have 3,4,5,7,8, and 10, in that they've each lasted zero units of time.

Nothing qualitative has to change for a particular happenstance to start happening for a certain duration because every happenstance possible is always happening for some particular duration or another, so long as you acknowledge zero units as a duration itself. Thus, nothing ever changes except duration. If happenstance 10 starts happening in a nonzero units sense, this isn't a non-duration change of events since it was already happening in a zero units sense. If you can imagine that the universe can be reduced to every happenstance possible, then you can express the nature of the universe across a certain span of time in terms of constituent durations alone. While it's true that the concept of "constituent durations" isn't the same measurement as the one overall duration of the universe, it also isn't any less in terms of duration alone, just as a collection of lengths of various constituent parts of my body wouldn't be any less in terms of length alone than the one overall length measurement of my body from head to toe.

Fox wrote:

I think we need to have a brief side discussion on value and meaning. Meaning isn't something that is just floating out there in the world; you are correct that your life doesn't have any objective meaning independent of you. Nothing has objective meaning. Meaning and value are something we create. That doesn't make them unreal, mind you; thoughts and feelings really exist.

This is part of why I included the visual illusion. If you can acknowledge that the truth of that illusion is different from our perception of it, then you can acknowledge that the apparent meaningfulness of life can be illusory in the same way, whether you actually find that to be the case or not. Personally, I do find it more likely that values are objective in the manner of Plato's Forms. Even when people have different values, I think the truth is always a consideration and that some people are out of tune with that truth. I also think language is slippery enough to where you can connect most any random idea thrown out there with the nearest truth to it, which makes it seem as though we're being subjective when we're not. Possibly the only principle I hold important is that anything can be explained in objective terms provided the explainer has enough knowledge of reality to do so. Everything makes sense, even our delusions in the sense of why we have them and why they're out of tune with reality. Furthermore, I believe that if we had enough knowledge available to us, we could understand exactly why any particular individual might feel or think any particular way about any particular topic, regardless of whether he or she is right or not.

Fox wrote:

For some reason, you want to link meaning to duration; if something doesn't produce different results in the longest of long terms, it's meaningless. But, because meaning is a purely human construct, we don't need to view it that way, and in fact there's no rationally compelling reason to view it that way. Meaning can exist in the moment; value can exist with regards to temporary things. Not just can, but does, because we will it so.

I think you're too caught up in trying to construe meaning as some sort of force in the world like gravity, rather than what it really is: a product of our own minds. It can't be wrong, and ultimately it's self-justifying.

I think math is meaning in the same way that perceived utility is meaning-- language is an extension of math, as is the computation device I'm putting my language through right now. I'm fairly certain any statement of value, no matter how complex, could be expressed as a mathematically accurate statement if we only had the time and understanding to do so. Even notions such as hedonism or existentialism where personal preference moves to the forefront of what meaning is, there's no reason to think that any particular expression of such a value can't be analyzed insofar as it attempts to say anything about reality. Saying reality isn't a hard determinist mathematical setup can be confirmed or rejected by someone with all the relevant knowledge, as could the idea that reality is subjective and defined by our own whims. And those whims themselves could be explained in terms of a chain of causality and can be assessed based on how closely they reflect an understanding of reality rather than an equally understandable misunderstanding of it.

Fox wrote:

Street Magic wrote:

To play devil's advocate a bit, I could see how a finite existence would be meaningful if time were just another spatial dimension and that we happen to just not be complex enough to perceive it in its entirety. In that case, our stretch of time would be akin to the size of our bodies. It probably wouldn't make sense to say our bodies are meaningless because they aren't infinitely large.

This is a way to approach the problem, but I prefer to presuppose it's not the case, since we can't prove it is the case. I assert that we are totally rational to value temporal things even if time is not a spatial dimension. Indeed, if you wish to continue to insist it's not rational, then I'm going to ask you for a definition of rational, such that anything a human does can be rational or irrational.

I don't think I said "irrational," and for good reason. I've always thought of "irrational" as meaning someone did something without a reason prompting that action. As you can probably tell from my determinist rant above, the concept of there ever not being a reason goes against everything I believe in. That said, I understand that "rational" or "reasonable" in this context would mean having the right reason rather than just having a reason and I might have slipped up and used the term or one of its variants at some point to mean as much, so it's not that big of a deal. The semantics just happen to be really relevant to how I imagine the universe does (or doesn't work.

To answer the gist of your question though, I would define "delusional" as believing in something that isn't true, even though it always makes perfect sense that the believer would believe in that way (as in the case of the grey squares illusion). In a way, there are no wrong beliefs in my interpretation of reality in that we all believe only what we're inexorably caused to believe. However, there is the other level of the cogs happening to understand the machine they're a part of. Even if the cogs have no choice in what they end up understanding or not understanding, we can establish whether they're right or not if we have the proper knowledge available to do so.

Fox wrote:

Street Magic wrote:

Taking value literally, who would pay money to have an experience that would be forgotten five minutes later and that wouldn't otherwise affect the former experiencer in any way once the experienced moment is over (aside from the lost money part)?

Well, if we change the "five minutes" to a somewhat longer duration, then the answer is all of us. I've seen a lot of movies I've never thought of again. I've gone to theme parks, enjoyed rides, and then never thought of them again afterwards. I've enjoyed pleasant meals out only to have them never cross my mind again after a few days time. We all spend money on things which ultimately don't meaningfully affect us in the long term and which we will forget, and we do so happily, because we see the value of them in the moment.

Street Magic wrote:

Would you actually pay money for such an experience knowing that you'd be exactly the same five minutes later if you hadn't paid anyone anything?

If it was really enjoyable for those 5 minutes, yes.

I have a pretty hard time understanding how you could think it isn't delusional to pay for something that has no impact on your life, including your memory, beyond five minutes. Even if it's the most pleasurable thing in the world, it would be as good as nothing five minutes later and you wouldn't even realize anything pleasurable had happened, nor would you benefit in any way from the usual consequences of such pleasure (such as a continued elevated mood beyond the five minute mark).

I totally agree that people do things similar to agreeing to that proposition all the time, which is exactly why I've focused on it. It seems perfectly reasonable for me to go purchase and eat some ice cream in the no strings attached normal way of doing so, but it seems completely absurd for me to even accept that another would agree to the hypothetical "memory and consequences devoid beyond five minutes" proposition because of how clearly that proposition amounts to being a payment for nothing. And because of the disconnect I have between the two scenarios, I believe the likely explanation is that I just can't see directly that the two grey squares are actually the same color.

Fox wrote:

Me, and most people I think, so long as the experience was good while it lasted. I don't do things to gain memories, after all. I do things to experience them in the present. Even if I forgot everything that happened the previous day every single day, I'd still want to exist and do things.

Not having memories of past events but being able to engage in the same variety of events over and over again would start to seem more valuable than simply pursuing a one off five minute event you wouldn't remember or otherwise retain any consequences from. Not even in a for the sake of argument way-- I, like most, do live as described above, although I, like most (yourself exempted apparently), wouldn't agree to the five minute amnesia proposition even though that isn't fundamentally any different.

Fox wrote:

Street Magic wrote:

"Patch of space-time" suggests a view like I mentioned towards the beginning of this post-- that time is another dimension like the spatial ones and that its span can't be taken away even though we perceive it from one end to the other. I agree this is a possibility, but I have no reason to believe its how things actually are.

For the sake of discussion I think it's best to assume that when time is past, it's gone. Even so, though, that doesn't change my statement or the value I place upon that patch of space time; the fact that it will be gone when I'm gone is trivial to me. While I'm here, I take interest in it. That's sufficient for me to serve as a foundation for ethics.

Collecting stickers for good behavior in class was something I took great interest in when I was five years old. Had I known it was an ultimately consequence devoid ploy meant to keep me in line, I imagine I wouldn't have taken it as seriously as I did. The facts that it ended so long ago after such a limited span of time and that it meant about as near to nothing as possible after the fact make any interest I had in it at the time altogether pointless as a foundation for behavior. I was under an illusion and wasn't aware of it in that situation, and that situation is fundamentally the same as the situation of the ultimate transience of the entire human lifespan.

Fox wrote:

Street Magic wrote:

There's a point in talking about eternities if we're all "programmed" to think in that way despite reality. The idea that we are isn't a stretch given how universal the concept of "souls" and "afterlives" seems to be throughout the known cultures, past and present. If that is the way we're seeing things, then it would make sense that we would think longer finite spans matter than shorter finite spans since we'd be under the false impression of permanence in contrast to the more easily recognizable correct perception of the temporary minute.

I don't think we're programmed to think that way, as is evinced by the idea that I don't think that way. I don't feel I'm a defective human.

I believe you do think that way on some level, even though you know it doesn't make sense to. Obviously, I can't know what you what you think or what you know, but the delusion/illusion bit is what I've been getting at all along.

Fox wrote:

Street Magic wrote:

Most of us already devalue the obviously temporary because we can tell that such things are inconsequential.

No we don't. We value things like cars, computers, money, and so forth. Even if an afterlife exists, the vast majority of us still believe in that afterlife we aren't taking our cars, computers, and money with us. We still value it none the less, despite the fact that it's obviously temporary. Do you really think we do things like buy cars because we might enjoy memories of that car in the afterlife? No, we buy it because we value the mobility and convenience it provides now.

Some things are more obviously temporary than others. Sand castles or houses of cards come to mind. The fact that we have the word "permanent" and use it for any number of ultimately temporary things should be enough to establish that we're not in the habit of understanding all the stuff we experience as the truly temporary phenomena that they are.

Fox wrote:

Street Magic wrote:

I also find that the dementia stricken man would be "someone" different from the wise man, although that goes into my even more complicated spiel on the meaninglessness of "self" given the vast differences between any given "same person" at two separate points 20 or 30 years apart.

I assert they'd be the same person, but I understand the case for believing it's someone else. I personally feel continuity trumps quality; even if something becomes vastly different, if it is linked by continuity, it is the same thing. If you're at all familiar with the famous example of the Ship of Theseus, it talks about this paradox. Obviously we disagree on what the proper conclusion should be.

Yeah, I had that in mind. There's also the one with the axe that had its handle replaced one year and its head replaced the next. I refer to people by the same names and pronouns as though they're the same even when talking about their childhood compared to their old age, but I see this as another language ingrained illusion that I'm no better at overcoming than any other average schmuck. The best I can do is know that I'm mistaken.

Fox wrote:

Street Magic wrote:

This goes back to my response above starting with:

Street Magic wrote:

Most of us already devalue the obviously temporary because we can tell that such things are inconsequential.

I find the value we all tend to place in our lives a delusion because we hold this value despite devaluing other experiences specifically for their lack of duration and lack of consequence.

Yes, but I assert we don't devalue other experiences specifically for their lack of duration and lack of consequence. I don't, anyway; I can't speak for anyone else. I can't even imagine how much money I've spent on things which are exactly what you describe: brief experiences which I don't even remember now and which have not meaningfully impacted my life at all. And I don't regret those purchases, because temporal enjoyment matters to me.

Yes, and I'm the same way in partaking in inconsequential and less than memorable activities at times, which is why I see this as one of the greatest illusions we're susceptible to as human beings (perhaps even simply as living things). I can manage to avoid this illusion when it comes to not acting on my impulse to tell someone off given my awareness of how much preferable the "not telling someone off" outcome is apt to be to the "telling someone off" outcome in the long run, even if the latter might be preferable in the immediate sense. One of the hallmarks of psychopaths is their inability to make such assessments of consequences and their resultant impulsivity. Ultimately though, we can see that an even longer term assessment of consequences will reveal that any combination of decisions will lead to the same result, making the notion of the psychopath's lack of foresight nothing more than a variant of our more psychologically typical delusion.

Fox wrote:

Street Magic wrote:

Consider this famous illusion.

The A square and the B square are the exact same shade of grey. Because we're, as a species, collectively "used" to discerning shades through comparison to other shades nearby rather than through the objective knowledge of color, we all fall for the same illusion in a big way. And despite my inability to see those two squares as the same shade of grey in that picture, I can know intellectually that I'm falling for an illusion and understand why that is.

While I don't agree that this is analogous to what we're talking about here (because I assert it's not the permanence of an experience that causes us to place value on it, and as such there's no illusory contradiction), I have to say that's pretty cool. I couldn't see the difference until I printed it out and cut out squares A and B, but they are indeed the same shade.

It really is amazing. Unlike most illusions, you can cheat and look at the two next to each other and you still probably won't be able to see that they're the same color when you look back at the original picture. It's a glaring fault in our visual system.

Fox wrote:

Street Magic wrote:

Loss doesn't exist independent of the thing that loses. If you take away the thing that loses, you eliminate the capacity for loss with it. That might be a loss for something else, but it can't be a loss for the thing you took away.

Possession is an abstract; things that don't exist can possess things. Even if your refuse to accept that, though, you can see that a person did exist up until the moment of loss, and only after the loss did he stop existing. As such, a loss occured.

Would you think that a gain occurs for someone who isn't yet born after this someone is born? I always thought it made no sense when people would talk about parenting children as though they were giving their children something in the act of spawning them alone. I don't think you can give a "not yet person" a "his person" any more than you can take a "his person" from a "not anymore a person."

Did you have to right a dissertation? Smile

This is very long.

Gibberish

Joined: 29 Aug 2009

Posted: Thu Mar 25, 2010 6:47 am Post subject:

Enrico - have you ever seen the Timecube website? Does that guy teach in Korea as well? I think so.

Street Magic

Joined: 23 Sep 2009

Posted: Thu Mar 25, 2010 8:36 am Post subject:

Enrico Palazzo wrote:

Did you have to right a dissertation?:) This is very long.

Sorry if it's a problem. That was a particularly heady topic. I think if I had written something much shorter, I would've opened myself up to a bunch of arguments I already had answers for.

Gibberish wrote:

Enrico - have you ever seen the Timecube website? Does that guy teach in Korea as well? I think so.

The Timecube guy is hilarious. I'm a huge Terence McKenna fan and everyone knows his Novelty Theory stuff is a bunch of pseudo-math apophenia. When you've popped into an existence no one really understands, I think it's plenty sensible to wildly speculate in what little time you personally have. Hardcore, skeptical science is the ideal method for obtaining knowledge, but it works on a pretty slow scale and focuses more on the details of things. Philosophical speculation can make all kinds of crazy leaps as long as you acknowledge you're assuming stuff you don't know for the sake of discussion. It's the stuff of college films and concept albums. If you're against that, then you're basically a psychedelic Grinch.

That said, I hate it when people use "quantum physics" in the context of philosophy. Probably because I hate JZ Knight and that "What the Bleep Do We Know" BS I was forced to watch in an interdisciplinary studies class a few years back.

Gibberish

Joined: 29 Aug 2009

Posted: Thu Mar 25, 2010 9:57 am Post subject:

Man, that What the Bleep Do We Know movie was horrible, truly god awful schlock.

slynne23

Joined: 10 Feb 2010

Posted: Tue Apr 13, 2010 7:53 pm Post subject: re: afterlife

I don�t know about you all, but I plan to spend my afterlife as a poltergeist. I will throw pots and pans and knock books off shelves. Don�t ask what I�m going to do to the exorcist they will bring in � my plans for him are not pretty. In the alternative, I would like to be reincarnated as a housecat.

itaewonguy

Joined: 25 Mar 2003

Posted: Wed Apr 14, 2010 1:05 am Post subject:

wouldnt mind sitting around a camp fire on a clear night smoking some grass and having this conversation with you guys...

Radius

Joined: 20 Dec 2009

Posted: Wed Apr 14, 2010 3:35 am Post subject: Re: The Afterlife

BaldTeacher wrote:

Do you think that something about us continues after death? It's been on my mind a lot lately. Not all of us will live until old age. I've had a close call or two and I know people who have died. In the end we all die. We'll be remembered directly by our family and friends until they all die. The details and fragments known about our lives decrease with each generation until they completely fade except for maybe a name on a family tree if we're lucky. Then inevitably, civilization collapses. It's entropy and it can't be avoided, only postponed. Even if we go down in the history books or produce great works that will be remembered by a future civilization, like Julius Ceasar or Plato did, eventually humans will go extinct too. And it's like we've never even been here.

If this Earthly realm is all that there is for us, it really doesn't matter how much fulfillment or enjoyment you get out of life, or what impact you have. You could be Hugh Hefner, George Patton, or an overweight Warcraft nerd and in the end, you all reach the same finish line and get the same prize. Of course if you pass on your DNA, a part of you does live in the physical sense. If you think about it, who we are as individuals, is a culmination of all the people in our family who came before us.

How much of your being do you think survives death? Maybe consciousness is universal and never dies. Maybe all of our egos come from the same consciousness. Who the hell really knows. I've read some interesting circumstantial evidence about the afterlife in different forms.

If there is one, that's fantastic. If there isn't, we won't be around to be disappointed. I guess that's a plus.

Anyway, what do you think?

Baldteacher, seek Jesus Christ, the only One that can Save you from the flames of Hell. He said, "I am the way, the Truth, and the Life. No man can come unto the Father but by Me."
So if you want to go to Heaven and be with the Father, you must accept Jesus Christ as your own personal Lord and Savior. Until you do, your life will seem incomplete. and surely it is until Jesus takes up residency in your heart and soul and fills you with the Holy Spirit. The only way a man can enter Heaven after death is to be Born-Again. Accept Jesus' death and resurrection and be born again today!

ED209

Joined: 17 Oct 2006

Posted: Wed Apr 14, 2010 3:42 am Post subject: Re: The Afterlife

Radius wrote:

*burp*
Yeah, but do you know where I can buy cheap ipods?

machinoman

Joined: 12 Feb 2010

Posted: Wed Apr 14, 2010 9:26 am Post subject: Re: The Afterlife

Radius wrote:

Baldteacher, seek Jesus Christ, the only One that can Save you from the flames of Hell.
...
you must accept Jesus Christ as your own personal Lord and Savior. Until you do, your life will seem incomplete.

Yeah. Your life will not be complete until you, too, are trying to frighten and deceive people into joining your religion.

Or perhaps there is no magic pill to fulfillment. There are many of us who have come to peace with the world on our own. Fulfillment is not something that is easily achieved, nor is it something easily held onto once reached. The truth is, its a big, complicated world none of us will ever fully understand. I'm afraid to say, your life will never seem 'complete', as Radius's tempting offer might lead you to believe, but you can learn to appreciate life for what it is.

As the Red Hot Chili Peppers put it,
"This life is more than just a read through."

Summer Wine

Joined: 20 Mar 2005
Location: Next to a River

Posted: Wed Apr 14, 2010 5:22 pm Post subject:

http://www.near-death.com/ It doesn't fully answer the question as only those who don't return can truly answer the question without being critiqued. But people who say that its happened have existed and do exist today, so while its not total scientific proof, if enough people from different parts of the world have a similar experience then it provides a starting point for research on the topic, even if its not accepted by others. http://www.near-death.com/experiences/experts01.html#theory2

Radius

Joined: 20 Dec 2009

Posted: Thu Apr 15, 2010 2:05 am Post subject: Re: The Afterlife

machinoman wrote:

Radius wrote:

I know its tempting! i took it and have never looked back. i now have no fear of death and eternity because the Bible tells me I go to Heaven for accepting Jesus as my Savior.
And before you say the Bible was written by man, and full of lies etc., the Bible was God-breathed, and divinely inspired by God Himself---so, even though it was written by man, God was the author and the inspired man for each letter and word written in it.
As it is, God cannot sin, he cannot lie, so therefore the Bible cannot be false.

its logical.

think about it.

the offer is extended to everyone---accept Jesus as your savior, ask Him to Save you from your sins, and be Born Again!

....Otherwise, die in your OWN sins, and pay for them yourself in Hell.

The answer was clear to me. Ill take Jesus and Salvation.

Radius

Joined: 20 Dec 2009

Posted: Thu Apr 15, 2010 2:06 am Post subject: Re: The Afterlife

machinoman wrote:

Radius wrote:

Fox

Joined: 04 Mar 2009

Posted: Thu Apr 15, 2010 2:17 am Post subject: Re: The Afterlife

Radius wrote:

its logical.

think about it.

Yeah, no. There's nothing logical about Christianity. It's incredibly illogical. The idea of a loving God that would under any circumstances consign anyone to a place like Hell is completely irrational. The idea of sin is completely irrational. The idea of Jesus dying for humanity's sins is beyond irrational. Christianity is a collection of fairly reasonable ethical teachings wrapped up in an utterly retarded hypothetical cosmology. Believe it if you want to, but don't even try to pretend there's a solid intellectual basis behind that vapid, emotionally-driven belief.

Display posts from previous:

	Korean Job Discussion Forums Forum Index -> Off-Topic Forum	All times are GMT - 8 Hours Goto page Previous 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 Next
Page 6 of 8

You cannot post new topics in this forum
You cannot reply to topics in this forum
You cannot edit your posts in this forum
You cannot delete your posts in this forum
You cannot vote in polls in this forum

TEFL International Supports Dave's ESL Cafe