The news was presented at the AAAS meeting in Phoenix, Arizona. Anna Fowler presented a synthesis of dozens of studies on near-death experiences and neuroelectrical activity around cardiac arrest. - https://particle.news/story/aaas-presentation-argues-consciousness-may-persist-minutes-to-hours-after-clinical-death
A long time ago, my old therapist asked me what I thought would happen after I died. I told him I didn’t know and was ok waiting to find out when it happened. He pressed me on it and I said “ok, either the big switch flips and that’s it, or something soul-like survives, or the human mind dilates my final moments into an eternity because it cannot comprehend non-existence.” And then he changed the subject.
This reminds me of that.
Gawdamm I never thought of that possibility. You’ve broken my brain sir/ma’am. I’m going to be useless for the rest of the day contemplating this.
It’s more likely a combination of both, it’s permanent lights-out, but the universe doesn’t meaningfully exist without a conscious observer, so you’ll be dead for infinity and you won’t sense any of that time passing because you’ll be dead, but even the most unlikely events become 100% certain given enough time and there are calculations for how long it takes for another universe to pop into existence. (It’s a huge number, but again, effectively zero if you’re dead.)
This may mean it’s impossible to really die forever. You won’t have memories or anything, but if space and physics is constant then at some point things will repeat and a sense of “self” will exist again. And again. And again.
Space is finite, and time is likely finite too. So every posibilty isn’t really a thing. And regardless a copy of you existing is not you.
I’m impressed you figured that out despite it being broadly accepted as likely an unanswerable question.
No, of course not, but by the laws and facts we do know about space at a fundamental level, we know that incredibly rare events can happen, like whole universes. There’s even an equation for it. Roughly ten to the power of ten to the power of ten years before we get another universe similar to our own, and longer still for an identical copy, but nothing really precludes this idea, in fact we have very strong evidence of it happening.
Also agreed, but how did you end up experiencing this now? And who said anything about consciousness having to exist in a copy? For all you know when you die, you immediately start over a googleplex years later as some insect in a new universe that immediately gets eaten and then BAM something else equally absurd another googleplex years later. It has nothing to do with a soul or anything, just that we know that consciousness is a thing that seems to happen, and universes seem to happen, and you’re here now when you weren’t before. You can believe what you want and it doesn’t really matter, whatever is going to happen after you’re dead for an infinity is going to happen whether we believe it or understand it or not.
We are hung up on the idea of “time” but that’s just because you’re in a body that’s experiencing time. You were dead before, now you’re not. You’re not even made of the same stuff you were a year ago, you’re just consciousness temporarily emerging from a moving collection of particles and mechanical parts. How can you say for sure what’s certain?
If I die the universe stops existing. Apologies everyone.
What do you think Hell is, if it’s not that eternity spent going over our worst moments?
Based on the anesthetic I had a few years ago it’s probably not the third thing, but the therapist was annoying me.
“She was overcharging”
— Sebastian