Obviously difficult to know what peak tech will look like but unless our understanding of physics is completely off kilter there are some things that simply can never be overcome. We can’t ever make things faster than light, size a finite limit in terms of how small something can be. Sci Fi has seriously deluded people as to what is actually realistically feasible

I don’t know if it really that is interesting though. To say that we can’t infer anything without being conscious is as deep as saying we can’t investigate anything else once we’re dead.

I think it would be more of a problem if we lived forever. Death is very sad and all that but its what all of us have to deal with living things will die whether it be from aging or coming into to contact with something that will make death happen.

It's a good point, but it really depends how our brain will perceive time. It might be that reducing aging also means enabling with more energy which in turns allow you to stay passionate and curious

I mean, there is one way. Technically, information can never be completely destroyed- there’s always some way to recover it, no matter how complex and difficult. If we were to build a supercomputer capable of recovering the brain structure of those who’ve already died, we could save even them. The idea is called quantum archaeology, and even if it’s a long way off, it doesn’t matter- because all that means is a larger backlog of people to revive. Of course, this is assuming it’s possible to implement in practice, which we really can’t know yet.

It's highly speculative and one can attack many issues wrt to epistemology. For this post I opted to focus on the idea as presented. As far as I know there is no way to infer phenomenal consciousness/qualia without the actual experience. If there is, I'd love to know. Until then, it suggests something pretty fascinating about our universe.

And yes there is an if... so if 1 falls then the rest falls although not entirely as I explain in my post. Either p-consc can not be inferred without experiencing it or it's super hard to figure out how to ever infer it without the experience. Both cases - interesting wrt to our universe and may suggests other phenomena that are interesting in this manner wrt to how they manifest or their detectibility.

An additional benefit of longer life would be that, given a longer lifespan, individuals are naturally gonna focus on more long term priorities

But we already know that consciousness doesn’t exist as a unique instance, at least not in this sense. Our life is already broken up into individual sessions of consciousness, lasting a matter of hours. If your persistent “self” survives even something like sleep, would it not survive this?

Our species used to need death to evolve (death means more birth which means more genes mutations). But today, there's no longer a survival pressure that make our genotype evolve (yes there is a reproduction pressure still but it's doesn't make us evolve in an interesting way any longer).

So it's say that, no we no longer need death today

The thing is, we have no way of knowing what “max technology” could look like.

This has actually been proposed as a serious idea, although only in very early conceptual stages- it’s referred to as “quantum archaeology” and, simply put, it involves abusing the law of conservation of information to “observe” the past. Obviously, we’re nowhere near this, but to claim it to be impossible? That seems excessive.

> Children have come from the place we return to at death.

Ok but how would a child know that?

"Mommy, where do babies come from-- wait neverminded I somehow fully understand where I came from."

Death used to be an important feature for the evolution of our species. Now we can argue that it's no longer the case and that it's relevant to try and delay it

At the risk of sounding callous, I don’t care about any “cycles.” In the end, boredom is a problem with many potential solutions- we don’t need death specifically. Even in the worst-case, where we’ve “done everything,” couldn’t we develop a way to modify or suppress our own memories to make experiences “fresh” again?

Arguments like these, where the problem created is so much milder than the one that’s solved, feel like philosophical sour grapes. We are mortal, and without extreme technological advances, we’re going to stay that way, so we come up with excuses as to why it’s ostensibly a good thing, so we don’t have to confront the problem.

> I think even at technological peak we would not be able to do what you are describing.

What is your basis for this?

> I think people are very off at how capable max technology will really be.

Yes, but that includes both overestimating and underestimating.

We do not need death. One could argue that, under the right definition of “need,” that is an outright contradiction. Even an unsolvable problem would still be a problem.

> I don't disagree with this, what I am proposing is that a descriptive model and/or mathematics or logic can only be applied to a moral problem or dilemma after one has presupposed or established a particular ethical framework, moral philosophy, and/or particular moral norms and judgments. Descriptive models, non-normative facts, and math/logic alone can never solve a moral problem or dilemma, in order to arrive at a moral judgment or conclusion one must presuppose an ethical framework or particular norms/value-judgments.

I suspect you have a particular implementation in mind, and in that implementation what you say is indeed correct.

1. Is there though? That doesn’t seem self evident or settled considering there’s a whole tradition and sub-camps of empiricism, a posteriori knowledge completely dependent on the pragmatic acceptance of consciousness as the only lens we have.

2. “If there is” seems like the first would need to be settled first before this conditional can be pondered.

3. Since we can’t get past the first premise, there’s no real reason to grant this conclusion.

And no, it really doesn’t seem that profound once deflated.

A philosopher-type person named Jesus of Nazareth said "The poor you will always have with you". To date, we really don't have any practical solution to poverty.

But what if the solution to abject poverty is to stop seeing it as a problem?

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> Again, I would invoke Chalmers' argumentation here:

This is not what Chalmers' argument is.

As I said in another thread:

Again, I would invoke Chalmers' argumentation here:

One can make a debunking argument about beliefs about phenomenal consciousness in general, perhaps with some variety of non-reductionism operating as a background assumption. There are various ways to lay out such an argument, but perhaps the most straight forward is as follows: 1.There is a correct explanation of our beliefs about conscious-ness that is independent of consciousness 2. If there is a correct explanation of our beliefs about conscious- ness that is independent of consciousness, those beliefs are not justified 3. Our beliefs about consciousness are not justified.

Basically, I am claiming 1 and in my post list 2 as a partial knockdown argument. I personally find this a brain-breaking and fascinating idea wrt to the properties of our universe.

So we can bicker about knowing or belief, but in the end I don't see how the basic idea that whatever consciousness is bears a particular relation to us so that we can even bicker about it as an explicandum, is not compelling basis to ponder the search for other phenomena that might not be easily or at all detectable without a particular relation we'd have to bear to them.

PS forgive the fact that I immediately published my own thoughts for others to read and respond to. Not very Marcus Aurelius of me.

I read Meditations today as a newbie and what follows is my own thought pattern as I sat in silence in the wake of the book. Enjoy!

I have deduced that Man possesses a soul, or something that very nearly all men have, that very nearly no other animal has, and that Man calls it a soul. This understanding is derived from the fact that all things beyond sensation lend themselves to consciousness; although he must explore the world to realize his sentience and therefore must utilize his animal half in order to access his rational half and thus realize Man’s rationality. When in pursuit of the satiation of the animal sensation of hunger, Man may come across a bush bearing attractive, colorful fruit. The sensational smell may guide Man to harvest the fruit, at which point previously unseen teeth spring from the branch and try to eat Man’s hand. Understandably, Man is likely to withdraw his hand from the treacherous creature he has just encountered and similarly withdraw his person (perhaps hastily) from the bush’s vicinity; seeking the cure to his hunger pangs elsewhere. Thus the bush has deterred another stupid beast from interfering in it’s reproductive cycle. But Man is not just another stupid beast. Had he been born a squirrel or a bird the story would end here; and he’d eventually have excluded this berry and it’s bush from his diet. Man is tenacious however and further, and more importantly, he possesses in his arsenal a tool which, as previously stated, virtually none of the animal kingdom possesses. Reason. Man is capable. Having been thwarted by the devil creature masquerading as a bush bearing tasty fruit, he will eventually find a place to satiate his sensation of fatigue, as do all creatures. During this rest however he will do something peculiar. He will more likely than not reflect on his day. He does not know why he does this but now nevertheless he does. He will doubtlessly recall how a peculiar creature bit him when he grabbed for what looked like tasty fruit and will start to do another peculiar thing. He will ponder the mystery of the devil creature in the forest. After some time man will do another thing. He posits a theory to himself that this violent creature that has bested him is not violent at all. In fact the creature may have been a bush as he first suspected but with some sort of defense mechanism to prevent stupid creatures from doing exactly what it was he had attempted. Man then does several things not normally seen in the animal kingdom. He makes a sort of mental note to examine the bush more closely if he sees one like it again. And then he does see one. In fact, he realizes, he has been looking for it for the entire time that has elapsed between his plan-hatchery and the time that he finally stumbled upon it; to the detriment even of his other tasks. After some examination our curious friend will be delighted to find that with care and deliberation he can maneuver around the teeth and delicately pluck the tasty fruit from its holdfast. At first he may find himself astonished. So amazed by his own work that he forgets why he endeavored to do it at all. He studies the smallish fruit, again using his animalistic senses but now toward a higher purpose. He knows now that he was right once before, and that this bush feels great need to passively deter interlopers from partaking in its appealing assets. But why? After some more deliberation he maybe comes to yet another conclusion; this time that this really must be some special fruit for the nature of its master to be so protective of it. When no longer can man stand to hold it, to smell its healthy ripeness or to even gaze upon this tender piece of flesh in his palm, the sticky blood of which must now be running to his wrist before escaping one drop at a time to the forest floor; Man shovels it into his mouth, believing himself a veritable pioneer in the world of gastronomy. Several things may happen now. Man may experience an unpleasant sour sensation and almost immediately refuse the fruit in the opposite direction from whence he first experienced it. He may contemplate it for a moment before swallowing, evaluate the situation and decide he’s not sure why the bush bit him and those who came before; for while the fruit would certainly do the job of satiating that hunger sensation, it would take most of the day to carefully harvest enough of it to ward off the unpleasantness that drove him to the bush in the first place and it simply isn’t worth it. Man is, after all, busy with all the fighting and humping and resting he must do day after day. Or, the fruit may pass Man’s test and he has his full of it before returning to the place in which he rests; whereupon he simply never wakes up. Finally: man may experience a brand new sensation. His eyes may widen as he chews and swallows the bright morsel and he gazes at the bush knowingly, understanding it all now. The bush was righteous in guarding the tasty little fruits. If these were undefended every creature in the forest would be chowing on them madly; ceaselessly. Imagine the massacre! So of course the bush must have taken up arms to protect the fruits. Probably, thinks man, now getting quite the hang of this theorizing business, probably the bush protects these so only a creature as smart as he could enjoy them. In a combination of the chemistry of sucrose and the satisfaction only man will ever know and only ever after having completed something previously impossible to him, he gathers enough of the sassy little plant’s fruits to eat on the walk home in what remains of the afternoon light and begins his journey. On the way he probably sees someone he knows well and does yet another peculiar thing. He communicates with this neighbor (who he likes and who he feels would probably enjoy a story of heroism and a snack) and he gives the other a portion of his spoils. This may happen countless times before Man finally gets to his resting place but eventually, he will do the peculiarest thing of them all. He will of course be a master at telling the finer details of his story after just a few times of telling it when he comes across yet another neighbor. This neighbor, however, is one our heroic friend is not particularly fond of and at once he is doubtlessly shocked to realize just how little of his stash remains after handing out the trophies all evening. How many morsels had he given away now? He had not counted. He will later come to the conclusion that he was so proud of his own story and so hungry for the admiration of his peers, for the ability to tell them something they did not know that he had lost track. For now, gazing at the not-friend neighbor and then at his much-diminished handful several times he makes a naughty decision. He scurries past the other, not giving him any outward attention, and returns home to finish what remains of his most excellent adventure, alone. After all, he reasons, the not-friend didn’t solve the mystery of the biting bush.

You’re only struggling to see that I’m struggling with how your central point is anything to really take note of.

As someone else already said above. That, being conscious is really the only way we are aware of the phenomenon of consciousness, just seems a tautology, a restatement of obvious practical limitation. They were also right that its our only way of being familiar with anything.

That being said, with all importance being deflated finally, trying to infer further metaphysical claims from it seems dubious.

Hmm maybe I will read more into Chalmer. See if that changes my thinking

Thanks for the info and responses.