I have practiced Taiji for over 20 years, nearly every day, averaging about two hours per day. Every single day I have learned something new. I believe I could continue this sequence without end.
Since my disembodied mind will have no physical limitations it apparently has the potential for unlimited learning. If I continue to learn for all of eternity I think I will become god-like and will create new universes. Now that is purpose.
accomplished meditators can still their thoughts so that they experience pure awareness, which turns out to be an extremely pleasant state. Training to do that might be the best preparation for disembodied solitude. See for example: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/37714573/.
The premise that your thoughts would continue with you into the abyss would rely on your brain continuing to do so as well. Your thoughts change based on the health of your brain. If you experience head trauma, the way you experience your own thoughts changes. Further, if you die, your brain does not continue to function, so it would be unlikely your thoughts would continue to live past the organ that created them.
I guess this did convince me to take eternal disembodied solitude more seriously. But I find the whole thought experiment very underspecified. My brain works differently depending on how much sleep / coffee I've had, if I'm stressed about work, whether I exercised yesterday, etc. Will I experience any physical discomfort? In the present, I am more content to sit and think if I have moved around recently. Will I be able to remember the thoughts I had 18394 subjective years ago? In the present, how well I remember something depends on its emotional impact, which involves complex interactions with my physical body. For me, the scariness of this scenario, and how to best cope with it, are highly sensitive to the details.
Is it possible to reason about what forms of eternal disembodied solitude are more likely?
Is this how you survive an MRI-scan? But aren't the kind of people who need to sit through an MRI, the half of the population with below 101 IQ who watch wrestling and read Fifty Shades?
This is a psychologically naive idea. Most people when placed in solitary confinement go insane. It is very doubtful that "making your thoughts interesting" is going to save you from perpetual solitude.
This analogy is both interesting and useful, but suggesting that the mere conceivability of something infinite requires us to act has the same logical flaws as Pascal's wager.
There's no more evidence of a post mortem future of conscious solitude than there is of any other post mortem future. Preparing for the possibility that the Norse pagans are right would probably be more fun.
I have practiced Taiji for over 20 years, nearly every day, averaging about two hours per day. Every single day I have learned something new. I believe I could continue this sequence without end.
Since my disembodied mind will have no physical limitations it apparently has the potential for unlimited learning. If I continue to learn for all of eternity I think I will become god-like and will create new universes. Now that is purpose.
accomplished meditators can still their thoughts so that they experience pure awareness, which turns out to be an extremely pleasant state. Training to do that might be the best preparation for disembodied solitude. See for example: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/37714573/.
The premise that your thoughts would continue with you into the abyss would rely on your brain continuing to do so as well. Your thoughts change based on the health of your brain. If you experience head trauma, the way you experience your own thoughts changes. Further, if you die, your brain does not continue to function, so it would be unlikely your thoughts would continue to live past the organ that created them.
Never answer hypotheticals. It's logically impossible.
why am I reminded of Philip K Dick's novels?
I guess this did convince me to take eternal disembodied solitude more seriously. But I find the whole thought experiment very underspecified. My brain works differently depending on how much sleep / coffee I've had, if I'm stressed about work, whether I exercised yesterday, etc. Will I experience any physical discomfort? In the present, I am more content to sit and think if I have moved around recently. Will I be able to remember the thoughts I had 18394 subjective years ago? In the present, how well I remember something depends on its emotional impact, which involves complex interactions with my physical body. For me, the scariness of this scenario, and how to best cope with it, are highly sensitive to the details.
Is it possible to reason about what forms of eternal disembodied solitude are more likely?
Is this how you survive an MRI-scan? But aren't the kind of people who need to sit through an MRI, the half of the population with below 101 IQ who watch wrestling and read Fifty Shades?
People with high IQ too have sat through an MRI-scan eg migraine etc
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This is a psychologically naive idea. Most people when placed in solitary confinement go insane. It is very doubtful that "making your thoughts interesting" is going to save you from perpetual solitude.
This analogy is both interesting and useful, but suggesting that the mere conceivability of something infinite requires us to act has the same logical flaws as Pascal's wager.
"Who would fardels bear,
To grunt and sweat under a weary life,
But that the dread of something after death,
The undiscovere'd country, from whose bourn
No traveller returns, puzzles the will,
And makes us rather bear those ills we have
Than fly to others that we know not of?"
There's no more evidence of a post mortem future of conscious solitude than there is of any other post mortem future. Preparing for the possibility that the Norse pagans are right would probably be more fun.
The meaning of life is that everyone must choose the answer to that question for themselves.