From: Damien Broderick (d.broderick@english.unimelb.edu.au)
Date: Wed Sep 04 2002 - 23:15:42 MDT
At 12:50 AM 9/5/02 -0400, gts wrote:
>There is an hypothesis that we must accept or reject. That hypothesis is
>this:
>"Certain immortality is achievable by you and me."
>There is nothing probabilistic about this hypothesis. It's either true
>or false.
Oh, for Pete's sake. The crypto-religious manner in which you've defined
`immortality' (`can't die, won't die') makes that `hypothesis' a
contradiction in terms for anything made of parts. In the real world--any
real world we can conceive, I'd venture to say--any conscious being has to
be built out of parts, arranged in a certain modifiable organization. In
our empirical universe, that complex organization must be prey to
disruption (even if its structure can be repaired by multiply-redundant and
mutually-healing maintenance systems).
It seems very likely that the parts themselves must be susceptible of decay
or destruction. The universe came out of a state of monstrous compression
and will end either the same way or in indefinite attenuation. Either way,
nothing can or will last, at least on the basis of what we know about the
universe today.
Moreover, any talk about quantum leakage derives directly from our present
understanding, and therefore can't be set aside by fiat. Therefore, it is
self-evident that absolutely knowable deathlessness is impossible, unless
the world can be modified at the deepest ontological levels. Get over it,
find another word or more for the range of outcomes that *are* capable of
being contemplated, and whereof you cannot speak thereof give it a rest, as
Wittgenstein said to his nagging nanny.
Damien Broderick
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Sat Nov 02 2002 - 09:16:43 MST