• Light/Dark
  • Ever wanted an RSS feed of all your favorite gaming news sites? Go check out our new Gaming Headlines feed! Read more about it here.

What if we could invent an afterlife

julia crawford

julia crawford

Took the red AND the blue pills
Member
Oct 27, 2017
35,065
So let's say i am a scientist. I invent this "thing" that creates a small universe that is essentially infinite. Lets say i put this machine at the very closest to the heat death of the universe, that is, after everything living has likely died away.

So then this machine retroactively pulls every dying animal with some degree of complexity or intelligence into this side universe, essentially giving them a new, eternal life. There is also life that is natural to this place, because life just come up anyway and there's no point in not allowing that. And it can make up its own rules for how things work. There's an endless supply of everything in this machine. Don't worry about the science of it. It's just a thread on an internet forum.

Edited to add a small detail: once in, you could opt out and cease existing. No questions asked. Heaven would be GDPR compliant.

What do you think? Is it cool? Here's my first question. How ethical is this? What's the ethics of giving people a new life without their consent?

Let's pray some very smart aliens have or will invent this eventually 🙏
 
Last edited:
OhSatan

OhSatan

Member
Mar 15, 2018
15,570
The Door to the Tenth Sub Level of Suicide
John Kowalski said:
So let's say i am a scientist. I invent this "thing" that creates a small universe that is essentially infinite. Lets say i put this machine at the very closest to the heat death of the universe, that is, after everything living has likely died away.

So then this machine retroactively pulls every dying animal with some degree of complexity or intelligence into this side universe, essentially giving them a new, eternal life. There is also life that is natural to this place, because life just come up anyway and there's no point in not allowing that. And it can make up its own rules for how things work. There's an endless supply of everything in this machine. Don't worry about the science of it. It's just a thread on an internet forum.

What do you think? Is it cool? Here's my first question. How ethical is this? What's the ethics of giving people a new life without their consent?

Let's pray some very smart aliens have or will invent this eventually 🙏
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Go read Surface Detail from The Culture Series to see why this is a really really really really bad idea.
 
Volimar

Volimar

volunteer forum janitor
Member
Oct 25, 2017
38,236
There's a series called Upload coming out starring Robbie Amell. It's about a world where if you know you're dying , you can have your consciousness uploaded to a digital afterlife.
 

-COOLIO-

Banned
Oct 25, 2017
2,125
i think we'll be able to digitize the mind one day, this would naturally happen after that. i hope it happens.
 

Deleted member 46489

User requested account closure
Banned
Aug 7, 2018
1,979
*checks date* Weekend Era? Weekend Era.

Also, did you get this idea from The Restaurant at the End of the Universe?
 
Yossarian

Yossarian

The Fallen
Oct 25, 2017
13,259
tenor.gif
 
Ramala

Ramala

Member
Oct 28, 2017
6,034
Santa Monica, LA
capitalCORN said:
Forcing the ratrace into space is probably the worst possible scenario. Perpetual promise is perpetual leverage.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

You're thinking small. Imagine dedicated Trump
supporters. Imagine Trump telling them the only way to get to *his* heaven (the best heaven) is ... pick your poison really. It's consciousness in a computer. He tells them it's not. They believe him. It doesn't matter if it even works.
 
Geist

Geist

Prophet of Truth
Avenger
Oct 25, 2017
4,579
Random reincarnation with no omnipotent higher power to influence it sounds perfect to me.
 

AlwaysSalty

The Fallen
Nov 12, 2017
1,442
I think digitizing minds is an inevitability. We probably wont be here when it happens though, also the going back through time part is pretty impossible. But if it did happen it would be cool. You can opt out so no harm done imo.
 
I_D

I_D

Member
Oct 27, 2017
572
Isaac Asimov did it first.


I think it's entirely possible for something similar to this to happen. It wouldn't scan backward through time, but putting people's minds into digital form and letting them live forever is probably going to happen eventually (not in our life times).
 
andrew

andrew

Member
Oct 25, 2017
2,906
Hard to say what the ethics of it are. How is it designed? Is it our world with unlimited resources? Is it a variation on our world? Do the inhabitants have the ability to shape their world within limits? What are those limits? You say "it can make up its own rules for how things work" but who designed those rules?

Essentially all the same ethical dilemmas and questions for God we already toss over in philosophy remain: is it just to give life or is life only pain, even in an infinite resource afterlife?
Spoit said:
Oh so this is the bad place
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
 
PepsimanVsJoe

PepsimanVsJoe

Member
Oct 26, 2017
6,115
Did you know that the first Matrix was designed to be a perfect human world where none suffered, where everyone would be happy? It was a disaster. No one would accept the program. Entire crops were lost. Some believed that we lacked the programming language to describe your "perfect world". But I believe that, as a species, human beings define their reality through misery and suffering. So the perfect world was a dream that your primitive cerebrum kept trying to wake up from.

- Agent Smith (The Matrix, 1999)

I'd also argue that a world where everything is infinite is incredibly boring. What's the appeal of drawing or painting when you can merely will something into existence? Let's say you could produce incredible music by merely waving your hand. Where's the incentive to learn how to compose a song or play an instrument? This can be applied to all of life's pursuits. If everything is just a thought away, then existence serves no purpose. We no longer have anything to strive for. Without the flaws and limitations that define us, our imaginations would become our prisons. There'd be no more discovery, no more creativity. The arts and culture that have kept societies "alive" for several millennia would disappear.

Heaven is a flawed concept IMO. If it actually existed, then we would have destroyed it eons ago. Perfection is something to aspire towards, not obtain.
 
OP
OP
julia crawford

julia crawford

Took the red AND the blue pills
Member
Oct 27, 2017
35,065
EloquentM said:
John Kowalski so you just want the matrix?
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

More like github but for life.

Also i feel like talking about these topics in the context of religion is very... very wanting for high level wishing and not a lot of practical, pragmatic thinking. But taking away from it that angle of religion or divinity would make people look at it in a more engineering way, more like... like how they'd think of something made by a peer of theirs.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.