Valmorian

So because you've compromised on the "best", it's not wishful thinking?

Believing that a letter I get in the mail contains $1000 cheque is not wishful thinking because I could have believed it had a $1000000 cheque?

How silly.

Marduk

"3. Mental states (pain, euphoria, anxiety, hallucinations, etc.) or states of consciousness can be reliably and predictably invoked by introducing certain substances to the brain."


This one I'm all too familiar with.

ps418

Me too. I admit it. That's what first got me interested in this stuff. I used to wonder how the f*** a few hundred micrograms of LSD could alter my perception so profoundly. Now it makes sense to me.

crocodile deathroll

<a href="http://www.alcor.org/" target="_blank">Here is the ultimate in wishful thinking !!!</a>

Would you like to be one of their "patients"(sic)?

[ November 12, 2002: Message edited by: crocodile deathroll ]</p>

Sidian

i'm did participate in the time discussion elsewhere on the board. infinite nows doesn't seem useful to me.

also, if we reincarnate when we die but at a different time, you have made your population problems worse not better. if all the "nows" occur now, then you not only have to have personalities in each person you live your life time with...there has to be personalities for every person to have ever lived all simultaneously (for lack of a better word)

i can't die and reincarnate as someone 300 years from now, their now is concurrent to mine and needs it's own personality while i'm busy here typing away.

i don't buy the infinite nows and i don't buy simultaneous multiverses and i don't buy reincarnation.

crocodile deathroll

Then how do you account the splitting nows it get with the case of the <a href="http://www.sciencenet.org.uk/database/Physics/Original/p00188d.html" target="_blank">twins Paradox </a> or the "twins effect" appeals better to me because it is not really a "paradox" it is only a paradox if you are using the wrong paradigm for time. The effect is real and has been empirically proven by the by findings of the <a href="http://www.dipmat.unipg.it/~bartocci/hafkeat.htm" target="_blank">Hafele Keating Experiment </a> in October 1971. Even just the simple act you sitting of a chair while I am walking around will though two nows out of kilter and split into two
Because the dead can not possibly experience eternal boredom because to be bored at all you need to be conscious and to be conscious you need to be "alive" you could well die and be born in 300 years and your percieved past, and besides the human race my of wiped itself out 300 years from now in a nuclear holocaust, so it may not be possible for you to be born then. That is anybody's guess
Do you believe cesium atoms just beat a lot of new age gobbledegook?

[ November 13, 2002: Message edited by: crocodile deathroll ]</p>

MadMordigan

If you are simply using this material as proof of their non-existence, I think it's insufficient.

In the end, this evidence of brain function is realyl just a gold leaf invitation for Mr. Occam to come by for dinner and sweep upi.

crocodile deathroll

If only Mr Occam new of relativity he would be in favor of only one soul casting world-lines back and forth through time, so why over complicate things with billions of them.
Multiple souls is a totally unnecessary complication

Valmorian

Of course, the even more parsimonious theory would be that there is not such a thing at all as an independant "soul".

crocodile deathroll

And that we are all zombies