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I am religious and believe in free will

71 (27.7%)

I am religious and do not believe in free will

10 (3.9%)

I am not religious and believe in free will

114 (44.5%)

I am not religious and do not believe in free will

61 (23.8%)

Total Members Voted: 251

[SirQuiamus]

Sleeping is just one example of a situation where your consciousness (and your self?) appears to be temporarily extinguished. Is there any reason to presume that consciousness is uninterruptible in the first place? What if it's discontinuous in the same way as visual perception, which has a natural refresh rate of about 12 FPS? If consciousness is periodically renewed in a similar manner, who's to say that you're not dying a dozen deaths per second?

[UXLZ]

I'm pretty sure the natural refresh rate of visual perception is a bit higher than 12 FPS...

[Arx]

The human eye and its brain interface, the human visual system, can process 10 to 12 separate images per second, perceiving them individually.

[SirQuiamus]

Hehe, I was about to post the same link.
When the images are perceived as a continuous movement, it's already a sign of the fact that you are missing something in between the frames and your brain is interpolating to fill in the gaps. The threshold for that is probably higher than 12 FPS, and as we know, about 45 FPS is necessary to prevent flicker on a film/computer screen, but the exact numbers are not relevant to a XXPhilosophical DebateXX.

EDIT: In my opinion, the most frightful aspect of the teleporter thought-experiment is that a supervillain would eventually try to conquer the world with an army of clones. Meeting an atom-by-atom copy of yourself would certainly be interesting, since it would be like looking at a mirror-image made flesh. Your "copy" would say and do exactly the same things as you would, resulting in a very strong illusion of a shared consciousness, which would be enough to convince either of you to voluntarily disappear (or make another "copy", if you are a supervillain). This scenario would be an empirical proof of the epiphenomenality of consciousness, perhaps the strongest proof you could get (too bad it's impossible).   

[UXLZ]

Oh, that's what you meant. I thought you were saying something else.

[Orange Wizard]

There's also a visible difference between 60 FPS and even higher rates. Still, not really relevant.

I'll talk more about the oblivion/sleep-death thing in the morning. For now I'm going to bed.

[Frumple]

... people say that, but I can't really tell the difference between 30 and 60 fps, much less 60 and something higher. It all looks and plays about the same to me once you're past the point of obvious stutters, which happens (for me, anyway) in the 30+ range.

Unless the thing's gone buggy and that causes everything to go into super-speed ala old dos games on a modern computer, anyway.

[ChairmanPoo]

There's also a visible difference between 60 FPS and even higher rates. Still, not really relevant.

I'll talk more about the oblivion/sleep-death thing in the morning. For now I'm going to bed.

you mean another version of Orangewizard will tall more about it. Not you, surely

[Cryxis, Prince of Doom]

I don't really like the idea of oblivion and repeatedly dying.

+1


I like the idea of eternal living in paradise much better

[Frumple]

I've always been fond of just plain oblivion, myself. Several decades of this shit is more than enough to want to peacefully sleep for the rest of eternity, and I've yet to see a description of an afterlife that wasn't either some sort of fridge horror or boring as hell (or both, in some cases). Just... let me have peace, damnit. Or at least eternal epic!dream mode or somethin'.

[Rolan7]

Agreed, I'm actually comforted that the Jewish afterlife for gentiles seems to be... well, there isn't one.
I'm absolutely scared of dying, but only instinctively...  A dreamless sleep isn't terrifying, just disappointing.
Huh.  And yet the idea of never waking up just makes my skin crawl.  The survival instinct is just that strong, it's an overwhelming yet irrational fear.

Really, the idea of being forced to live forever should be the terrifying one.  Though I'd love to spend a few decades or centuries as a time-traveling, completely passive observer.  There's no reason to believe that happens, but it wouldn't affect reality at all so... why not?

[TD1]

I don't really like the idea of oblivion and repeatedly dying.

+1


I like the idea of eternal living in paradise much better

No doubt that's why you believe it.

Also, nothingness here too. I'd much prefer immortality (with an in-built die option) but, on the other hand it beats what Cryxis thinks is waiting for me.

Which reminds me of something I said a few years ago and which subsequently stuck in my mind- "religion was made by old men afraid of their own mortality."

[Bohandas]

re. oblivion

But then from one's own perspective it's equivalent to never having existed in the first place (unless we take four-dimensionalism into account

[Cryxis, Prince of Doom]

It's only waiting if you let it.
Don't say I didn't try to help you if we die and you go there.
But if I'm wrong and there is no afterlife I can be fine with the nothingness to come

[Frumple]

... except it wouldn't be help, t'me. The christian afterlife is damnation regardless of which direction you go, from my perspective. Infinite torture or infinite slavery with a side of grotesque personality reconstruction -- both sound pretty horrible. I personally want nothing to do with any aspect of an abrahamic afterlife, short of maybe the bit where people are just annihilated.

'Course, the heaven generally isn't framed that way, but that's why it's fridge horror instead of just straight up

Bleh. I should have remembered there's a reason I generally don't like thinking too hard about religious afterlife scenarios...