If somebody enters a black-hole-like area out of which no information may ever return, are they dead or alive?
Does that question even make any sense? Is there any way to distinguish the two cases?
What if we threw a coffin into that area without knowing whether the resident was dead or alive?
If information is no longer accessible, should we even consider it to have a definite state?
deeeeep philosophy
You're not the only one wondering about that.
I know that that's a
physics problem, but... how do I say this...
You know how the cosmological horizon is constantly approaching? And how something that we used to be able to interact with (in theory) is now forever lost, if it passes that horizon? That's a real-life, physical process that doesn't involve any
physics paradoxes while still raising the
philosophical problems
which I refer to to which I refer.
If somebody enters a black-hole-like area out of which no information may ever return, are they dead or alive?
Dead. Very, very dead. Spaghettified beyond the point where covalent bonds can exist and then sucked through the firewall and irradiated into oblivion before they actually crossed the event horizon.
Not if the black hole is large enough. Not if it's actually the cosmological horizon. But true, for most (and perhaps all
existing) black holes.
the answer is yes. it matters because of why they are sent into this non-information area.
I get why it
matters - because people being alive matters. But why do you say that somebody's alive-or-dead-ness is even a meaningful concept if their alive-state and dead-state cannot be distinguished through evidence?
the question assumes that you yourself never has to enter.
True - and that is an important point. This information might still exist, but is forever lost to
you.
but what if humanity has developed interstellar travel but not any convenient means of interstellar communication? do you not send out colonists, who may be willing volunteers; of whom you will not hear the fate of for hundreds of years? that you would be dead of old age before they responded?
or that they may never even be able to send a signal strong enough to stand out against the background noises, pattern or no?
That doesn't actually satisfy the criteria of my philosophical problem - but if those interstellar colonists were to approach the cosmological horizon, such that the horizon would soon consume them and cut them off from Earth, then that would suffice.
That raises a good point, though - for practical purposes, you'll probably die before the near-interstellar colonists could send back a message of success anyway. You're throwing colonists into the void, and the only difference is whether some hypothetical descendants receive a success message.
if humanity believed that those sent into the noninfo space could or should survive and fufilled a purpose to them, then their nonresponse to communication becomes a barrier to improving the trip and task, not a debate about their non-existentence.
But does anything
exist if its existence and nonexistence are even theoretically indistinguishable?
faith is still a value, and backed by emphirical evidence we can weigh it against moral standards.
"Faith is a value?" What does that mean? How is that an argument for the existence of the cosmological explorers? "I believe they live, so they live" just raises the question of "well why do you believe they live then?"
Author
Topic: Things that made you go "WTF?" today o_O (Read 15089164 times)