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A Thought Experiment For Atheists A Thought Experiment For Atheists

12-30-2013 , 03:13 PM
Quote:
Originally Posted by David Sklansky
Suppose there was some kind of technological breakthrough that would improve the Earth in every imaginable way for every living human for the next 600 years. But it resulted in the Earth's demise in year 601. Why should atheists be opposed to it? (Assume there is no chance for space colonization and that life expectancy has no chance of surpassing 150 years.)

After several replies I am now adding in that everyone becomes sterile after 500 years or so. I was not trying to compare present suffering to future suffering (aside from being childless). Only future non existence.
To answer the original question, I submit that the answer is that atheists should oppose this idea, because the well-being of people in the more distant future is no less important than that of present-day and near-future people. No individual human's well-being is more important than any other's. There is no reason, except climate change, to think that humans will not be around for tens of thousands of years more. The people that are alive 3,000 years from now are just as deserving of an opportunity to have a fulfilling life as those that are alive 300 years from now.

P.S. In fact, one could argue that human life is higher-quality now than it's ever been (see, e.g. Steven Pinker's thesis that today is the safest time in human history), and that trend may well continue beyond the next 500 years without a technological advance of the sort you're talking about. By extrapolation, the further into the future you go, the more fulfilled the humans living then will be, on the whole, and therefore the more human life is "worth."
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01-02-2014 , 11:06 PM
I havent read the thread (and the inevitable "you guys dont understand what I've brilliantly asked" posts) but I wouldnt care, for one - I'm presuming your edit was supposed to be sterility after 450 years, not 500.

I'd approve implementing the breakthrough.
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01-03-2014 , 03:22 PM
wb bunny
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01-04-2014 , 12:39 AM
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Originally Posted by batair
wb bunny
Just passing by. Glad to see DS still can't ask questions properly the forum is still too stupid to appreciate DS's genius.
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01-04-2014 , 08:32 AM
It's not the question that troubles me. It's the speculating over the reasons for the answers.
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01-07-2014 , 08:49 PM
Quote:
Originally Posted by David Sklansky
Quote:
Originally Posted by Robin Agrees
So why would it be important to me if the human race doesn't go beyond the 600 years? It doesn't. I assume I would be dead before the 600 years are up so...........whats the question again?
And my point is that there is no good reason for an atheist to think otherwise, aside from worrying about suffering. Especially if preventing this demise hurts people now. Yet many atheists talk like they believe otherwise. Which makes me doubt their atheism.
FWIW, I found the book awful, but http://www.amazon.com/The-Physics-Im.../dp/0385467990 Tipler's book includes an argument for an atheist to be concerned with your hypothetical.

I read it many years ago, but from memory he maintains that it is quite plausible that a sufficiently advanced humanity will (at some point) develop the computing power and technology to essentially resurrect every human who has ever lived (out of interest, curiosity, altruism or somethingorother...). If you share the various assumptions included in his argument, you may well expect to die and then wake up moments later as a cleverly encoded, immortal, computer program running forever on the supercomputers of the distant future.

I always suspected he wrote it as some kind of bluff attempt to win the templeton prize, but maybe I'm just a cynic..
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01-08-2014 , 04:56 AM
Quote:
Originally Posted by bunny
FWIW, I found the book awful, but http://www.amazon.com/The-Physics-Im.../dp/0385467990 Tipler's book includes an argument for an atheist to be concerned with your hypothetical.

I read it many years ago, but from memory he maintains that it is quite plausible that a sufficiently advanced humanity will (at some point) develop the computing power and technology to essentially resurrect every human who has ever lived (out of interest, curiosity, altruism or somethingorother...). If you share the various assumptions included in his argument, you may well expect to die and then wake up moments later as a cleverly encoded, immortal, computer program running forever on the supercomputers of the distant future.

I always suspected he wrote it as some kind of bluff attempt to win the templeton prize, but maybe I'm just a cynic..
I'm still trying understand what is self.

Don't think if you were to be digitally resurrected it would be you. It would be a digital clone and a new being who thinks he is you.

I've read that we may already be living in a computer program within a simulated universe. It is also testable.

I also read that there is some slight evidence for a multiverse.
Our observable universe isn't uniform like it is supposed to be.
Seems there's some evidence that something beyond what we can see is pulling on our universe.

We might be an atom in an infinite sea of other universes.
The implications of that are truly mind-blowing.
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01-08-2014 , 09:32 AM
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Originally Posted by Jasrace
Don't think if you were to be digitally resurrected it would be you. It would be a digital clone and a new being who thinks he is you.
I think it's nonsense, but I guess people who think consciousness is computation would regard it as just another evolution - much like the "you" of ten years ago has very little commonality with the present day "you".

Do you only think you're the same person as the one you remember from school? Or was that really "you"?
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01-11-2014 , 03:58 AM
Quote:
Originally Posted by bunny
I think it's nonsense, but I guess people who think consciousness is computation would regard it as just another evolution - much like the "you" of ten years ago has very little commonality with the present day "you".

Do you only think you're the same person as the one you remember from school? Or was that really "you"?
I could see in the future were you could have a biological clone and physically connect the two brains for one to absorb the others. You wouldn't actually be destroyed in that scenario.

I always thought about teleportation like in Star Trek. You're basically destroyed during that processed in process but reassembled. Would that be you?

But there's the concept that absolutely everything in existence is connected through quantum entanglement. So maybe you could be reassembled digitally and be none the wiser. IDK lol.

I do think that David's thought experiment is goofy.

For one, I think humans could/will become biologically immortal before we become a type one civilization and control the Earth in every way. That's if we don't kill ourselves first through climate change or nuclear war.

Humans making it from a type 0 to a type 1 is the hardest part and don't think we will ever make it. Fingers crossed!
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01-11-2014 , 05:06 PM
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Originally Posted by Jasrace
I do think that David's thought experiment is goofy.
He has a collection.
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01-11-2014 , 10:40 PM
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Originally Posted by bunny
He has a collection.
Lol.
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01-16-2014 , 03:46 PM
Quote:
Originally Posted by Dexter Hugo
I love church people. Just because I think there is no such thing as god doesn't mean I don't have morals..
FYP
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01-22-2014 , 02:10 AM
To answer the original question:

i wouldn't choose the breakthrough, because i figure, that in 600 years there will be technology that provides the same without the end of the world.

I am an agnostical though...
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01-24-2014 , 12:41 PM
Grunching because I don't want to read all this AIDS.

The answer is because future human life has value just as present human life does.

If this is some kind of gotcha about abortion, there is only room for so many future humans and we don't look to be running out anytime soon.

Hope this helps.
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01-24-2014 , 12:47 PM
Have skimmed DS posts ITT and he seems to think future human lives should have no value to atheists.

Do not understand this at all. I think the happiness of other people is valuable regardless of where they are temporally located.

I think the happiness of future generations is more important than the happiness of this one because the needs of the many etc etc.
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01-31-2014 , 04:13 AM
Quote:
I think the happiness of future generations is more important than the happiness of this one because the needs of the many etc etc.
Hi,
i actually like that line of argumentation, probably the best line in this hole thread.
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01-31-2014 , 12:53 PM
Quote:
The answer is because future human life has value just as present human life does.
The important thing is that even if this is utterly false, that an atheist could hold this view irrationally and not because he secretly has some faith in God.
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01-31-2014 , 08:07 PM
Quote:
Originally Posted by Bladesman87
The important thing is that even if this is utterly false, that an atheist could hold this view irrationally and not because he secretly has some faith in God.
And he could also secretly hold some faith in God and not hold it to be true. Not all who believe in God thinks all humans deserve to live, at least not the last time I checked the news.

Probably not so relevant for the question, but still - to show the absurdity of the claims made.
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02-04-2014 , 03:00 PM
Quote:
Originally Posted by tame_deuces
And he could also secretly hold some faith in God and not hold it to be true. Not all who believe in God thinks all humans deserve to live, at least not the last time I checked the news.

Probably not so relevant for the question, but still - to show the absurdity of the claims made.
More than that, many religions welcome the idea of a total apocalypse.
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02-11-2014 , 09:48 PM
This is the problem with atheists. This planet has a vast amount of life on it. Destroying it all so that human beings could have a better "material" existence is beyond stupid and egotistical. Though thought experiments are all you are left with when you can't stop thinking for even 2 seconds.

And fwiw I think organized religion is worse than atheism as a whole right now but "thought experiments" like this make me realize that in the future that atheism is much worse than religion could ever be.

Last edited by LucidDream; 02-11-2014 at 09:54 PM.
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02-11-2014 , 09:53 PM
Quote:
Originally Posted by LucidDream
This is the problem with atheists. This planet has a vast amount of life on it. Destroying it all so that human beings could have a better "material" existence is beyond stupid and egotistical. Though thought experiments are all you are left with when you can't stop thinking for even 2 seconds.
Did you, uh, miss the fact that virtually every atheist ITT rejected the thought experiment? Or did you just assume that everyone who rejected it was a theist?
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02-11-2014 , 10:10 PM
According to DS those people aren't true atheists.




Quote:
Originally Posted by David Sklansky
You are making this too complicated.

Here is my argument in a nutshell:

Some atheists harbor a bit of doubt about their lack of belief.

Some don't.

Those that do are more likely to be hesitant to defile the bible than those who have no doubt.

Thus if I know that you are a proclaimed atheist who is hesitant I can increase the chances that you are in the first camp compared to what it was before I knew that information.
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02-11-2014 , 10:14 PM
David is wrong though
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02-12-2014 , 01:59 AM
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Originally Posted by well named
David is wrong though
A reasonable response to most of his threads.
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02-12-2014 , 02:03 AM
Or we've confirmed that there are no atheists in RGT and this is the realm of the internet's most convincing trolls.

Last edited by Bladesman87; 02-12-2014 at 02:03 AM. Reason: until this cunning trap snared them all
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