And Slaters Go Plop

13 Responses to “Eternal Life”

1. Ian says:

   April 12, 2011 at 2:38 pm

   Infinity is cool
2. Damian says:

   April 12, 2011 at 2:41 pm

   Infinity is impractical
3. Damian says:

   April 12, 2011 at 2:45 pm

   Actually, there’s a challenge for you: How old would you be if it took you 1 billion years just to type out how old you were (assuming typing 1 character per second)?

   *edit* something like 1,000,000,000+10^(3.1536×10^16)?
4. Ian says:

   April 12, 2011 at 7:42 pm

   I got 1*10^9 + 10^(3.1558*10^16) – but I accounted for those stupid leap years.

   Actually I think it is slightly different to that for two reasons – shifting to a simpler example of an age it would take you 2 seconds to write, it is anything between 10 and 99 which is the range (10^1) to (10^2)-1. Similarly 3 seconds would be anything from 100 to 999 or (10^2) to (10^3)-1 – i.e. it takes x seconds to write any name from 10^(x-1) to (10^x)-1. So I suppose the real answer is:

   1*10^9 + 10^(3.1558*10^15) and 1*10^9 + 10^(3.1558*10^16)-1

   I love these little diversions
5. Damian says:

   April 12, 2011 at 7:53 pm

   Haha! Well done. I’m impressed.

   The ridiculous thing about infinity is that there is also an inevitable time at which even writing in to-the-power-of notation would take you a billion years.

   I’m not sure people who glibly claim that they’re going to live forever have really understood just how long ‘forever’ really is.
6. david winter says:

   April 12, 2011 at 9:29 pm

   …this looks like a Project Euler challenge.

   (there’s some great writing about the maths of infinity in The Oxford Book of Science Writing that Dawkins edited)
7. Ian says:

   April 12, 2011 at 10:05 pm

   I’m not sure people who glibly claim that they’re going to live forever have really understood just how long ‘forever’ really is.

   I think most people think of forever as a really long time, when in reality a really long time doesn’t even scratch the surface of forever. Forever is necessarily the worst thing possible
8. Rhett says:

   June 20, 2011 at 9:44 pm

   So this made me think…

   Taking your assertion that infinity would be a horible thing, if you could magically alot yourself a number of years in which you would age proportionally, and within which you could pursue every interest or hobby or job to a highly fulfilling and successful degree (spend a few years here as a famous rock star, then a few years there as a Hawking-level scientist), how many years would you choose to allot yourself?

   If eternity is impractical and/or boring, what would be your ideal timeframe?
9. Ian says:

   June 21, 2011 at 1:16 am

   That is an interesting question and I’m really not even sure where to start with it – in fact I’m not sure there really is a meaningful direct answer…

   Thinking about it tonight the only real answer I’ve come up with is this: I’d like to live as long as I want to live. I honestly have no conception of how long that might be.

   The only thing that is certain is that in an infinite life you are guaranteed to stop wanting to live at some point. I’d also note that one can never regret dying…
10. Damian says:

    June 21, 2011 at 10:28 am

    This is a great question. I’ve been mulling on it for a while. My short answer is that, right now, I’d like to live for a very long time. My long answer is…

    We’re living organisms who have evolved to have certain desires and fears. These natural desires and fears have been selected for in our ancestors in order to help us survive to reproduce in a particular environment.

    An example of this is that we desire fat and salt because in our evolutionary past they’ve been a scarce resource and those of our ancestors who found these things delicious did better than those who didn’t. Our bodies have evolved to give us a feeling of reward when we ingest salt or fat. Not every animal has these particular desires because not every animal needs these particular foods but they’ll have their own ancestral baggage which is possibly of benefit to them or possibly a liability due to a change of environment (like we find ourselves in today with an excess availability of fat and salt but still a massive reward for eating it which is actually detrimental to our health in this environment).

    Something we share with probably every single living thing is the reward we get when we mate. A species that didn’t have such an inbuilt reward or drive would quickly go extinct. An orgasm is the reward we get for trying to make copies of ourselves. Another thing we share is a drive to survive at least long enough to procreate. Once again, a praying mantis or spider species that evolved to eat their mates *before* intercourse wouldn’t last long. We have a huge array of fears and rewards built in to keep us alive but no selection pressure to keep them or get rid of them after we’ve procreated. (to complicate things there may be an evolutionary ‘grandparenting’ advantage but we can ignore that for simplification)

    Just like the desire to have sex after menopause might be seen as an unintentional result of a drive that served us well earlier in life so the desire to survive remains.

    If we could define a single ‘purpose’ for all living things it would be to make copies of itself. All our desires and fears derive from that.

    Now, if you were to ask me if I’d like to eat a mountain of fat and salt there’s a part of me that makes my mouth water at the thought but another part of me that knows from experience that I’ll get sick and yet another part that understands that even though French Fries taste great they might not be so great in the long run. If you ask me whether I’d like to have a continuous, 24 hour orgasm my first thoughts are that that would be bliss but logically I know that at some stage it would have to get boring. When you ask me how long I’d like to survive for and experience any pleasure I’d like I’m immediately drawn to the idea and tempted to say ‘forever!’.

    But can pleasure be enjoyed if it is continuous? Do we only feel rich because there are other people in worse situations than us? You’re happy now to have two functioning arms and legs but what if everyone else had wings as well? What would it mean to live in a universe where you have existed for a billion billion billion years and experienced a billion billion billion pleasures but no fear or pain? Would we need to be surrounded by infinite suffering just to have the contrast? Is there a point at which any pleasure becomes tedium?

    I think that this is the point at which we have to concede that, just like salt or sex, the proposition is attractive but when taken to the extreme we can see that it just wouldn’t work.

    More importantly, I think that the notion of eternal life is a concept created by us poor creatures who have the ability to perceive our own eventual demise. It’s a coping mechanism because fear of death would cripple us otherwise. There is an excellent book I read recently by Ernest Becker called The Denial Of Death on this topic. There was a documentary made about his thesis recently called Flight from Death and I thoroughly recommend taking a look at it.

    Anyway, fascinating topic and I could ramble on about it for… ever.
11. Rhett says:

    June 21, 2011 at 6:36 pm

    Interesting!

    I think what you’re missing is that along with the concept of eternal life goes the concept of eternal fulfillment and satisfaction and joy. In the Christian worldview, anyway.

    Which, for you guys is like talking about fairies and unicorns, I know.

    But, your assertion that infinity would be a horrible thing relies on infinity getting boring in a way we know boredom now. If you are willing to evaluate the fairies and unicorns idea of infinity in a logical manner while leaving out the concept of infinite and eternal joy, you’re only evaluating the back end of the unicorn, not the whole thing.

    So while infinity may seem pointless, so does this line of argumentation.

    It’s fun and amusing though.
12. Ian says:

    June 21, 2011 at 9:42 pm

    The problem is that at some point in an infinite life of joy you are guaranteed to cease to want to experience anything, purely because the timeline is infinite. It is less an issue of boredom than an issue of infinity.

    It also seems to me that to experience an infinite joy I would have to change an awful lot about myself in the transition. I would worry I might cease to be meaningfully myself in the process, particularly as I would have already abandoned my physical body.
13. David says:

    April 13, 2012 at 2:27 pm

    Not to mention eternal isn’t always defined with time or for that matter definable as mentioned below…

    While in the popular mind, eternity (or foreverness) often simply means existence for a limitless amount of time, many have used it to refer to a timeless existence altogether outside time. By contrast, infinite temporal existence is then called sempiternity. Something eternal exists outside time; by contrast, something sempiternal exists throughout an infinite time. Sempiternity is also known as everlastingness

    Eternal life can also be defined as a timeless existence,[citation needed] which is also not known for certain to be achievable, or even definable, despite millennia of arguments for eternity. Wittgenstein, in a notably non-theological interpretation of eternal life, writes in the Tractatus that, “If we take eternity to mean not infinite temporal duration but timelessness, then eternal life belongs to those who live in the present.”

    Wikipedia