Clock of life, thought experiment.
Here's a thought experiment i came up while gazing at the stars today.
Think of yourself as a clock, which has a limited amount of time, depending on it's battery. Once time runs out, clock stops ticking, end of life. Your actions have effect on it, either positive or negative. How should you act in a situation like this?
By benefiting humanity, you increase the chances of getting a new battery, new battery gives you a certain amount of time, until that battery runs out again. Do you benefit humanity enough, that you'll be able to obtain a new battery, before the time of your clock ends?
Think of yourself as a clock, which has a limited amount of time, depending on it's battery. Once time runs out, clock stops ticking, end of life. Your actions have effect on it, either positive or negative. How should you act in a situation like this?
By benefiting humanity, you increase the chances of getting a new battery, new battery gives you a certain amount of time, until that battery runs out again. Do you benefit humanity enough, that you'll be able to obtain a new battery, before the time of your clock ends?
Comments (53)
Immortality can only be achieved by egoism. You, a human Being, is finite in existence, but your ego is not – as in the meaning of legacy –. Egoism is the only way to exist that eternalizes something finite – like Being – in something infinite– in ideas and in the world outside the individual –.
I do agree that human ego is the driving force of humanity, because we are finite, we need to obtain more as fast as possible. That is possible only, because of our ego.
How so. To benefit others you have to sacrifice something.
By benefiting others, you're also improving the quality of your life. By sacrificing something for others, you're gaining more back.
Is that really a sacrifice then or a mere investment? I like the idea. List a few examples for us.
I would go so far as to say that human nature is that of egoism. The moment we move from the state of Not Being to the state of Being, we become egoists. Existence demands the realization of the individual.
We are at the point, where we're realizing our individuality, but what is the next step? I think becoming an individual being called humanity is the next step for our species. Collect all the knowledge individual humans have obtained and gathering it into a single point. Hivemind is a pretty close term for that.
Humanity has idealized this since its beginnings – God.
You should look to improve yourself for the sake of humanity, not because of yourself. Find the strengths and weaknesses you have and decide a path, that works for you. You shouldn't look to benefit yourselves, like our current society works, because that causes a lot of problems. When you benefit other individuals with your actions, they will benefit you, because you have been of benefit for them. If we act in a way that is beneficial to others, those benefits accumulate and you will always gain more back, hence you could call it investment instead of sacrifice. Quoting Outlander
Indeed, that is the path we've been going towards since the beginning, there is no way to stop it. How fast and how safely we get there, that is something we can affect and should affect. You could say, that the big bang was the first clock to be wound up. We as humanity need to be able to change that battery, before our universe comes to an end.
If the unit itself sets out to change its own battery, then it will never happen; it may be able to take out the old battery, but the unit can't put a battery in while it's inoperational due to not having battery power.
Exactly, You need someone else to change your battery, that is the reason we should always try to work together. By working together, you're increasing the chances of someone, whom you've benefited, to be there to change your battery for you, when the time is nigh.
If we are going to get into astronomy here, I'll already tell you my position on this subject: Humanity will not go beyond our solar system - if it continues to act and think in the way it currently does and has always done -, imagine becoming "One". At the monumental dimension of the Universe - whatever it is - we are nothing.
Exactly, that is why we need change. Individuality comes at a price, when your population grows too big. That is the reason we need to become whole again. We started as a whole, which split apart at the beginning. Now is the time, for that to happen again, but this time, we as humanity have to become whole.
Rght. But when you battery stops, do you get the same identity back when the new battery gets put in? Does your system not go back to factory condition?
It does not necessarily have to go back to that, but according to the metaphor the battery sustains life. Once life stops in you, it can't be restarted. Not in the case of humans, anyway. So... your body may be resurrected, but it will be a different person, and your memories, personality characteristics, abilities, etc. all might be different, not to mention that you won't have the same conscience.
That is something, that we will have to see in the future. There is no promise, that a battery change wouldn't change your being. It is a large part of yourself as you may imagine.
Interesting. I always thought that at the monumental dimensions of the Universe, any finite object is nothing. But apparently it's just us? Others are not nothing, compared to the monumental dimensions of the Universe? Would be interesting to hear your point of view on that.
When did this happen? My knowledge - which I admit to be basic - in biology says that the only point where we "all" were the same was more than 3.5 billion years ago when the first forms of life began to emerge. Humanity - as far as Homo Sapiens Sapiens is concerned - appeared less than 200 thousand years ago, and even then, we were never from a hegemonic culture, or biological race. When you become, you are already unique and individual.
No, sir, the battery won't change you. It is simply a power supply. What will change you is that you lose everything at the time of death; and the new you, that is, the body that the new battery brings to life, will have different experiences from the body you first had.
I don't know if you can see that. If not, I can explain.
You could say that there was nothing, before our universe began. If this is not correct, it would change a lot. A big bang, the beginning of our universe, that is the moment when everything was whole. Individuality started to split from the whole, creating everything in our universe.
I understand what you're implying. I think this idea could go well with the ouroboros? If your battery is replaced (reincarnation), you might not know of your past time, even though you're the same unit with a different energy source.
I was referring to humanity's stereotyped concept of projecting itself into the future and controlling the galaxy, bringing democracy to other species and being technologically highly evolved. The most plausible view today is that the entire contemporary society will collapse in the next 100 or 150 years and we will enter a new dark age. But you never know what the future can bring us; it can be much worse.
Are you knowledgeable of the Great Filter?
Thanks. I agree on every point. How does that compare to the monumental dimensions of the Universe, though?
I still prefer not to give an opinion on the beginning of the Universe, because the most advanced scientific theories that we have today - such as the Big Bang - bring us at most an "possibly" as an answer.
Yes.
Exactly, no matter how much we hypothetically think of the problem, our technological advancements aren't enough to determine what is life and our universe.
However, in my opinion, we should start thinking of all the possible futures and act towards the best one. Technology advances at an exponential rate, which means, how many more folds do we need?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AmFMJC45f1Q
The enormous scale of the Universe cannot be compared. We like to pretend that we can achieve this greatness of it.
Aha. Okay.
It might be possible in the future, string theory highly suggests of multiverses. Once we find another one, we can compare them. Then again, theory works, until it is proven wrong.
Could you open what this means, I'm not knowledgeable of the term, thanks.
Ah yes, i'm understanding it a little bit more. Isn't this what the large hadron collider is for? To learn more about our universe, because we know so little?
Here you want to pose cosmic questions and you haven't got the clock right. A clock powered by a spring goes "tick tock" as the escapement meters out the power wound into the spring. A clock powered by a battery (LCD display) is silent, or if it the little motor turns 'hands' it might make a clicking sound, but no tick tock.
Quoting Yozhura
How can we understand the universe when clocks baffle us?
However, I want to be wound up regularly, giving me another crack at showering humankind with the blessings of my fecund mind. Hey!!! I'm 74; get over here and wind me up; time is running out!
Is the definition of clock wrong in my experiment, or can you think of something multiple ways? Once you give enough context for something, you can paint a picture, even though it could be painted in another way.
That's why I said that the future can be completely different than we hope. It could be much worse.
totally agreed with, what you said there.
If that is true, humanity as organic beings will not be the future.
This is the most probable conclusion, or that we are in a simulation. You can think of the folds as years, we're at a point, where every year will bring huge changes and those changes can't be imagined.
I still think we are going to fall in the near future.
Quoting Yozhura
If this is true, whats the meaning of this simulation? If there are creators, the simulation hypothesis could be considered a theist hypothesis?
Agreed.
Quoting Gus Lamarch
We as humans are already simulating universes in many ways, our technology just isn't advanced enough to create simulation that is indistinguishable from reality, but at some point that will be the fact. Unless we can prevent our extinction before we're able to make one. The chance of us being the base reality is highly improbable.
Quoting Gus Lamarch
That is what i think at least, not sure if it's a correct way to think. If someone can prove it otherwise, that is what i believe.
It is the correct way to think.
Concept of God:
"The sole Supreme Being, eternal, spiritual, and transcendent, who is the Creator and ruler of all and is infinite in all attributes"
If we are in a simulation, we can guarantee that there is a creator, or creators, and that they would therefore be God. Finally, the simulation hypothesis is necessarily theistic because it believes that our Universe is the creation of some other higher being.
God is something we ourselves have defined, once we made the hypothesis, that simulation is a possibility. We created a god. Everything we can't understand is defined as a higher power, a god. But the question still remains, is there a supreme god among all the gods, that we've created?
Quoting Yozhura
Let me quote myself for a bit, If there always has to be a god. Wouldn't even the highest of being, the highest of all gods, still have a god for himself, even if he is the actual God of everything.
We are trying to answer this question for more than 5.000 years. And at least until now, no one has any clue...
Exactly, quite interesting isn't it.
If he is all-powerful, omniscient, and omnipresent, he would not need a God, because he already is the maxim of Being. He is but he is not.
Even if that was the case, wouldn't that God want to create a higher entity than himself?
I don't think so. This discussion in leading nowhere, so I'm out. Thank you for your time.
Thanks for your time as well.