You are listening to the always asking.com podcast. This is episode number six. Today's question, Is there life after death? humanity has long sought answers to the question of what happens when we die? Is there an afterlife? Do we resurrect to heaven reincarnate as another being unite with God? Or might we experience nothing at all? modern scientific theories have shed new light on this age old question. The answers will amaze you enjoy

is there an afterlife? Or is this the only life we get? Most believe science says there is no afterlife. But this view wild common is wrong. It required thousands of years of careful study of the natural world. Today, modern science offers answers to this age old mystery. Contrary to Popular wisdom, the existence of an afterlife is an inescapable conclusion of many of today's scientific theories. In this article, we will review 10 scientific theories that predict an afterlife. These theories come from diverse fields of science. They include Cornerstone theories of physics, such as quantum mechanics and special relativity, as well as theories fundamental to the fields of cosmology, biology, neuroscience, and technology. We will review these theories and see what they imply for the afterlife. You will see why rational evidence based scientists were brought to the conclusion that there is life after death. By the end of this article, you will share in their understanding, you will know what we can expect of the afterlife if our modern scientific theories are true, testable and untestable predictions. In science theories often make people addictions that can't be tested. For example, the theory for why stars shine predicts that right now a photon is leaving from the far side of the sun. We can never test this prediction. This photon is moving away from us at the speed of light, we can never catch up to it. Absent the existence of a mirror in the right place at the right time to reflect it back, this photon will remain forever beyond our light cone and therefore inaccessible to us. Nonetheless, the existence of this photon is a prediction that follows from an established theory. Accordingly, our confidence in this photons existence remains as high as our confidence in that theory. Therefore, a scientist who believes in the theory will believe in the existence of this photon, despite our total inability to ever see it. Some predictions of a theory are testable, others aren't. Though we can't test all predictions of a theory. Our confidence in a theory increases as we test and confirm more of a theory his predictions. Each successful test builds our confidence in that theory. As that confidence grows, so too does our confidence in all the predictions of that theory. This includes predictions we haven't yet tested, as well as the predictions which aren't testable. Each time we drop something and see it fall we perform another test of the theory of gravity. This theory predicts a one ton diamond would fall if dropped. Though we have never encountered a one tonne diamond to test this prediction. We are confident in the theory of gravity. Therefore we are confident that one tonne diamonds fall when dropped. We can be very confident in untested predictions. This is the situation for afterlife predictions. predictions of an afterlife represent the untestable predictions of otherwise testable things theories predicting life after death. Short of dying and experiencing the afterlife for yourself. Science has no way to directly test the existence or absence of an afterlife. Nonetheless, just as gravity predicts one time diamonds to fall, several theories in science tell us that life continues after death. The existence of an afterlife, though untestable is a prediction of well tested, well established and well accepted theories. Accordingly, our confidence in the existence of afterlife should be as high as our confidence in the theories predicting it. theories and predictions The following are some of the theories predicting an afterlife. These are not obscure theories, but theories taken seriously and used by working scientists in their fields. Some of these theories even rank among the most strongly confirmed theories in all of science. One, cosmic inflation predicts you will live again to mechanism predicts you will reincarnate three the concurrence model predicts you have infinite incarnations for quantum mechanics predicts you are subjectively immortal. Five. Special Relativity predicts you have an eternal existence. Six biological immortality predicts you can be made immortal. Seven. The simulation hypothesis predicts you are already in mortal hate. The technological singularity predicts you will be resurrected. Nine. The transection hypothesis predicts you are part of a god like mind 10 open individualism predicts you live wherever there is life for there to be no afterlife All of these theories must be wrong. If just one of these theories is right, then this life will not be your last. Let's review each of these theories in detail. We will see what each theory is about what it explains who originated it, why scientists believe it and what it can tell us about the life after this one. One, cosmic inflation and the afterlife, afterlife prediction, you will live again. Cosmic inflation is a theory in cosmology that fills gaps in our understanding of the Big Bang. It was independently conceived by Alexis Terra Minsky in 1979 and Alan Guth in 1980, with early kinks been worked out in the following years by Andrei Linde Paul Steinhardt, and Andy Albrecht, it explains why space is so big why the universe was so hot and dense in its early history, and why space is still expanding. Today inflation is a well supported theory having direct observational evidence. Cosmic inflation makes a prediction that so far remains untested. The process that caused our big bang never stopped, and it will continue creating new ones for all time. This idea is known as eternal inflation. Eternal inflation leads to a multiverse, a reality populated by an infinite number of big bangs, with new big bangs occurring forever. This consequence is acknowledged by the originators of the theory. Quote, most important of all is the simple statement that once inflation happens, it produces not just one universe, but an infinite number of universes. End quote. Alan goof in eternal inflation and its implications. Quote, every experiment that brings better credence to inflationary theory brings us much closer to hints that the multiverse is real. And quote, Andrei Linde if this idea is right, if the multiverse of eternal inflation is real, then it has profound implications for the afterlife. Cosmic inflation's predictions for the afterlife. If eternal inflation is right, then our big bang is just one among an infinite succession of big bangs. Given that even rare happenings such as the entire history of life on earth is bound to repeat. It will repeat not just once or twice, but an infinite number of times. These other lives you will live will occur in another place in time very far away, and possibly very far in the future, but they will happen. Quote, in an eternally inflating universe, anything that can happen will happen. In fact, it will happen an infinite number of times. And quote, Alan goof in eternal inflation and its implications describing inflation. Alan Guth once said the universe may be the ultimate free lunch. Lind added to this. Quote, the inflationary universe is not just the ultimate free lunch. It's the only lunch where all possible dishes are served. And quote Andrei Linde every possible history of Earth from large changes where say mammals never evolved down to the smallest, such as a different choice for dinner happening the immensity of eternal inflation. So you will not only relive your life exactly as you have thus far, but in the infinitude of possibility, you will experience every variation. That life where you took the other job moved to the other city, where you went out to eat instead of staying in tune. nights ago, all of them happen have happened and will happen again. The idea of a cyclic reality is ancient. It's been described in the writings of ancient Egyptians and Mayans by early Indian and Greek philosophers, even in the Old Testament of Abrahamic religions. Quote, what has happened before will happen again, what has been done before will be done again. There is nothing new in the whole world. Look, they say, Here is something new. But no, it has all happened before long before we were born. And quote, Ecclesiastes one verses nine and 10, circa 450 to 200 BC, according to eternal inflation, after you die, you will be born again. You will live again. It may take a 1000 years or 100 trillion. But on the timescales of eternity, the time it requires is unimportant. What's important is that it's inevitable. We can't test this afterlife, but we can have tested cosmic inflation. So if cosmic inflation is true, you will live again. In fact, under cosmic inflation, you are destined to live an infinite number of times. For more on inflation, see what caused the Big Bang to mechanism and the afterlife, afterlife prediction, you will reincarnate mechanism to croute in the 1600s as the laws of motion were worked out the basic idea the body is a machine operating according to mechanical principles and following physical laws. Rene Descartes originated mechanism in his 1633 treaties of man in the 20th century. The invention of the computer revive theory. After Alan Turing invented the computer in 1936, he was among the first to speculate on the question of whether machines could think. Today, mechanism is assumed in all fields of science, from physics and chemistry to biology and neuroscience mechanism is perhaps our most strongly confirmed of theories, as no violation of the laws of motion has ever been observed. Moreover, mechanism is confirmed by advances such as brain implants, artificial limbs and sense organs. Mechanism predicts that the motion of everything, including animals and humans, can be described by simple mechanical laws. Since bodily motions are controlled by thoughts, then according to mechanism, the inner workings of our mind must also be mechanical. This implies that consciousness itself is the result of the mechanical operation of a machine in our case the machinery of the brain. Today this view is known variously as functionalism, or computational ism. Quote, I would like you to consider that these functions, including passion, memory, and imagination, follow from the mere arrangement of the machines organs every bit as naturally as the movements of a clock or other automaton follow from the arrangement of its counterweights and wheels. And quote, Rene Descartes treatise on man published in 1633. Quotes I propose to consider the question Can machines think if we wish to find such similarities, we should look rather for mathematical analogies of function. And quote, Alan Turing in Computing Machinery and intelligence 1950 in 1950, to envision the future where manmade thinking machines could do anything a human could do. Writing, we may hope that machines will eventually compete with men in all purely intellectual fields. See, when will AI take over? The theory that the brain is a machine seems innocuous, yet it leads to a radical prediction. It predicts the possibility of reincarnation that is a mind surviving and continuing through another's body mechanisms predictions for the afterlife, if mechanism is right, then we can rebuild or replace any part of the brain. So long as the new part is functionally equivalent, the overall function and behavior of the machine is preserved. Quote. So what is this mind of ours? What are these atoms with consciousness? Last week's potatoes that is what now can remember what was going on in my mind a year ago, a mind which has long ago been replaced. This is what it means when one discipline As how long it takes for the atoms of the brain to be replaced by other atoms to note that the thing which I call my individuality is only a pattern or dance. The atoms come into my brain dancer dance, then go out, always new atoms but always doing the same dance remembering what the dance was yesterday. And quote, Richard Fineman in What do you care what other people think 1988 mechanism even predicts that in principle, we could scan a person at an atomic scale and using advanced technology rebuild that same person at another location from a different pile of atoms. So long as the patterns of a mind are restored, the person survives. It would not matter if the original atoms or new atoms are used. The recreated person is physically and mechanically identical. No physical test could distinguish them for identical atoms or indices. distinguishable according to mechanism, we can survive the death, destruction and even complete annihilation of our bodies. As we can be restored to life wherever and whenever the pattern of our mind is reformed. Quote. This led to the idea much later popular among analytic philosophers of mind that the mental is a set of functions that operate through the body. Such an approach supports the idea that there is a place for the self within nature, that itself, even one that exists over time in different bodies need be not a supernatural phenomenon. And quote, Jonathan gunnery Professor philosophy this mechanism implies the possibility of reincarnation, but how likely is it that an identical mind and body will be recreated elsewhere? Your brain is incredibly complex, and is not apt to spontaneously appear out of nowhere? But your brain did not start this way. It began as a single cell. It arose from a state of zero complexity containing no information to become what it is now. A brain that is dying eventually reaches this same state of zero complexity. In the course of its decline, it can intersect and become identical with the state of the developing brain. It would have the same mechanical processes, patterns of behavior and information content. As a dying organism declines and its brain complexity approaches zero, its seat intersects with that of a developing organism elsewhere. The result is atella transportation, the brain dies in one location and is recreated in another location with different material. The mind and person could thereby survive the death of their body. Quote, when the body dies, the mechanism of the body holds The spirit is gone and the spirit finds a new body sooner or later, perhaps immediately, end quote. Alan Turing quote, we could become senile and become identical to a younger person, probably a baby asleep, and that wave a death and quote cibdol neitra physicist, the mechanistic view that there is no soul only matter following fixed mechanical rules implies the possibility of reincarnation. The soul is thereby recovered as something distinct from any particular physical body which can transcend the death of the body. There's only one way to be conscious of nothing. We might call this blank state, the primordial state of being. It is the state we were in before we were born, and the state we return to after we die, quote, try and imagine what It will be like to go to sleep and never wake up. Think about that. Children Think about that. It's one of the great wonders of life. What will it be like to go to sleep and never wake up? And if you think long enough about that, something will happen. You will find out, among other things, that it will pose the next question to you. What was it like to wake up after having never gone to sleep? That was when you were born. And quote, Alan Watts. This primordial state is the state from which all minds emerge and to which all beings return. Under mechanism, the existence of this singular state guarantees reincarnation as another being. Of course, this prediction of mechanism is untestable. Traveling through a low complexity state as a senile or dying brain requires we lose all or nearly all information. About the previous life. Accordingly, there's no way to tell whether a newborn's conscious mind is a continuation of some previous beings consciousness. The idea of reincarnation appears across cultures and times. It was expressed by ancient Greeks and Romans. It is found in the Kabbalah, Jewish mysticism as well as in Druid and Taoist philosophies. It is a tentative many Eastern religions, including Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism and Sikhism. Quote, just as the embodied soul continuously passes from childhood to youth to old age, similarly, at the time of death, the soul passes into another body. The y's are not diluted by this end quote. Bhagavad Gita verse 213, circa 200 BC, quote, the difference between death and birth is Only a thought moment, the last thought moment in this life conditions the first thought moment in the so called next life, which, in fact, is the continuity of the same series. And quote, while Paulo rahula, Buddhist scholar and mungkin what the Buddha taught 1959 according to mechanism, the experience of death is something akin to reincarnation. We wouldn't necessarily live as ourselves over and over again as cosmic inflation predicts. Instead we can survive as other beings, some not necessarily human in this world or others. So if mechanism is true, you will live again. You will survive death by reincarnating to experience the life of another being. For more on mechanism, see, can a machine Be conscious three, the concordance model and the afterlife, afterlife prediction you have infinite incarnations. The concurrence model, also known as the lambda cold dark matter, or lambda CDM model is the most widely accepted cosmological model. It is therefore called the standard model of cosmology. One assumption of this model is that the shape of the universe is flat. In other words, space has zero curvature. According to our best astronomical measurements, the curvature of space omega sub k equals 0.000 plus or minus 0.005. So as best we can tell, it is zero. But there is a surprising consequence of flat space. It implies this is infinite, not just infinite empty space, but infinite and filled with infinite stuff, infinite galaxies, infinite stars and infinite worlds. The curvature of space is the 3d equivalent of the 2d curvature of spheres surface. The surface of a small sphere, like a marble or ping pong ball is highly curved, it is easy for us to tell it is round. But the larger the sphere, the flatter its surface becomes. A basketball or beach ball is less curved than a marble. As fears grow to the size of planets, the surface starts to look flat. Now imagine the sphere kept growing until it was infinite in size. At that point, its curvature would be zero, its surface would be perfectly flat. The same is true of the curvature of space. If space is flat then space is infinite, quote, measurements of temperature and polarization and isotropy in the cosmic microwave background CMB have played a major role in establishing and sharpening the standard lambda CDM model of cosmology. The six parameter model based on a flatter universe dominated by a cosmological constant lambda and cold dark matter CDM with initial Gaussian adiabatic fluctuations seeded by inflation and quote, nine year Wilkinson microwave anisotropy probe w mmap observations, quote, they say that the curvature of the universe is tightly constrained around zero. In other words, the most likely model is that the universe is flat. A flat universe would also be infinite. And their calculations are consistent with this to end quote, MIT Technology Review. But even the idea that the universe is infinite leads to bizarre and unintuitive consequences for the afterlife. The concurrence models predictions for the afterlife if the concordance model is correct, and space goes on forever now It is not just space that is infinite, you become infinite. Within infinite space exist infinite occurrences of the Milky Way galaxy, infinite occurrences of our solar system, infinite occurrences of Earth and even infinite occurrences of you exactly as you are now. Quote, the idea such an alter ego seems strange and implausible, but it looks as if we will just have to live with it because it is supported by astronomical observations. The simplest and most popular cosmological model today predicts that you have a twin in a galaxy about 10 to the 10 to the power of 28 meters from here. This distance is so large that it is beyond astronomical, but that does not make your doppelganger any less real. The estimate is derived from elementary probability and does not even assume speculative modern physics merely that space is infinite, or at least sufficiently large in size and almost uniformly filled with matter as observation. indicates, in infinite space, even the most unlikely events must take place somewhere. And quote, Max Tegmark, cosmologists at MIT. infinite space implies you have infinite bodies throughout the universe. We each have unlimited physical incarnations. If some misfortune were to kill you here and now say a meteorite crashing down on you, you would nevertheless survive. You would survive through the lives of your other exact duplicates on distant Earth, otherwise identical except they're no meteorite foul. Since you can't experience those Earth's where you die. You only experienced those parts of the universe where you survive. The implication, you can't be killed, at least not everywhere. There will always be another version of you elsewhere who lives on, perhaps one who experiences a miracle Killing, cure or other happenstance of fate. So while a doctor who examines the body can determine that body to be dead, no doctor can prove a person to be dead, not without proving that person has no other incarnations surviving elsewhere in reality, whether or not the universe is infinite is an age old question. It takes back at least 2600 years with the Greek idea of the apparent sum. 2300 years ago, the Greek philosopher Epicurus argued for the principle of plenitude the idea that given infinite space and matter, there ought to be infinite worlds, some like ours, others different quotes. Furthermore, there are infinite worlds both like and unlike this world of ours, for the atoms being infinite in number, as was proved already are born on far out into space for those atoms, which are of such nature that our world could be created out of them or made by them have not been used up either on one world or on a limited number of worlds, nor again on all the worlds which are alike on those which are different from these, so that they know where exists and obstacle to the infinite number of the worlds. And quote, Epicurus in letter to Herodotus circa 300 BC. The idea of an infinite universe also appears in religious texts. It's found in the Indian religions of Hinduism, Buddhism, and Jainism. And in the Chinese philosophies of Confucianism and Taoism, in Abrahamic religions, the idea appears in Gnosticism, by faith, Mormonism, and in the writings of Christian and Islamic theologians. Quote, it is established by evidence that there exists beyond the world of void without a terminal limit, and it is established As well by evidence that God most high has power over all contingent beings. Therefore he the Most High has the power to create 1000 thousand worlds beyond this world, and, quote, fake out in our Razi 12th century Islamic theologian quotes now that we have a truth that the worlds of God are countless in their number, and infinite in their range, none can reckon or comprehend them except God, the all knowing the all wise and quote, Baha Allah, founder of our high faith in tablet of vafre. According to the concordance model, there are infinite worlds, some like this one, others different. Therefore, should you die here, your life nevertheless continues elsewhere, right where it left off. So if the concordance model is true, you will have infinite incarnations. accordingly. From your own point of view, you survive any peril. For more on the concordance model, see, does space go on forever? And how big is the universe for quantum mechanics and the afterlife? afterlife prediction, you are subjectively immortal. Quantum Mechanics started as a theory of quanta like particles, but later it was realized its rules apply to all particle types. For the previous century, evidence favored the idea that light is a wave. new findings at the turn of the 20th century brought this into doubt. Max Planck's finding on blackbody radiation in 1899 Albert Einstein's account of the photoelectric effect in 1905 band Neil spores model of the atom in 1913 All three results suggested that light was made of particles, not waves. It took nearly two decades for physicists to reconcile this. In 1925, Werner Heisenberg, Max Born and Pascal Jordan developed a theory based on matrices. Later that year, Erwin Schrodinger developed an alternate formula based on a wave equation. Heisenberg and Schrodinger as approaches gave the same answers. Later john von Neumann proved the two formulas were equivalent. We now have an answer to the question of his lighter particle or a wave. Light is made of particles, but the probable locations of these particles is governed by an equation similar to those describing waves. Today, quantum mechanics is thoroughly confirmed. It is responsible for the most accurate prediction in all of physics and is the basis of Numerous technologies, including lasers, transistors, and LEDs, we couldn't have high speed fiber optic networks, DVDs, flash memory, micro processors, or flat screen displays without these, but there is a disturbing consequence to the equations of quantum mechanics, particles can be in multiple locations at once. quantum computers speed up computations by exploiting the fact that particles can simultaneously be in multiple states at once. Schrodinger was the first to realize his equation, interpreted literally predicts an infinite number of unseen universes where every experimental possibility is realized a quantum multiverse, but he never published this idea. He mentioned it in a 1952 lecture, where he warned that what he was about to say might seem lunatic. He's lunatic idea when the Schrodinger equation seems to describe some different histories, they are not alternatives. But all really happens simultaneously. Quote, here was an eminent physicist joking that he might be considered mad. Why? For claiming that his own equation, the very one for which we had won the Nobel Prize might be true. And quote, David Deutsch, inventor of the quantum computer in the beginning of infinity. The idea was not published until five years later, by graduate students at Princeton, whoever at the third independently reached the same conclusion. He published it as his 1957 doctoral thesis. Quote, the universal wavefunction must contain amplitudes for all possible worlds depending on all quantum mechanical possibilities in the past, and this one is forced to believe in the equal reality of an infinity of possible worlds. And quote, Richard Fineman who won the 1965 Nobel Prize in Physics for quantum electrodynamics. In 1981 Richard Fineman was the first to have the idea of a quantum computer, a computer that exploits the resources in parallel universes to speed up calculations. In 1984, the physicist David Deutsch showed how to build one. Dutch believes quantum computers can provide near irrefutable evidence of many worlds. Quote, since the universe as we see it lacks the computational resources to do the calculations. Where are they being done? It can only be in other universes. quantum computers share information with huge numbers of versions of themselves throughout the multiverse. And quote, David Deutsch quantum computers are now reality, you can sign up for free to run your own programs on quantum computers that quantum computers exist forces us to confront the existence of alternate universes. If this prediction of multiple parallel histories is true, then we live in a reality where anything that can happen does happen. This not only affects life as we know it, but also the afterlife. Quantum mechanics is predictions for the afterlife. Quantum Mechanics implies the existence of unlimited alternate histories and universes. Within these universes are unlimited alternate versions of us, each living out every permutation of every possibility. One implication of this idea is a form of immortality. Whoever it who originated the many worlds idea was the first to introduce the concept of quantum immortality, the idea that because we only perceive branches of The Schrodinger equation where we survive, it is impossible to die from one's own point of view. In a discussion with his employee Keith Lynch, also a trained physicist Lynch recounts that ever it raised the question of whether it makes sense for a believer in many worlds to play high stakes Russian Roulette as in some universe, a version of you is bound to win. Quote, Everett firmly believed that his many worlds theory guaranteed him immortality. his consciousness, he argued, is bounded, each branching to follow whatever path does not lead to death, and so on ad infinitum. And quote, Keith Lynch in the 1980s, others realize this implication of quantum mechanics quote, for an example, to illustrate this lack of uniqueness, we might return to the double slit experiment and suppose the right hand detector is attached to a gun which shoots kills me if it records the particle. Then after one particle had passed through the experiment, the wave function would contain a piece with me alive and the piece with me dead. One I would certainly be alive. So we appear to have a sort of Russian Roulette, in which we cannot really lose. Indeed, since all aging or decaying processes are presumably quantum mechanical in nature, there is always a small part of the wavefunction in which they will not have occurred. Thus to be completely fanciful immortality is guaranteed, I will always be alive in the only part of the wavefunction of which I am aware and quote, you and J. Squires in the mystery of the quantum world 1986. The concept was independently described by roboticist hands more of x in his 1987 book mind children, and also by the logician Bruno marschallin. His 1988 paper on fatigue theory Philosophy display, we can only experience the branches where we survive. Accordingly, everyone is subjectively from their viewpoint immortal. Whenever, in some particular history, your life ends, there is always some other history in the multiverse where your life continues in our branch, whoever died in 1982 at age 51, but if his thesis is right, there are other branches where he is alive to this day. Even unlikely events such as quantum tunneling to a younger age will for some of our lucky cells, forestall the decline of old age. Everett's daughter, Liz ever it took her life in 1996. In her notes, she expressed hope of meeting her father in a parallel universe. It is especially tragic when a young person dies. There is so much unrealized potential, so many experiences Never had. Under quantum mechanics that potential is not unrealized only realized elsewhere in reality in other histories of the multiverse, the idea of an infinite reality filled with infinite universes can be found in many religions. Quote, there are innumerable universes besides this one. And although they are unlimitedly large, they move about like atoms in you. And quote Bhagavata Forerunner 616 37 sec 800 to 1000 ad, quote, God has the power to fill the vacuum with an infinite number of universes, and quote fakeout in our raazi in massive volume five, see 1200 ad. If the quantum multiverse is real, then we never experienced death. Further one's life is not constrained To a single path. Rather, each life branches out to explore every possibility. We experience all of them, every Road Not Taken. If quantum mechanics is true, there are branches of history in which you will never born or died at a younger age. But despite the opinions of people in those branches, you are here alive and well. Those who have died from our perspective feel the same from the position of whichever branches they survive in. If quantum mechanics is true, you are subjectively immortal. Accordingly, from your own point of view, you will live forever. For more on quantum mechanics, see does everything that can happen actually happen. Five, special relativity and the afterlife, afterlife prediction you have an eternal existence. Special Relativity redefined our ideas of space and time, both become merged into a unified four dimensional hole called spacetime. Albert Einstein developed special relativity in 1905. His miracle year. As incredible as its predictions were, every time a prediction of relativity has been tested, it has been proven right. Special Relativity overturned and ideas powered by Newton and believed since the time of Euclid who established geometry in 300 BC, the idea that time and space are absolutes. If time were absolute, then everyone should agree on the order of events and what exists and happens in the present moment of time. Absolute time also implies Time flows at the same rate for everyone. relativity forced us to dispense with all these ideas, the right time flows, the order of events and the content of the present or not Salute but relative different observers can disagree. Quote, are two events. For example, the two strokes of lightning A and B, which are simultaneous with reference to the railway embankment also simultaneous relatively to the train, which will show directly that the answer must be in the negative. End quote. Albert Einstein in relativity, the special and the general theory 1916. The only way to reconcile their different viewpoints is through a four dimensional reality where time and change are illusions. asking what event happens first, is like asking what seed comes first in an apple. Events are embedded in spacetime like seeds are embedded in apples. There is no absolute ordering to the seeds. The order you encounter them depends on the angle you choose to slice through the apple One of the first to notice this implication of special relativity was Einstein's teacher Hermann Minkowski. Since then, Einstein and other physicists have adopted it. It is now a standard view among physicists. Quote, the views of space and time which I wish to lay before you have sprung from the soil of experimental physics, And therein lies their strength, they are radical, henceforth space by itself, and time by itself are doomed to fade away into mere shadows, and only a kind of union of the two will preserve an independent reality and quote, Einstein's Professor Herman Min koski, in space and time 1909. Quote, it appears therefore, more natural to think of physical reality as a four dimensional existence instead of as hitter to the evolution of a three dimensional existence. And quote, Albert Einstein in relativity, the special and General Theory 15th edition 1952. Should special relativity be correct, it has implications for the afterlife. Special relativity is predictions for the afterlife. In four dimensional space time change as the future coming into being and then disappearing into a non existent past doesn't happen. According to relativity, the word now becomes like the word here. Neither word reflects the property of the universe, but instead reflects the property of the person speaking it. Quote, just as we envision all spaces really being out there as really existing. We should also envision all of time as really being out there as really existing to end quote. The physicist Brian Greene in the Elegant Universe 1999 So if the four dimensional ism of special relativity is true, then we are eternal beings, we live forever across all times spanning our existence. Quote, of course, man is four dimensional just like all other organisms and objects. This mere situation implies that there is a life after death, namely, that part of the four dimensional human being that exists after the moment of his death and quote, cw varieties can four dimensional reality continued 2018 on March 15 1955, Michele besso, a dear friend to Einstein died, Einstein wrote a letter of condolence to besos. widow, quote, now he has again proceeded me a little in parting from this strange world. This has no importance for people like us who believe in physics, the separation between past, present and future has only the importance of an admittedly tenacious illusion. And quote, Albert Einstein, in a letter to besos family 1955 relativity tells us we must dispense with the idea that time flows or that there's an objective present. In this revised view, Julius Caesar is alive. He's just in a location 2000 light years away in space time. From Caesar's viewpoint, the present is a little before zero ad ends, none of us are yet born. Our opinion that he is long dead doesn't bother him. No more than the opinions of people born in 4000 ad bother us. It's also no coincidence the present year happens to be a time during your life rather than a billion years in the past or future. You will always find yourself at a point in time where you will exist. Some 2500 years ago, the Greek philosopher Pamina DS argued that existence is timeless and any appearance of change is an illusion. Quote, what is is uncreated and indestructible, alone, complete, immovable, and without end and quote, communities in the way of the truth, circa 475 BC, we also find the idea of timeless existence within Eastern religions. For example, in Hinduism, quote, the unchanging arm is the all its expansion is what has been, what is what shall be, and what is beyond the three times is also arm. For all this is the eternal and this self is the eternal and this self has four aspects end quote. do que apana shad circa 200 ad, religions that considered God to know the future, or God to be outside of time often described future events as already existing, at least within the mind of God. Quote, God, bowing to his infallible precedents of the future has appointed and ordained from eternity all events occurring in time, especially those that directly proceed from or at least are influenced by man's freewill. And, quote, The Catholic Encyclopedia. There exists times long before you were born and times long after you died. But despite the opinions of people in those other times, you are here, alive and well within the time span of your life. That is our true nature as four dimensional beings. many religions promise eternal life if special relativity is true, You already have it. You exist eternally. Your life is yours forever. For more on special relativity, see what is time. Six, biological immortality in the afterlife. afterlife prediction, you can be made immortal. Biological immortality refers to the discovery by biologists that there exist in nature species that not only don't age, but can live forever gerontologists like Aubrey de Grey, and technologists like Ray Kurzweil, believe the ills of aging are in principle curable. Many organizations are now working on if not devoted to a cure for aging. This includes the sense Research Foundation, Google Vax Calico, human longevity Harvard's Paul F. Glenn center for biology of aging research UCLA molecular biology Institute, the American Academy of anti Aging medicine by Aviva turn bio technologies unity biotechnology, the Methuselah foundation and H x. Perhaps aging and death are not inevitable. According to the current understanding, aging is wear and tear manifest at the cellular level. between 1955 and 1982. Science went from almost no understanding of aging to having what is now considered a complete picture. No new forms of age related damage have been discovered since 1982. Aubrey de Grey outlines strategies for engineered Negligible Senescence scns techniques that, if mastered, could reverse age related damage. In 2005, mit challenged molecular biologists to find any flaw in sense and offered a $20,000 prize to whomever made the best argument. Despite that, it was the opinion of the judges that no submission met the criterion of the challenge. In disproved sense, quote, there is nothing in biology yet found that indicates the inevitability of death. This suggests to me that it is not at all inevitable and that it is only a matter of time before the biologists discover what it is that is causing us the trouble and that the terrible universal disease or temporary illness of the human's body will be cured. And quote, Richard Fineman, the pleasure of finding things out 1999 quote, we will transcend death and that natural cycle. We're not just grapes on the vine, we are overcoming that natural process that we emerged from. Yes, we came from nature, but we are going to surpass it through the power of our technology, which comes from our mind made manifest in the real world. And quote, Ray Kurzweil should a cure for aging be found in your Lifetime has major consequences for the afterlife for what is an afterlife if you never die. Biological immortality is predictions for the afterlife. If biological immortality is right, then our lives could theoretically be extended to thousands, millions, perhaps even billions of years. We could then experience thousands or millions of human lifetimes. In 1900, life expectancy in the US was 47 years. By 2000, it had risen to 75 years, an increase of 28 years over a century or three months every year. Should future technology enable life expectancy to grow by 12 months per year, then humanity will achieve technological immortality. Quote, we've been expanding our life expectancy for thousands of yours. So it was 19 thousands of years ago. 37 in 1800 We're gonna get to a point 10 to 15 years from now, where we are adding more time than it is going by to our remaining life expectancy. And quote, Ray Kurzweil author of Fantastic Voyage live long enough to live forever. Aubrey de Grey has coined this concept longevity escape velocity. He believes the first person to live to 1000 is already alive on this planet. Quote, I think the first person to live to 1000 might be 60 already, and quote, Aubrey de Grey in 2004 were you younger than 16 in 2004. Though we don't possess technological immortality, today, you might be young enough to live to that future where we do. The 3500 year old Greek leader of the Hindu tradition describes a drink of the gods called amritha it confers to its drinker's immortality. The Book of Genesis compiled 2600 years ago describes a tree called the tree of life in the Garden of Eden. Eating from this tree provided eternal youth and immortality for those in the garden. Around 200 BC, China's first Emperor Qin Shi Huang, sent 1000 people in search of the elixir of life non returned. Every culture has a name for it amritha Soma and Rosia nectar of the gods tree of life, the elixir of life Philosopher's Stone, fountain of youth, all represent the same dream, escaping the fate of old age and death. Modern medicine is on the verge of finding a real fountain of youth. Scientists have used gene manipulation to program creatures to live 10 times longer. They have tested drug cocktails that reverse aging In humans, and discovered how to reset cells to more youthful stages. The implication is if you can live long enough, you can be made immortal. You could live forever, or at least as long as you want. For more on biological immortality, see can aging be cured? Seven, the simulation hypothesis and the afterlife. afterlife prediction you are already immortal. The simulation hypothesis is the idea that what we take to be physical reality is not the true reality. But a computer generated simulation. Hands more events was the first to propose the idea in 1998. In 2003, Nick Bostrom formalized the theory with his simulation argument, but it was a new name for an old idea, the dream argument. This is the idea that we cannot tell what is real from what is a dream The Dream argument appears in Socrates is the theatres in 369 bc and in the writings of Zhu Wang Joe from around the same time. In 1849, the poet Edgar Allan Poe asked is all that we see or seem that a dream within a dream. Today, we teach this lesson to infants. Our Nursery Rhymes tell them that life is but a dream. Today, modern technology and ideas like virtual reality, computer simulation, video games, and mind uploading, allow us to conceive of scenarios where what we take as real may in fact, be a sort of dream. Quote, when connected to a virtual reality, the location you seem to inhabit does not exist in the usual physical sense. Rather, you are in a kind of computer generated dream and quote, Han small events in pigs in cyberspace 1992 In a few decades, computer games have transformed from flat and pixelated to immersive photorealistic three dimensional worlds. How realistic might video games of the coming decades and centuries be? might they be so realistic that we could be in one and not realize it? With full sensory integration? You could experience any taste or smell, ache or pain, sight or sound. You could feel balance and touch, even hunger. With memory integration. You could be made to believe you with someone else, or temporarily forget who you really are. The idea has captured our fascination in fiction. There is the play life is a dream from 1636. The book simulacrum three from 1964 and the movies, the matrix and the 13th floor from 1999. But could such works of fictions become a reality? A more pressing question. How do we know we're not already in some kind of matrix? After all, we already put simpler creatures in won. In 2016, researchers at the open worm foundation uploaded the brains of worms into virtual environments. Project Leader Steven last and asked, Is it possible that what we are proposing is to build the world's first worm matrix, and environment where a nervous system would not know if it was in the real world or if it was in a virtual world? Nick Bostrom simulation argument gives us a way to estimate the probability that we are in a simulated reality. It turns the dream argument into a rigorous scientific question we can investigate. The simulation argument takes the form of a trilemma quote, The argument shows that at least one of the following propositions is true one, the human species is very likely to go extinct before for reaching a post human stage to any post human civilization is extremely unlikely to run a significant number of simulations of their evolutionary history or variations thereof. Three, we are almost certainly living in a computer simulation. And quote, Nick Bostrom in a you living in a computer simulation 2003. When asked whether our reality might be a simulation produced by information entities, the roboticist hands more of its answered, quote, of course. In fact, the robots will recreate us any number of times, whereas the original version of our world exists at most only once. Therefore, statistically speaking, it's much more likely we're living in a vast simulation than in the original version, and quote, hence more events in interviews. For wired 1995 according to Boston's argument, should humanity survive to the point where it can run simulations of humans living at earlier points in history, then it is a near certainty that you are in a simulation now, in that case, you would not be an original human being living at this time in humanity's development. Instead, you would live in the distant future, a time when humanity has mastered virtual reality and experiences and perhaps conquered aging, disease and scarcity. It's conceivable that in this time, humanity will have transcended its corporal reality. We might live as spiritual beings without physical bodies as minds that can inhabit any virtual reality of our choosing. Simulation hypothesis is predictions for the afterlife. If the simulation hypothesis is right then what you consider to be your life a life as a physical being in a physical world. May in actuality via computer generated dream should you awaken from this dream You will recall your true nature and immortal being who has lived many lives on many physical worlds. You will also find yourself to be in a familiar place, perhaps reunited with those who know from this life and others, beings who have shared countless lives and experiences with over billions of years, you will exist in a realm where anything that can be imagined is possible. A place that knows no suffering, disease, hunger or death. Quotes and afterlife in a different simulation or at a different level of reality after death in the simulation would be a real possibility. It is even conceivable that the simulators might reward or punish their simulated creatures based to how they behave, perhaps according to familiar moral or religious norms, a possibility that gains a little bit of credibility from From the possibility that the simulators might be the descendants of earlier humans who recognize these norms, and quote, Nick Bostrom in the simulation argument FAQ 2008. This is inevitable if the universe is infinite. In that case, every conscious experience has infinite explanations. Among them is the case where your current experience exists within a simulation. Quote, when we die, the rules surely change. As our brains and bodies cease to function in the normal way, it takes greater and greater contrivances and coincidences to explain continuing consciousness by their operation, we lose our ties to physical reality, that in the space of all possible worlds, that cannot be the end. Our consciousness continues to exist in some of those and we will always find ourselves in worlds where we are exist and never in ones where we don't. The nature of the next simplest world that can host us after we abandon physical law, I cannot guess and quote, hands more events in simulation consciousness existence 1998 accordingly, whether you are in a simulation or not, doesn't matter, for when you die, it will be as if you had always been in a simulation, as your consciousness only continues along those paths where it can. According to Bostrom in a big world cosmology, all possible human observations are in fact made by somebody somewhere. Unlike the reincarnation suggested by mechanism where we lose memories of this life, the simulation hypothesis implies a type of resurrection, where memories of this life are preserved. upon death, we will awaken from this dream and find ourselves as immortal spiritual beings reading united with other spiritual beings, as we know from experience, if we dream of having a winning lottery ticket, when we awaken we cannot take it with us. All we can take from a dream are the experiences, memories, and lessons we learned in it. These ideas are not only ancient, but nearly universal among the world's religions. We find in them the idea that the world is a dream that we will return to a plane of existence with memories learned here, and that we can break free from the cycle of reincarnation. In Zoroastrianism, one of the oldest surviving religions, it is said that one seven or so is sent to the mortal world to collect the experiences of life. The Taoist philosophers uang Joe wrote 2300 years ago, someday there will be a great awakening when we know that this is all a great dream. Quote. We are not human beings having a spiritual experience. We are spiritual beings having a human experience and quote, Jesuit priest Thiele are to shut down in the phenomenon of man 1955 among Abrahamic religions, Jews call it Olam haba The World to Come. Christians call it the kingdom of God, heaven. Muslims call it Jannah paradise, all describe a place devoid of suffering without toil, sickness or hunger, and inhabited by immortal souls without bodies. Quote, in the world to come, there is nothing corporeal and no material substances. There are only souls of the righteous without bodies, and quote, Jewish philosopher, my manatees circa 1100 ad, quote, what I am saying, dear brothers and sisters, is that our physical bodies cannot inherit the kingdom of God. These dying bodies cannot inherit what will last forever. And quote, first book of Corinthians 1551, circa 50 ad within Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism and Sikhism The ultimate goal of all souls is to break free from the perpetual cycle of reincarnation in the physical world. This cycle is called samsara. To break from this cycle is known as achieving Moksha, or Nirvana. Such a liberated soul can then be free of the repeated cycle of birth, life, death and reincarnation, and all the suffering they're in. quotes. Make me immortal in that realm where happiness and transports were joys and felicities combined and longing wishes are fulfilled. And quote, read read amandla nine came 130 Line 11 circa 1500 BC, within Buddhism is the idea of a pure land where one is free from the cycles of rebirth. Once reborn into the Pure Land one does not fall back into samsara unless one chooses to do so to help other beings. All the simulation hypothesis requires is our prowess of creating virtual reality to keep improving. Moreover, if reality is big enough, as with eternal inflation, the concordance model or the quantum multiverse, then it is guaranteed that we are already within a simulation. There are reasons to believe the ultimate purpose of life is to have experiences, simulation and virtual reality thereby represent the final goal of technological development. See, what is the meaning of life. So if the simulation hypothesis is right, you are already immortal. You will awaken to Find yourself as an immortal being who lives in a realm of infinite possibilities where any experience or life is possible. For more on the simulation hypothesis, see, are we in a computer simulation, hate the technological singularity and the afterlife. After life prediction, you will be resurrected. The technological singularity is a theoretical future point that life technology and the universe appear to be evolving towards one of maximum consciousness, creativity and intelligence. The idea was first described in the writings of the Jesuit priest Tejada shot down in the 1930s, but it was suppressed until after his death in 1955. The shotgun believed the universe's evolving towards the point of maximum consciousness which he called the Omega point. In 1956, a similar idea appeared in Isaac Asimov's the last question of the 500 books azimoff published, it was his favorite story. The first discussion of the technological singularity among scientists was a conversation between Stanislaw ulam and john von Neumann. Quote, one conversation centered on the ever accelerating progress of technology and changes in the mode of human life, which gives the appearance of approaching some essential singularity in the history of the race beyond which human affairs as we know them, could not continue. And quote, Stanislav ulam in 1958, recounting a conversation with john von Neumann technology advances rapidly for how much longer can this trend continue? where might we be when it ends? computing power grows exponentially. Since 1900, we've seen attend to the power of 18 fold increase in the price performance of computing It's not just technology that is changing ever faster. Even important historical events are happening at an ever accelerating pace. When Ray Kurzweil plotted major historical events paradigm shifts from 15 different lists, it revealed the average time between paradigm shifts to be shrinking towards zero. Should these trends continue for just a few more decades, we will reach a point where the time between major historical events approaches zero, as if all future progress will happen at once, quote, essential historic developments match a binary scale marking exponentially declining temporal intervals, each half the size of the previous one and equal to a power of two times the human lifetime. It seems that history itself is about to converge around 2014 and omega point to the shantung 1916 or historic singularity. Stannis left ewe lamb 1958 and quote, father of modern AI, Juergen shmoo, BA in his history converging 2006. Quote, evolution moves towards greater complexity, greater elegance, greater knowledge, greater intelligence, greater beauty, greater creativity, and greater levels of subtle attributes such as love. In every monotheistic tradition, God is likewise described as all of these qualities only without limitation, infinite knowledge, infinite intelligence, infinite beauty, infinite creativity, infinite love, and so on. Of course, even the accelerating growth of evolution never achieves an infinite level. But as it explodes exponentially, it certainly moves rapidly in that direction. So evolution moves inexorably towards this conception of God, although never quite reaching this ideal And quote, futurist and inventor Ray Kurzweil in the Singularity is Near 2005 quotes. In the final anthropic principle, or if anything like an infinite amount of computation taking place is going to be true, which I think is highly plausible one way or another, then the universe is heading towards something that might be called omniscience. And quote, physicist David Deutsch in the anthropic universe 2006. If this idea is right, the ultimate end of progress is to reach the limits of knowledge, complexity and intelligence. Should such a state be reached by anyone anywhere, there are consequences for the afterlife. Technological singularities predictions for the afterlife should a technological singularity occurs at any future time. It will possess the power to computation leverage Record anyone from the past. It can do this by simulating alternate histories, brute forcing possible life forms, or by reconstructing the past by collecting all available records. Once this super intelligence or omega point knows your state at the end of your life, it can allow the simulation to keep going. It may provide you with an afterlife, perhaps even one of your choosing. Quote, a super intelligence could also create opportunities for us to vastly increase our own intellectual and emotional capabilities. And it could assist us in creating a highly appealing experiential world in which we could live lives devoted to joyful game playing relating to each other, experiencing personal growth and to living closer to our ideals. And quote, Nick Bostrom in ethical issues in advanced ai 2003 Frank tipler describes how this over Make a point could allow the resurrected to interact united in a kind of virtual heaven. Quote, the body and memory collection could be setting any simulated background environment the Omega point wished a simulated world indistinguishable from the long extinct society and physical universe of the revived dead person, or even a world that never existed, but one as close as logically possible to the ideal fantasy world of the resurrected dead person. Furthermore, all possible combinations of resurrected dead can be placed in the same simulation and allowed to interact. For example, the reader could be placed in a simulation with all of his or her ancestors and descendants. And quote, The cosmologists Frank J. tipler. In the Omega point is a charlatan 1989. more of it says that future artificial intelligence is of overwhelming processing power, we'll be able to reconstruct human society In every detail by tracing atomic events backward in time, quote, it will cost them very little to preserve us this way. They will, in fact, be able to recreate a model of our entire civilization, with everything and everyone in it down to the atomic level, simulating our atoms with machinery that's vastly subatomic, and quote, hence more events in interview for Wired 1995 Why might an Omega point bother to do this? Would you do nothing if you were in a position to save billions of lives and could do so at little cost to yourself? See, are their universal values the afterlife predicted by the technological singularity is not unlike the resurrection envisioned by various religions. many religions believe that in the future, God will bring the dead back to life and provide those resurrected beings and it Eternal life, living with God and all other resurrected beings. That perfection of the world and resurrection of the dead is an ancient idea. It appears in Zoroastrianism which is 4000 years old and in the religion of ancient Greece is also found in the eschatology is of Abrahamic religions, Judaism, Christianity, Islam and Bahai faith, quote, it will happen in a moment in the blink of an eye when the last trumpet is blown. For when the trumpet sounds, those who have died will be raised to live forever, and we who are living will also be transformed. And quote, first book of Corinthians 1552, circa 50 ad. Early Jews and Christians believed that heaven would be a place formed on earth or in the sky, rather than in some alternate plane of existence. God would refashion the world creating the worlds to come. If the technological singularity is right, there will exist a godlike mind with the power of resurrection. Should it exercise this power, you will be resurrected and reunited with others to share in an eternal afterlife. For more on the Omega point, see, Does God Exist? Nine, the transection hypothesis and the afterlife. afterlife prediction, you are part of a godlike mind. The transection hypothesis is a theory that supposes The reason we haven't encountered alien civilizations is that they leave our universe. It was developed in 2011 by john m smart and builds off the ideas of john Barrow, who in 1998 proposed micro dimensional mastery. This is the speculation that advanced technological civilizations pursue ever finer scales of manipulation of matter. pace and energy. building structures of the nano and sub nano scales not only improves computational speed and data storage densities, but also makes computation more efficient. The computer operating at the ultimate physical limits of speed and memory looks like a black hole. Black holes are useful. They're the longest lasting objects in the universe. They are also the ultimate power plants, heat sinks and computers. They can even act as portals to the future. The transcendent hypothesis predicts advanced civilizations and to black holes. They disconnect from our space and time and in so doing gain maximum computation for the mass and energy put in. Why would anyone choose to enter a black hole or cut themselves off from the rest of the universe? What's there to do inside a black hole in a word, everything the company mutational resources in a black hole offer knowledge of other universes and realities, insights about alternate histories and timelines and provide for any imaginable experience. computation is the ultimate tool for explorers. It allows one to explore any possible Outer Space via reality simulation and access any possible in a space a conscious experience via brain simulation. While telescopes only let us see objects of our universe, computers let us peer into other universes. We can see and extract information about objects in other realities. Likewise, other universes that permit construction of computers can peer into our universe and observers, quote, maybe someday, despite current evidence, or means will be devised to peer into adjacent universes sporting very different laws of nature, and we will see what else is possible or perhaps in half pretence of adjacent universe is comparing two hours and quote, Carl Sagan in pale blue dot 1994. Today, we have devised this means, in fact, simulation is now an indispensable tool for today's cosmologists. It allows them to explore and experiment with alternative universes and cosmic histories. Quote, with the power of modern supercomputers, we are now able to replicate cosmic evolution with great precision through simulations. So we are now able to make replicas of the universe in a computer and this is a very powerful tool that cosmologists have developed in order to understand the universe. And quote, Carlos Franken what we still don't know. Why are we here 2000 and for quotes, computer simulation like a teller scope for the mind's eye extends mental vision beyond the nearby realm of simple mathematical objects to distant worlds such as complex as physical reality potentially full of living beings, warts, minds and all. Our own world is among this list of abstractly conceivable ones defined by the formal relationships we call physical law as any simulation is defined by its internal rules, and quote, hence more events in simulation consciousness existence 1998. If the transection hypothesis is right, advanced civilizations will be drawn to explore the unlimited potential realities of consciousness and possibilities of existence. This creates another possible afterlife. The transection hypothesis is predictions for the afterlife. There are two forms of knowledge, one third person knowledge knowledge that is shareable and communicable knowledge that can be found in books or stored as facts. For example, the population of Paris or the height of Mount Everest, to first person knowledge, knowledge that comes from direct experience which cannot be learned any other way, conscious and sensory experiences, emotions, and feelings. This knowledge is not communicable. It must be felt firsthand. For example, the smell of a rose or the pain of a bee sting. transcended civilization might use simulation to learn everything there is to know about the history, evolution and biochemistry of apple trees, but without creating conscious experiences, they would still know very little about what there is to know about apples, such as civilization would lack first person knowledge. They wouldn't know how an apple tastes to human taste buds know how an apple pie baking in the And smells, they could have all the book knowledge there is while remaining ignorant of rich conscious experiences. A civilization or mind interested in knowing everything must perceive not only third person knowledge, but also first person knowledge. This requires that it not only simulate everything, but be everything and try everything. After all, that is also where all the fun is. That super intelligence operating on a black hole or planet sized computer could have the mental experiences of every living being that ever lived on an entire planet. According to Bostrom, such a computer could simulate the entire mental history of humankind by using less than 1,000,000th of its processing power for one second. In that microsecond, it could live out a billion years saga seen through the eyes of every person who ever lived from each generation, tracing progress from the person who invented the wheel to the life of the first person who took The first step on the surface of the moon. Quote, do we find ourselves in a new body or no body? it probably depends more on the details of our own consciousness than did the original physical life. Perhaps we are most likely to find ourselves reconstituted in the minds of super intelligence successes, or perhaps in dreamlike worlds or AI programs where psychological rather than physical rules dominate, and quote, hands more events in simulation consciousness, existence. 1998. Quote, confession, if I love computation realism, it is because it entails the existence of many things not physically present, notably those incredible deep universal dreamers which keep losing themselves in an incredible labyrinth of partially shareable dreams, meeting ladders and ladders of surprises, self multiplying, self fusing, and which are Partially terrestrial and partially divine creatures, and quote, The logician Bruno marschallin discussion list 2011 its super intelligences exist with the aim of learning all there is to know this knowledge includes all first person knowledge, all experiences. Among the set of all experiences is the experience of what it is like to be you in this exact moment. Accordingly, if civilizations transcend, then your current experience in life can also be explained as the exploration of a transcendent super intelligence which may exist in this universe, if not another. Accordingly, when your life is over, you may wake up as a godlike mind, a super intelligence who has lived not only your life but the lives of every being who has ever lived. The idea that God knows every beings perspective can be found in many religions. In several it is stated explicitly Quote, to the Hindu, for example, God didn't create the universe, but God became the universe. Then he forgot that he became the universe. Why would God do this? Basically, for entertainment? You create a universe. And that in itself is very exciting. But then what? Should you sit back and watch this universe of yours having all the fun? No, you should have all the fun yourself. To accomplish this God transformed into the whole universe. God is the universe and everything in it. But the universe doesn't know that because that would ruin the suspense. The universe is God's great drama, and God is the stage the actors and the audience all at once. The title of this epic drama is the great unknown outcome. Throw in potent elements like passion love, hate, good, evil, free will and who knows what will happen? No one knows. And that is what keeps the universe interesting. But everyone will have a good time. And there is never really any danger because everyone is really God. And God is really just playing around and quote, Warren v sharp in philosophy for the series, heretic 2002. Under this view, the world is a play called Leela and one entity plays the role of every actor. It is you, you are it and it is everyone. If God is omniscient, then God must know what it is like to be you. How then can we tell whether you are you are part of God's perfect knowledge of what it feels like to be you in this moment. This uncertainty about one's true identity was pointed out by Xu Chang Jo 2300 years ago in his time telling of the butterfly dream. Quote, once Zoo NGO dreamed he was a butterfly, a butterfly flitting and fluttering about happy with himself and doing as he pleased. He didn't know that he was doing Joe. Suddenly he woke up and there he was solid and unmistakable zu ang Joe. But he didn't know if he was doing Joe who had dreamt he was a butterfly or a butterfly dreaming that he was uang Joe and quote zoomerang Joe enjoying z circa 300 BC. According to the transection hypothesis, there exists minds with the experience of billions of lives. There would exist minds that know what it is like to be every creature that's lived on earth and minds that know what it's like to be creatures born to other possible universes. So if the transection hypothesis is true, you are part of a godlike mind. When this life ends you can awaken as this being one in possession of the life memories not only of this life, but the lives of all others. For more on the transection hypothesis, see, are we alone? And can life survive the heat death of the universe? 10 open individualism and the afterlife, afterlife prediction, you live wherever there is life. Open individualism, like other theories of personal identity aims to answer the question which experiences belong to which persons. The theory of open individualism was first proposed in 1990 by Arnold zuboff and expanded upon in a 2004 book by Daniel colac. But the idea had adherence among scientists going back decades. The common sense view of personal identity is that each person is identified by either the material continuation of somebody body or the psychological continuation of some mind. In this way we can say a person at age 80 is ultimately the same person as when they were 10. But this common sense view breaks down when we consider less common situations. cases like split brains, cloning, merging memories, fusing minds, duplication machines, faulty transporters, and amnesia. If we create several identical copies of a person, which does the original become one of them, all of them, none of them. These situations reveal that the common sense view which colac calls closed individualism leads to inconsistency and therefore must be false. But if the common sense view is wrong, what's the alternative? According to open individualism, you quote, possess all conscious life whenever In all time and wherever in all the universe or beyond any conscious being stands, sits, crawls, jumps, lies, rolls, flies or swims. It's experience of doing so is yours and is yours now. You are that being. You are fish and fowl, deer and Hunter, you are saints and sinners. And quote, Arnold zuboff in oneself, the logic of experience 1990 if closed individualism is false, it leads to open individualism. This is the idea that there is only one experience to which all experiences belong. Quote, this is also the resolution of the tension between the rival criteria for personal identity, psychological and bodily continuity. As with brain by section, there is here an embarrassment of riches by the side of the classic debate has the upper hand when it argues positively that the person could remain the same if its own pet criterion was maintained even if the other was wholly absent. And indeed, one could easily imagine a person going along into another body with a transfer to that body's brain of his pattern of memories. And yet one can also easily imagine the persons continuing in the same body with an experience of amnesia or false memories. It seems that all such content of experience in different bodies or with differing mental states could be mine. And quote, Arnold zuboff in oneself, the logic of experience 1990 quote, The traditional common sense view that we are each a separate person numerically identical to ourselves over time, I, the personal identities closed under known individuating and identifying borders, what the author calls closed, individualism. shown to be incoherent. The demonstration that personal identity is not closed but open points collectively in one of two new directions, either there are no continuously existing self identical persons over time in the sense ordinarily understood the sort of view developed by philosophers as diverse as Buddha human most recently, Derek parfit what the author calls empty individualism, or LCI everyone AI personal identity is not closed under known individuating and identifying borders, what the author calls open individualism. And quote, Daniel colac, in IMU, the metaphysical foundations for global ethics 2004. If there is just one experiencer a single person who possesses all conscious experience, then it has major implications for the afterlife. Open individualism is predictions for the afterlife. What were the preconditions necessary? For you to be born for you to be blessed with life and consciousness. Did it require specific atoms in your first cell? Or would any atoms do? Did it require specific genes? Or might you still be alive if your eyes were a different color? Open individualism supposes that there are no necessary preconditions that regardless of the material, or genes, or even parents, you would be born and then you would experience life. But then it follows from this that you must also experience the lives of every being born anywhere to any parents. At first, this sounds ridiculous on its face. Surely we would know if we also experienced the lives of others, wouldn't we? Things are not so clear. Even in our own lives, we have experiences that we no longer remember. Someone have the vivid experience of eating that breakfast. You have to Thousand 471 days ago and experience you probably can't recall anything about from your present vantage point. Might it be the same with the experiences of other lives? Many thinkers have independently come to this view. These include eminent scientists, such as a founder of quantum mechanics, Erwin Schrodinger, the astronomer who solved the formation of the elements in stars Fred Hoyle, the polymath Freeman Dyson, and Kurt girdle, considered the greatest logician since Aristotle. If they're right, then all conscious life is you. All experiences are yours, quote, inconceivable as it seems to ordinary reason, you and all other conscious beings as such, are all in all. Hence, this life of yours which you are living is not merely a piece of the entire existence, but is in a certain sense, the whole only this whole is not so constituted that it can be surveyed in once plans and quote, the physicist Erwin Schrodinger in my view of the world 1951. Quote, enlightenment came to me suddenly and unexpectedly one afternoon in March when I was walking up to the school noticeboard to see whether my name on the list for tomorrow's football game. I was not on the list. And in a blinding flash of inner light, I saw the answer to both my problems, the problem of war and the problem of injustice. The answer was amazing, a simple. I called it cosmic unity. Cosmic unity said there is only one of us. We are all the same person. I am you and I am Winston Churchill and Hitler and Gandhi and everybody. There is no problem of injustice because your sufferings are also mine. There will be no problem of war. As soon as you understand that in killing me, you are only killing your And quote, Freeman Dyson in disturbing the universe 1979 if open individualism is right, the implications are astounding. Every building you see, you have lived the lives of everyone who built it. You have lived as all of your ancestors and all your descendants, as all the rulers of the world and all the peasants. You are every creature that has swum crawled or flown on this planet or any other. Open individualism teaches us we all to regard others as self. It thereby provides an ethical framework not unlike teachings found in many religions. We should also be more understanding of others, for not only would we act the same way in their shoes, but we are in fact in their shoes and we did choose to act that way. The idea that all consciousness is of a single consciousness is ancient. It appears explicitly in the religions of Hinduism and Buddhism, quote, the calm Yogi's who are a purified intellect and who control the mind and senses see the soul of all souls in every living being. And quote, the Bhagavad Gita, chapter five, verse seven, circa 200 BC, quote, the root of all things is nothing else but oneself. And quote, Samantha Pedro Buddha in the killer Raja Tantra of Tibetan Buddhism, quote, based upon the direct experience of those who have fulfilled the necessary conditions of such knowledge, this teaching is expressed most succinctly in the Sanskrit formula, tattoo vmrc, that art thou the Atman or imminent eternal self is one with Brahman, the absolute principle of all existence, and the last end of every human being is to discover the for himself to find out who he really is, and quote, Aldous Huxley in the perennial philosophy 1946. The realization of seeing the self in others forms the basis of the nearly universal Golden Rule. Quote, that which you hate to be done to you do not do to another, end quote, pirate strolls found in ancient Egypt 664 to 323 BC. Quote, killing a living being is killing one's own self showing compassion to a living being is showing compassion to oneself. And quote, the salmon Sutton verse 151, quote, love your neighbor as yourself. And quote, Book of Leviticus chapter 19, verse 18. Quote, the most righteous person is the one who can sense for other people what he can sense for himself and who dislikes for them what he dislikes for himself and quote, Mohammed in the handy quote, regard your neighbors gain as your own gain and your neighbors losses your own loss and quote, the Taoist scripture Tai Shang can impian 12th century zuboff concludes in oneself, perhaps the spread of this knowledge among the intelligent beings that are you can help you to stop yourself from hurting yourself because you mistake yourself for another. Huxley's perennial philosophy concludes the goal of creation is the return of all sentient beings out of separateness and that infatuating urge to separateness which results in suffering through unity of knowledge into the wholeness of eternal reality. According to open individualism, you cannot die so long as there is life anywhere in reality for every living being everywhere is you. So, if open individualism is true, you live wherever there is life, you are the universal person and the one self of experience. For more on an open individualism, see, why was I born? And is there a universal ethical or moral system? conclusions? Is there life after death? It took thousands of years of investigation, but science now offers answers to this age old question. We find the idea of an afterlife is a scientific idea because it is a prediction of well established theories. We have reviewed 10 scientific theories which count among their predictions the prediction of an existence beyond this life. Science reveals an afterlife that cycles forever sees reincarnation through other beings and has infinite lives throughout an infinite cosmos. It has shown that we are subjectively immortal, eternal, and through technology might live billions of years and experience countless lives from an immortal plane of virtual reality. We have seen how science predicts that we could be resurrected by a godlike mind. Indeed, we may even be part of such a godlike mind now, even if we're not already the one soul present in all conscious life, only in the case that all 10 of these theories are false. Are we fated to experience but one brief stint as a mortal human being on earth? But what if all these theories are true? What would we experience after death when there are so many possibilities? Do we experience reincarnation or resurrection? Do we awaken as a god or as a worm? In a sense, we experienced them all. Once consciousness would For a time get lost in a web of dreams, losing itself perhaps for eons before finding itself again. Once the consciousness realizes it is God, it dives back in to dream the great cosmic Lotus dream. Quote, there is the deep and appealing notion that the universe is but the dream of the God who after a 100 brahma years dissolves himself into a dreamless sleep and the universe dissolves with him until after another Brahma century he stirs recomposes himself and begins again to dream the great cosmic Lotus dream. And quote, Carl Sagan in Cosmos Episode 10, the edge of forever 1980. In his book dreams of a final theory, the physicist Stephen Weinberg concludes, I do not for a minute think that science will ever provide the constellations that have been offered by religion facing death. expressions of scientific atheism have been common among scientists. But in the face of accumulated evidence, this view is no longer tenable. In his book the physics of immortality, the cosmologists Frank tipler, replied to Weinberg saying I disagree. science can now offer precisely the constellations in facing death that religion once offered, it seems tipplers view is correct. Starting from well supported scientific theories, from special relativity to quantum mechanics, from mechanism to cosmology, from technology trends to theories of personal identity, all these premises, when followed to their logical ends lead to ideas of an afterlife not unlike what is found in various religions. If ideas like life after death are amenable to scientific investigation and rational consideration, then perhaps we are witnessing the fall of scientific atheism and the rise of a kind of scientific spiritual ism what Aldous Huxley called or otology, the science of the self through these techniques, And investigations we can extend our understanding of and perhaps add to the science of the soul.

This has been another episode presented by always asking.com where we ask the big questions thanks for listening