Chronofox Posted November 20, 2011 Report Share Posted November 20, 2011 A bit of a psychology-TOK blend here. My class just watched 12:01 PM, an extremely thought-provoking film about a man stuck eternally in a time loop that not even death can help him escape from. It's gotten me thinking about what the longevity of life and the universe means.Mortality and death is something that everybody fears. However, in a way, it's also something that gives meaning to our lives. If humans were immortal, then every moment would be rendered completely meaningless. There's a saying that, as you get older, time seems to fly by more quickly. This is because we've already "experienced" more, so in a way every day seems shorter, as well as every minute and every hour and every year because we've already lived through so many minutes or hours or days or years. But if we lived an infinite amount of time, then each and every moment would fly by so quickly they would completely lose all meaning.The same holds true for the inverse. The longer the universe exists, the more meaningless our lives are. From a mathematical perspective, if we let 'x' denote the length (timespan) of our lives while 'y' is the time span of the universe, then the ratio x:y denotes the time in which we are conscious relative to the time that the universe exists. If we let 'y' approach infinity (assuming that the universe is forever), then x approaches zero. In other words, our lives are meaningless in terms of time length in comparison to the time length of the universe; we practically do not exist.It seems to be, if anything, a thought scarier than death. What does this say about the limits of human consciousness? What would happen to humanity (or what are the implications) if we could live forever, and be conscious permanently? Reply Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Award Winning Boss Posted November 20, 2011 Report Share Posted November 20, 2011 There wouldn't be life, we'd just be living because 'life' as we know it requires an end. So to me It's a pretty odd question because I don't know whether it'd be possible for us to be conscious. Would we remember everything? If you had NO ability to have memories are we truly conscious. There was a book I read about a guy that lost the ability to form new memories, he was stuck in 1945. Does that make him as conscious as you and i? Do I know where I'm going with what I've said? no but that happens a lot 1 Reply Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
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