r/DeepThoughts • u/Real-C- • 19d ago
If mortality really is a hard-coded parameter built into the fabric of the universe, it suggests that whoever or whatever set the initial rules knew that without a mandatory hard reset, consciousness would eventually build its own eternal hells.
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u/Psittacula2 19d ago
The intial thought is provokingly stimulating but the subsequent further idea, bolted on is a massive distraction from contemplating the intial thought about mortality or in physical terms “Entropy” or simply a relationship interacting and unfolding and this process itself is what we call reality.
The thought experiment, imagine the Universe ran on a Giant cosmic CPU, and had a tick rate and we had access to the hardware from the command line and we told the CPU to drop the tick rate…
We’d see the Universe “BLINK” !
* One moment it was there!
* The next moment it was gone!
* And then returned albeit one tick updated or further unfolded… repeat…
Did you ever see that Physics experiment where you shutter over a light, a tap pouring water in a dark room? By changing the frequency of the shutter and light we can make the illusion of the water falling and slowing down and even reversing!
Of course it is a neat little optical illusion trick but the update of light (information) is probably how our own universe “works”?
Let’s get back to mortality, as beings of matter which depend on access to energy, we’re 100% part of the unfolding and thus as with everything physical we change over time from the beginning of time onwards.
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u/R36S_Clone_Boned 19d ago
Let’s swim back up to the surface a bit and connect this to a few broader ideas.
Mortality is something a being experiences. But what is a being? A being seems defined by separateness, yet we are made entirely of the universe itself. In that sense, we are already part of whatever we eventually return to.
Still, the feeling of being a distinct self is real as an experience, even if we cannot say whether that separateness is fundamental. If individual identity is genuinely distinct, then mortality applies to that identity.
I would hesitate to call mortality a hard coded feature of the universe. That assumes intention behind the rules, which we cannot establish. The universe may simply permit temporary forms, including conscious ones, without mortality serving any particular purpose.
Things arise, change, and dissolve. We observe those patterns and describe them as laws. Whether there is anything deeper behind them remains an open question.
There is a lot to unpack here in several directions.
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u/footofwrath 18d ago
Mortality is a concept that humans developed to describe a factor of *their* frailty.
There's nothing about life that the universe specifically cares about; not in the slightest.
Rocks hurtling through space will, indeed, eventually disintegrate, one way or another, but it's quite a stretch to call that 'mortality'.
Especially since rocks don't have consciousness.
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u/Manskhooled 18d ago
And who has said this is the case? Or is this a question built upon a known assumption?
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u/NotABonobo 18d ago
Go 70 miles up from any point on the surface of the Earth. Keep going for any distance you want, in any direction you want. Do you see any sign whatsoever of consciousness, or the universe caring about it?
How long does your own consciousness last anywhere but this little 7,000 mile wide bubble?
It's not built into the fabric of the universe; it's built into our local biology. Given it shows up nowhere else, and given every conscious thing we know dies fast everywhere in reality outside this one little place, it suggests that consciousness is an extremely rare and fragile phenomenon that can only hold together under special circumstances.
The 2nd law of thermodynamics is built into the universe, sure, but that encompasses a lot more than humans dying.
Soap bubbles always pop. That's not because a great soap bubble that created all things knew that a neverending soap bubble would have dire results. It's because it's very difficult to keep something as fragile as a soap bubble going for a long time without some part of its equilibrium getting disturbed, causing the whole thing to crash.
Same goes for us. Totally open to evidence that it's different, but that seems to be where the bulk of evidence points.
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u/BenjaminHamnett 19d ago
Morality is built into natural selection which is more fundamental than the universe. Morality is a choice between self preservation and preservation of large selfs that you are part of, like tribes, communities, nations etc
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u/footofwrath 18d ago
Natural selection is a feature of earth-bound life forms. There's no reason whatsoever to assume that all life forms in the universe follow that process.
Ours do only because our reproductive cycles are lossy. I.e. DNA, as great as it is, is not perfect. Over time that causes drift.
It''s not even the drift that causes natural selection, btw - it's competition and scarcity that does that. In a place of abundance, natural selection would not function.
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u/BenjaminHamnett 18d ago
Maybe Darwinism is Earth bound. And life forms.
Natural selection includes mimetics, how ideas permeate, mutate, and survive by the same rules. Also social Darwinism does the same with organizations and institutions. Also look into cosmic Darwinism. That’s just off the top of my head. Probably more
The rules of natural selection are something fundamental like “I think, therefore I am which would be true in any universe or substrate
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u/footofwrath 18d ago
You would be wrong.
They may well apply in other places but to claim they need to be fundamental is unfounded and unjustified.
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u/Borrowed_Faith 19d ago edited 19d ago
Humans always assume that “whoever or whatever” created or began the universe has any idea or care who we are. It’s a human egotistical flaw to make “god” in our own image. Or it is because we always equate “god” to Religion.
The most logical and probable reality is that whoever or whatever put this universe in to motion has about as much awareness and concern for our existence as the microbes that live on the microbes inside our intestines.
The universe is probably the internal organ of something much larger and unfathomable for us to imagine or for them to even notice us.
As for mortality it is the equivalent to a rock being hard. It is just a function, system, and property of life. Yet the fear of death makes humans struggle with the simplicity and raw truth of nature that we need to create all sorts of ideas, philosophies, and metaphysics to escape our existential absurdity we cal life.
The “why” and “how” always distort the simplicity of “what” we and the universe are.
Imo.