Half of the time I look forward to my death, it doesn’t scare me since I don’t see the real point of my life, what scares me is if my agony would be slow and painful.
But then what? I just stop existing and it’s like I fell asleep? Do I see light? Darkness? Nothing? What is nothing?
The connections in my brain that made me me will fail and I will cease to exist, same as before I existed.
The ~40% of me that are Microbes are going to have a field day.
Either of two things:
Nothing. However, I don’t think most people quite grasp the meaning of that. Kind of how they think that before the big bang there was just empty space. No, empty space is not nothing. There’s no empty space, there’s no time, there’s nothing. By definition it cannot be experienced. Experience simply ends. It’s as if nothing ever happened. The universe could just as well have never existed.
The more optimistic theory is that consciousness is in a way immortal. You can only experience being, not not-being. It’s kind of how when you go under general anesthesia and then wake up it’s quite unlike sleeping. When you’ve slept you have the sense of time having passed in between. With general anesthesia this is not the case. One moment you feel sleepy and then you wake up in another room. From your subjective experience you never lost consciousness to begin with. Whose to say that something similar doesn’t happen with death. Instead of experience ending it just moves elsewhere. It’s a pretty difficult concept to explain but it’s somewhat similar to the idea of quantum immortality.
Its a state equivalent to before you were born. Its feels exactly as it felt back then. That is the nothing.
If, and that’s a big if, you don’t remember a thing, then things could have happened that you won’t remember.
I don’t actually believe that this is what happened, but it’s not the rational slam dunk one might think it is.
I wish it is that way though. I don’t want to relive the experience I went through earlier in my life.
yeah all the same things could happen after death you don’t remember now. It is what it is. The universe does not really care how we interpret entropy.
You become what you were before you were conceived.
When you die, your brain dumps dopamine and you enter a euphoric state in the brief moments before you’re technically dead.
Time is relative for every entity, according to the theory of general relativity. I posit that as you die, your personal timeline extends to infinity. The state of euphoria is therefore permanent to you, the experiencer. It’s not heaven, but for you it might feel like it.
Additionally, every neuron fires as your brain gives out, so during that personal eternity your life is “flashing before your eyes”. If this reflection on your life fills you with contentment, that is heaven. If it fills you with shame and regret, that is hell.
Sounds like someone elses problem at that point.
When you die you simply wake up in the nearest universe where you didn’t die.
Death is an objective event. It never happens subjectively.
In everyone else’s experience, you die. Your body becomes a corpse and you are no longer there.
In your own experience, you don’t die. The gun doesn’t fire. The car crash never happens. You somehow walk away from the train derailment. Your cancer clears up.
Death exists for other people, never for the self.
Eventually, you become the only living human. You are eternal.
After millions of years, you accumulate enough power to create new people. You do this so you don’t have to be alone. You are now God.
My family will be very sad.
The game will be over, I will remove the VR headset, and continue living my real life. I’m sure in time the memories will fade.
You’ve lived a long life, but a settlement needs your help! Here, I’ll mark it on your map.
You don’t experience anything, not even a sense of ‘nothing’.
Sweet, silent oblivion.
If I’m wrong I’m gonna go full on Karen on whatever jackass is in charge.
Nothing.
It’s just nothing.
Asking what you experience after death is a nonsensical question, you don’t experience anything at all.
What did you see/hear/feel/experience back in 1066 during the Norman Conquest of England?
You weren’t there, you weren’t alive then, so you didn’t experience anything at all.
That same sort of non-experience is what awaits you after death.
How do you know? Can you prove it?
I have no way to tell, one way or another, so I’m not saying you are objectively wrong.
But you sound… Categorical.
Either nothing or everything.