If it'd be possible and what happened in EVA happen to us..

[Reichu]

Screw bodies, no matter how well built they are; their stability over long periods of time is pathetic.

Well, then, clearly the answer is to acquire the Fruit of Life. Then that won't be a problem.

Non-corporeal existence is where it's at.

I believe this is what we call the "Green is Always Greener Syndrome".

[Mr. Tines]

Screw bodies, no matter how well built they are; their stability over long periods of time is pathetic.

Well, then, clearly the answer is to acquire the Fruit of Life. Then that won't be a problem.

Any finite system (being) can only enter a finite number of states, so will eventually get into an endless series of repetition.

Non-corporeal existence is where it's at.

I believe this is what we call the "Green is Always Greener Syndrome".

Countered by the "brain in a jar" argument - if you receive sensory input as if embodied, it doesn't matter if you aren't. In particular, even if you're just a quantum anomaly drifting in a pool of LCL, the sensory input of scary Asuka sitting on you and hurling abuse will be just as scary as if it were happening in Misato's apartment.

[Timesplitter 01]

To tell you the truth, I dont really care.

Becasue I am sorta in "dream land" already and I am also in reality.

lol.

Unforuntately to have a world like that you need reality. Without reality nothing would truelly exist even the the single entity left by us joining. No progress would be made and plus


THERE WOULD BE NO ANIME..

[Reichu]

Any finite system (being) can only enter a finite number of states, so will eventually get into an endless series of repetition.

Are you referring to the "catch" of immortality?

I think the problem you are referring to is much the problem I've encountered trying to write about a place where nobody ever dies. The "solution" I came up with was to have the inhabitants maintain sanity via constant memory loss; and those who cannot do this for whatever reason are the ones to enter a perpetual state of madness (e.g., the cilia-mouthed Azazel). Plug, plug, plug. ;)

Countered by the "brain in a jar" argument - if you receive sensory input as if embodied, it doesn't matter if you aren't. In particular, even if you're just a quantum anomaly drifting in a pool of LCL, the sensory input of scary Asuka sitting on you and hurling abuse will be just as scary as if it were happening in Misato's apartment.

...making me wonder how a quantum anomaly can receive "sensory input" without so much as a brain (the very thing that can be fooled into believing it has not been deprived of true stimulae, as per "Matrix" scenarios) -- but nevermind that.

[Mr. Tines]

Are you referring to the "catch" of immortality?

This is not the "listless immortals" as in e.g. Tanith Lee's Death's Master, or other sour-grapes thanatic memes; but simple mathematics of finite state machines. Quantization implies that there are only a finite number of ways of arranging 100kg of stress-energy within a co-moving cubic metre, so there is only a finite number of ways of arranging me and a chunk of environment. (There's actually a stronger thermodynamic argument that implies that growth without bound is required for persistence even without the state-machine mortality.)

Mortality as a consequence of being a finite state machine is touched on in passing in the latter stages of Egan's Permutation City.

...making me wonder how a quantum anomaly can receive "sensory input" without so much as a brain (the very thing that can be fooled into believing it has not been deprived of true stimulae, as per "Matrix" scenarios) -- but nevermind that.

Shinji has the advantage of having an explicit soul which could be replumbed - but the brain in a jar argument extends to any system which emulates a brain in a jar by sufficiently complicated computation (Egan, ibid.)

[sadsadshinji]

yay for non-existence!

[Hexon.Arq]

The triviality of mankind, untarnished and purged of suffering. What's to miss in the absence of true memory?

[Gazdakka Gizbang]

Hooray for Third Impact!!! A festivity in which all minds and souls culminate together to form the next stage in our evolutionary path. Nothing wrong with that.....

[Dave]

Any finite system (being) can only enter a finite number of states, so will eventually get into an endless series of repetition.

Wouldn't each repetition be different from the last? The being would have the memory of the previous repetition, thus altering their own perception of the current repetition.

[Dave]

This is not the "listless immortals" as in e.g. Tanith Lee's Death's Master, or other sour-grapes thanatic memes; but simple mathematics of finite state machines. Quantization implies that there are only a finite number of ways of arranging 100kg of stress-energy within a co-moving cubic metre, so there is only a finite number of ways of arranging me and a chunk of environment.

However finite the possible states of any volume may be, there is always the wonderful possibility of particles popping up at random. Eventually every state may be reached, but predicting what comes next is nigh impossible. Finite possiblities at random for an infinite amount of time is more than enough for me.

[ice reaper]

if humans were to achieve immortality and maintained their aging process then after about 1 century and a half you'd be a quivering pile of living poo-poo and would most likely wish for the release of death.

on the other hand if you didn't age in the same way- where would you prefer the physical aging to end? and just to add to my previous statement- we'd need to be able to regenerate to prevent our bones wearing down and our organs wearing out- OR becoming so muscular that they don't achieve their apointed job like the heart becoming too strong and pumping our blood at such a high speed that it would rupture our arteries and veins.

now that's just not cricket.

[Mr. Tines]

Wouldn't each repetition be different from the last? The being would have the memory of the previous repetition, thus altering their own perception of the current repetition.

Presuming memory has a physical basis, then even that is subject to the same restriction; as a finite being, your capacity for memory is only finite.

Of course in some circumstances, a short cycle repeating state when in some pleasant psychological state (e.g. in flow) may be a desirable thing : Peer in Permutation City exemplifies this.

Quantum jittering may make the cycles chaotic, but the space you occupy is still finite and bounded.

[Reichu]

Presuming memory has a physical basis, then even that is subject to the same restriction; as a finite being, your capacity for memory is only finite.

In NGE, anyway, the soul preserves everything in the mind AND a flawlessly detailed blueprint of the body. (Well, if we look at liquification-->embodiment, anyhow. 'Salvation' appears to be a trickier area, but Yui at least would appear to have gone through it unscathed.) I wonder how many terrabytes of data those things can store? Spiritual energy is the future of data storage, I'm telling ya!

[sadsadshinji]

i guess hell will make lots of money selling souls
aside from that, does memory have a physical basis? i always thought it had to do with various synapse chains...

[Mr. Tines]

aside from that, does memory have a physical basis? i always thought it had to do with various synapse chains...

Synapses are physical things: if the distribution of atoms and electric fields are part of the mechanism (rather than the medium something beyond physical laws), then the various states of memory are just some of the finite number of rearrangements available.

[sadsadshinji]

correct me if i am wrong, but synapses are just connections formed between nerve cells..right?
in that case i guess you are right
then again, they havent really figured out memory completely, have they?