• cattywampas
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    9 hours ago

    Sort of but not really. Consciousness is intrinsic to a living brain. So while the basic components that we’re made out of will continue on until the end of the universe, our time as unique individuals and our experience of it will come to an end. Which is a bummer for us, but that’s a natural aversion that all life necessarily shares.

    • pptiny
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      2 hours ago

      Well that would be the physicalism/materialism hypothesis. Truth is we don’t know. That’s why it’s called the “Hard Problem of Consciousness”

      The scientific and philosophical communities are split into a few major camps:

      Physicalism / Materialism: They believe consciousness is an emergent property of complex biological computation. Just like “wetness” emerges when you put hydrogen and oxygen together, consciousness emerges when you network enough neurons. (Though critics argue wetness is still just physical behavior, while consciousness is a whole new dimension).

      Idealism / Non-Dual Perspectives: This flips the script entirely. Instead of consciousness being a product of the brain, the brain (and the whole physical world) is an appearance within consciousness. In this view, you don’t have a conscious brain; the brain is a conceptual map appearing in the wide-open space of prior awareness.

      Panpsychism: The view that consciousness is a fundamental building block of the universe, like mass or electrical charge, and complex brains simply channel or organize it rather than creating it from scratch.

    • PrimeMinisterKeyes@leminal.space
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      7 hours ago

      Well, there’s a theory that the Big Bang created both our universe which has an excess of matter and is moving forward through time; and, in the same instant, a mirror universe that has an excess of antimatter and is moving backward through time. So there’s a mirror-you who, in a way, lived billions of years before you.
      The next question then is: is this a cyclical event?

    • Elting@piefed.social
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      6 hours ago

      Yeah I think consciousness is evidence in and of itself that the universe can organize into a higher order. It would be conceited to claim that because I obtained consciousness that means I can understand how that higher order functions. My consciousness will never reform exactly how it is now, but that is just a reflection of an ever changing universe.

    • kayzeekayzee@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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      8 hours ago

      My personal philosophy on this is that the forces that shaped me and made me who I am will still exist after I’m gone, so it seems inevitable that some version of me will someday recombobulate by pure chance into some variation of what I represent.

      • cattywampas
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        7 hours ago

        Never dies of old age but still can die from trauma, disease, and predation. And like all life it’ll naturally want to avoid those things.

    • grrgyle@slrpnk.net
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      9 hours ago

      Yeah. I think if we deprioritize individual consciousness then it comes easier to swallow (by the conscious mind…).

      Obviously you shouldn’t deprioritize others’ minds. This is just a personal technique/cope.

      • Elting@piefed.social
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        9 hours ago

        You can find your own peace through the death of your ego. I wouldn’t call it coping, but being in touch with reality. We are all just a piece of a cycle, consciousness is but a beautiful gift of circumstance.