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Prions
Luckily, this is the epitome of that Epicurus quote:
Why should I fear death? If I am, then death is not. If Death is, then I am not. Why should I fear that which can only exist when I do not?
You know how when you get put under for anaesthesia, and you don’t notice the time you were gone? It’s like a cut in the tape of life.
What if death is like that, and BAM your consciousness re-emerges billions of years in the future the moment you die.
But your consciousness is alone. And in pitch black nothingness. Forever.
This is what I think happens. You don’t experience death, you just reemerge on the other side, no matter how long it takes.
The chances of your brain being created were infinitely small before you were born, but it still only took 14 billion years for it to happen.
Entropy would end up taking your consciousness as well, so I doubt you’d be there, 14.3 billions years later, forever.
We don’t really know what consciousness is, so we can’t really be sure that it is subject to entropy.
It’s not the death I’m worried about. I just don’t want to suffer leading up to it or put my family through some long drawn out ordeal watching me die.
Well good news, false vacuum decay would kill everyone on Earth instantly with no warning
Then I’m not worried about it.
Same here. Like, that would obviously suck, but 🤷
I mean sure, it’d suck, but no one would be around to think it sucks, so it’d be fine 😎👆👉👆👉
How to remove all suffering. Utilitarians hate this simple trick!
How you know the Wikipedia article is good
I’m not worried about this specific apocalypse, if only because there is literally nothing that can be done to prevent it nor stop it if it starts.
I’m far more worried about more localized, preventable, human-caused apocalypse like climate or nuclear war.
Also, we won’t see it coming and won’t feel it happen. As far as deaths go, it’s about as easy as it gets.
Exactly. Same energy as worrying about Earth being hit by a gamma ray burst - 🤷♂️
I would be very glad if it was something only destructive to humans, and not the planet(s ecosystems).
If our particular bubble of the universe has remained unmolested for 13.8 billion years, it is safe to assume it will continue to be for the next 1000 years.
Also it’s not like assuming it will collapse in the next decade will make any difference other than having a harder time enjoying the time before then.
"threat
If our universe is in a false vacuum state rather than a true vacuum state, then the decay from the less stable false vacuum to the more stable true vacuum (called false vacuum decay) could have dramatic consequences.[5][6] The effects could range from complete cessation of existing fundamental forces, elementary particles and structures comprising them, to subtle change in some cosmological parameters, mostly depending on the potential difference between true and false vacuum. Some false vacuum decay scenarios are compatible with the survival of structures like galaxies, stars,[7][8] and even biological life,[9] while others involve the full destruction of baryonic matter[10] or even immediate gravitational collapse of the universe.[11] In this more extreme case, the likelihood of a “bubble” forming is very low (i.e. false vacuum decay may be impossible).[12] "
Also, of course there’s a Kurzesagt
I’m going to file this under the category of philosophy similar to “what if we’re living in a simulation?” and “parallel universe” theory. As far as I’m aware we have no evidence that there’s even such thing as a false vacuum, so this is all just speculation based on some theories.
Yeah, if you need existential dread, a gamma-ray burst could end us in an instant too and they’re confirmed to exist and much more likely.
Yeah but then we get to be big and green, or stretchy, or invisible etcetera
maybe you couldn’t survive it but I’m built different
Well, that sucks.
Does this mean the laws of physics could just… Change?
Hoping for the scenario that means FTL travel is possible and nothing else changes lol
Irl physics patch is crazy
yup. though if the laws of physics change then that also means the laws of physics holding your atoms together are gonna be blended up into a soup at the very least
Unless they change into a set of physical laws in which magic is real, and the turtle of enormous girth holds us all together in his mind!
That seems wildly improbable. What are you going to push off of to get you to speeds faster than light? There could be gimmicky ways like expanding / contracting space, but thats not moving faster than light, thats space changing faster than light. Changing cosmic topology to allow stable wormholes could possibly do something similar, but that could just as easily mean that you and all other matter exist in the exact same location. That would be… not fun
But if the laws of physics were to change, who’s to say what’s possible‽ Star trek future is in the works!
More likely infinite energy just became a thing and you explode 🔥
There’s a principle, I can’t remember the name of it, but basically it goes that the universe exists in such a way as to support life, because if it didn’t, there would be no one around to discuss the ways in which the universe might have formed. Which is to say, while it’s all good to contemplate a different set of physical laws in which we could not exist, we cannot use the condition of our existing as proof that the universe must allow us to exist. Any universe in which an observer exists is necessarily a universe in which an observercould exist. We will only ever get to observe that which allows our existence.
It’s mainly used, to my knowledge, to attempt to dissuade the religious of ideas of a creator deity.
But I think here it has another application. If false vacuum decay happens, and all of everything just goes poof, that’s not interesting. There will be no observer, no one to mark it, no one to study it. On top of that, no one to even know there was once someone. Who knows, maybe it’s happened hundreds of trillions of times, maybe infinite times, maybe once, maybe never. Either way, we, and anyone else out there, will have no way of knowing, or remembering, or anything else. So it’s not interesting. There’s nothing of value to be learned, because there’s no way to use the knowledge to do anything.
But contemplating the ways in which it could happen and we could survive? Suddenly a new set of physical laws govern us? Different, but just similar enough that we don’t explode, implode, or just dissipate into component atoms (if atoms still exist!)? That’s interesting! That’s worth contemplation and thought! At the very least it’s worth a damn fine dime store paperback sci Fi novel!
Let’s do something interesting here! What’s your wish list for a change in our physical laws that still allows our existence? I went utopian, ftl space flight, nothing else changes. But maybe it’s some mad max universe now? Maybe it changes our physical structure enough that we’re all cronenberg monsters limping our way through the universe in tiny, slapped together vessels that we put together as we saw what was approaching on the horizon of the observable universe, and in the new laws planets can’t form? Searching, seeking, viciously lonely abominations, wandering a void unlike anything we’ve ever experienced?
Maybe the only change is that idiots stop voting and wealth disparity disappears somewhere. Be adventurous! Be the change you hope the decay will bring!
There’s a principle, I can’t remember the name of it, but basically it goes that the universe exists in such a way as to support life, because if it didn’t, there would be no one around to discuss the ways in which the universe might have formed.
The Anthropic Principle. It’s a mind-bender, especially because it’s fundamentally unfalsifiable.
That’s it! And yep, total mindfuck. But also sort of… Profound, I guess
I thought it was the self observation principle?
“We like to destroy the universe at least every couple of months.”
Subatomically dispersed at the speed of light is probably the best way to go. And no one would be left to mourn you.
♫♪♫ And we will all go together when we go ♫♪♫
Beam be everywhere, Scotty!
Metastable equilibria.
Gamma Ray Burst
Sleep tight
I’d much prefer death by a solar system wide tsunami of highly energetic particles then the slow, agonizing death march we’re currently doing.
I was gonna say it might be worse if you’re on the opposite side of the planet that gets hit but I’ll give you that one.
Never trust a gamma ray burst
Obligatory mention of the novel [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schild’s_Ladder](Schild’s Ladder) by Greg Egan.
Such a scenario would be interesting indeed.
His books are always at least a little mind-bending
He is exceptional at writing hard sci-fi that unnerves you.
I’m moderately certain, whichever future timeline we move to, there will be aspects of Egan’s works.
Modern day Jules Verne, recommended to read at least one book of his.
I believe that it is possible that false vacuum decay has already begun, but so far away that it might not ever reach us.
Climate change.
Uh yeah, I sure hope it doesn’t
Every day, when I see or hear someone driving a gas vehicle. So like, all the time.
