GOGO M-THEORY.
---------- Post added at 01:19 AM ---------- Previous post was at 01:17 AM ----------
So you overcame the fear for the emotion to commit the noble act of saving your friend. (Exceedingly commendable, by the way. <3)
The debate gets all quantumy (definitely not a real word) a universe inside an atom etc. Can't be dealing with it
Guess I'm the anomaly again. In one of the aforementioned near-death situations, if I truly wanted to preserve my life I could've just not got involved. As it was, I stepped between my friend and the mugger and got schtabbed in the knee for my trouble (I used my mega ultra ninja skills of stepping back as the knife came down so he overbalanced and stabbed my knee instead of my stomach/chest).
GOGO M-THEORY.
Self-preservation =/= fearing death.Yes it is, fear is nature's way to of telling you to stop whatever is happening to keep yourself alive. You can't mentally acknowledge fear, only be aware of its effects, and thus deduce from that what you're scared of. An arachnophobe doesn't know they're scared of spiders because they think about being scared of spiders, they know they're afraid of them because they instinctively stay as far away from them and struggle to go near them. A non-arachnophobe knows that they're not scared of spiders because those reactions don't exist on their body.
Grown familiar doesn't mean you can expect everything. I have a rough idea what I'll do tomorrow, I have a rough idea next week. I can't say for 100% what will happen in any given time period though, I may be extremely certain but never 100%, and it is therefore by definition, unknown.
Because you're incapable of processing any sense or feeling without a functioning brain - and we can measure if a brain is functioning or not. Even so, I'll take the 100% chance of having senses while alive over the slim chance of experiencing something at all when dead, and then the even slimmer chance on top of that that it's a greater feeling than life.
It's not a generalisation, our sole being for existence is self-preservation, which is avoidance of death. When you're scared of something you never stop and think "Wow, this is scaring me." You react. If you're arachnophobic, and you see a spider, you don't think "I'm scared of that, do something". You just do something. If you're driving and a lorry veers towards you, you don't stop and think about what to do, you instinctively do something to avoid that lorry hitting you and killing you. Just because the fear of death never crosses your mind, that doesn't mean it stops physiological and physical reactions to avoid it don't take place. They do - for everyone. No one can willingly remove their primal reactions, so I don't find it an unfair generalisation for the population.
How, if you have no way of processing the information? It's like saying if you remove your heart, for all you know something could happen to keep the blood pumping through your body.
Self-preservation =/= fearing death.
I agree.
Self-preservation = what ever is best for you. Sometimes(always) is better to be dead, than to see one you love death.
Yes it is
I'm probably going to regret this but here goes.
How do we know if we've actually died before anyway? You know...past life and all that. And how do we know we haven't had a past life BEFORE that one? Or if we're actually alive now? What if all this...is actually just some weird dream that we're living out?
But it's most likely nothingness.But, to borrow from Rumsfeld, it is a known unknown. There are a finite number of things you can possibly do tomorrow or next week: everything is not possible. Unlike death, which is an unknown unknown. Literally anything can happen.
How do we know the brain isn't just a vector for consciousness and thought? How do we know that it isn't really our spirit that gives us consciousness, and the brain is merely a means of transmitting it until we get to the point where we no longer need it and thus discard it?
I didn't say I wanted death here, all I'm arguing for is not being afraid of it. As it is, I'd take life too, because I'm young and I want to see more of it. However, if I die, so be it.
Then if fear is so primal, how do you explain my inherent lack of it when confronted with death?
Explained earlier. You deal too much with facts, which don't exist as we know them after death. Maybe.
Not really, no. By your logic, when having a gun to your head you'd just run like a headless chicken because it'd be a natural reaction.
Exactly. You could be scared of death, but still choose to save your love ones instead yourself. Hows that self-preservation ? I know thats a sort of selfless act ( even though selfless acts DOES NOT EXIST), but you decided to save someone else, not yourself. Doesn't sound logical to me.That just means you have stronger will to save a loved one than to save yourself. It doesn't mean you're not afraid of it though. The clue is in the name: SELF-preservation. Love, at the end of the day, is but a chemical reaction within the brain - the same as fear. Whichever is dominant is what you will act on.
Exactly. You could be scared of death, but still choose to save your love ones instead yourself. Hows that self-preservation ? I know thats a sort of selfless act ( even though selfless acts DOES NOT EXIST), but you decided to save someone else, not yourself. Doesn't sound logical to me.
How the **** is that my logic? I said we want to preserve our existence, not do something that's likely to encourage our death. By your logic, I'd stand frozen in the middle of the road when faced with a car.
Yea, I know that. Im saying there's stronger feelings/emotions than self-preservation. And self-preservation doesn't always mean to be scared of death.Read my post again, I already explained the point. Emotions cause urges to commit reactions. Urge to save someone else > urge to save yourself. It doesn't mean self-preservation doesn't exist, it means you had stronger emotions for an alternate reaction. It is possible to feel multiple emotions at once, y'know.
Well, a an arachnophobe would stay away from a spider, thus every sane person would run away from any situation that would put him/her in any danger.
Yea, I know that. Im saying there's stronger feelings/emotions than self-preservation. And self-preservation doesn't always mean to be scared of death.
If you have a gunman who tells you not to move or he'll shoot you, running around isn't going to solve ****.
Self-preservation - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia - " It is universal among living organisms. In some vertebrates,pain and fear are parts of this mechanism. Pain causes discomfort so that the organism is inclined to stop the pain. Fear causes the organism to seek safety and may cause a release of adrenaline"
Oh, the wiki card. It's like CJACKO's 'simple as that'.
Yet how many people react in different ways? Some run, some try to fight back, some stay put... Not everyone reacts in the same way, why do you assume they all feel the same?
I don't like definitions. They are in 100% cases incomplete. Self preservation means to do whats best for you. It can be triggered by fear, I agree. But also you can have that emotion without feeling fear.
Night pal, off to bed.
Go dig up any biology textbook and it'll say the same if you dislike wiki, it's 2am and is an easy to find source to showcase elementary biology. GC hit the right lines of the philosophical argument of death itself, I really don't see why I'm essentially debating evolution here.
I hope you have a PHd in Biology and a ton of research to back up your ignorant comments. Unless you do, you're in no position to comment on the pace of scientific developments. Science advances exponentially, once we reach 200, accelerating to 1000 past that becomes relatively easy. Expanding the life expectancy by 20-30 years was one **** of an achievement, but that was a 60% increase in life expectancy. Reaching 200 would be 150%, just a bit of a difference there, how can you acknowledge the possibility of a 150% increase but not living to 1000? That implies we have solved an awful lot of problems to do with regenerative medicine, that is the initial stumbling block in the first place. And he never said everyone will live to 1000, he said THE person who will do it has already been born. As in, just 1 person.
Prolonging death is the ultimate goal for humans, and it's those "crackpots" and "morons" that Cambridge keep churning out that contribute a **** of a lot to it.