Mike Burr - log

[mind] Transcendental things you don't like to think about

What if you do have a mysterious awareness that outlives your dissolution and what if the way it works is that all unpleasantness sensors were turned to "on" at the moment of death and you were just a being of infinite pain for infinite time.

I'm fine and how was your birthday, grandma?

The weird thing I think about here is: are you living in your own unique fork of the universe, utterly alone but only in the technical sense?

It's seems both a priori true and absurd at the same time.

  1. Your awareness is locked in there, like it or not.
  2. Your "thoughts" influence your physical body ergo your thoughts influence the outcome of the universe.

So how deep does that reach? You are only there with you for this entire ride. Sensory input is nice, everyone likes that.

If you are a widely-connected person who really works toward this or that for better or worse, the compounding effect is enormous. e-normous.

That is: universe with vs universe without your physical form and the influence of the "flow control" machine that (supposedly) sits between your ears diverge greatly over ~70yrs. You could literally influence planets if you started from birth as a kind of bot whose mission is to do this.

Instead your influences on the universe are noisy, on order, rather random and completely intractable. But that's not to say they are not significant. You are not just contributing heat during your lifetime.

And ONLY YOU have the helm. And there's no knowing whether maybe the "state" of your local neighborhood is down to your lifelong bad attitude or not (which, whew, is a good thing.)