You can't describe non-existence in phenomenological or psychological terms because existence is required for experience (unless you believe in "souls"). The body will exist, but the neural activity that underlies experience will be absent.
edit: another user commented and said this was "logically unsound 20th century positivism". Let me direct you to this quote ca 300BC from Epicurus:
> Death, therefore, the most awful of evils, is nothing to us, seeing that, when we are, death is not come, and, when death is come, we are not.
Crypto is the greatest wealth transfer of this generation alright - transferred directly from the bamboozled suckers who work real jobs for their money, and right into the pockets of the many crypto platforms charging fee after fee.
When the value of the coin in the wallet inevitably drops as markets start "dumping" rather than "pumping", the crypto platforms that took advantage of the hype will be rich as hell (and in "real" money, too).
Yes, Sirhan Sirhan, the man who conveniently "forgot" everything leading up to and including the shooting itself.
Strangely enough, years later his attorney's argued that he was framed. Even RFK's son, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., believes that Sirhan Sirhan was framed and did not actually conspire to kill RFK. He actually wants Sirhan Sirhan released [0].
> This comes from a mindset that technology is "tiered" and that later technologies are "better" than earlier ones in all ways.
That wasn't really what I was going for. What I was thinking was actually efficiency. Of course projectiles will always be effective, but they are not the most efficient. Technology tends towards an increase in efficiency, and inefficient technologies are often supplanted by new ones (swords being largely displaced by guns, muzzle loading weapons being largely replaced by automatic, etc).
If the point is to eliminate an adversary's existence, I can imagine that in thousands of years more efficient means will have been invented. But you're probably right that it doesn't make for exciting television.
> weaponry in particular, most "ray guns" are noticeably inferior to real-world guns in almost every way except perhaps ammo capacity
I was thinking about this watching Foundation. In thousands of years will humans really be _shooting projectiles_ at each other to disrupt vital organs? Why wouldn't it be some kind of device that interacts on a deeper level, I'm thinking like setting off a mini-nuclear-chain-reaction when coming into contact with a single cell that just causes their body to instantly vaporize.
Guns in general seem like something that should already be antiquated.
On that link there's a screenshot of the homepage for the service. It looks about as awful as you'd expect. How this even got past the elevator pitch is entirely perplexing.
Interestingly enough there's also an occult-related book called The Secret Teachings of All Ages by Manly Hall (1928). That book is more or less an overview of esoteric beliefs in the West. Why was he fascinated in this stuff?
Very interesting. I hadn’t actually thought about the _legalistic_ consequences of Cartesian dualism, but it’s a fascinating thought. Applied to free speech that’s a very unique problem - I’ll have to take a look. Thanks.
Can anyone recommend a book that describes some potential destructive consequences of Cartesian thinking on everyday life in Western civilization (not just in the field of philosophy)? It seems possible to me that choosing the individual "subject" (the mind in mind-body dualism) as the starting point for Enlightenment discourse could have contributed in some way to the modern selfish solipsism we see in society today.
I haven't used Facebook or Instagram in about 3 years. Occasionally I'll get sent a link to something on Instagram before having this exact experience. Whatever I'm missing out on, it hasn't been enough to convince me to make another account, my quality of life has significantly improved ever since I extricated myself from the social media hellscape.
> More recently, Shi and her colleagues at the WIV have performed high-profile experiments that made pathogens more infectious. Such research, known as “gain-of-function,” has generated heated controversy among virologists.
Yeah, I don't see this ending well. A lab leak seems... inevitable, no?