[3:29:24 AM] Charles: is this part of that order precedes chaos concept?
[3:29:27 AM] Zero: by eating items that have order and extracting order, our bodies engage in a chemical reaction that lowers the order of the universe in a net
[3:29:33 AM] Zero: okay do you even know what physical order and chaos are
[3:29:38 AM] Zero: i am talking about the laws of thermodynamics
[3:30:39 AM] Charles: not...exactly
[3:30:49 AM] Charles: all I know is something about plants somehow increading "order"
[3:30:52 AM] Zero: oh my god i did not sign up for physics 101
[3:30:55 AM] Zero: no that's not
[3:30:58 AM] Zero: SAORGIASHDFO
[3:30:59 AM] Zero: GAAAAAAAH
[3:31:08 AM] Zero: okay i almost got mad
[3:31:10 AM] Zero: /almost/
[3:31:17 AM] Zero: okay, you can't expect to have a serious discussion with me about physics
[3:31:20 AM] Zero: without actually KNOWING any physics
[3:31:37 AM] Zero: and operating under some sort of magical thought that believes that life is caused by energy beyond our understanding like the ancient egyptians and greeks
[3:31:46 AM] Charles: lemme ask a question
[3:31:53 AM] Charles: if you took a human
[3:32:14 AM] Charles: ripped it apart into atoms, and lined those atoms in rows, and counted them
[3:32:27 AM] Zero: that's kind of horrifying but continue
[3:33:49 AM] Charles: then glued them all back together
now, why do those conbination of atoms result in a human being that is concious of itself?
[3:34:15 AM] Zero: you fail to distinguish between the material of the parts and the actual process of parts
[3:34:22 AM] Zero: you can apply what you said to any orderly process
[3:34:33 AM] Zero: consciousness is a /specific/ subset of orderly processes and logical systems
[3:34:51 AM] Zero: if you ripped a computer into atoms and put it back together, it'd still be a computer
[3:35:11 AM] Zero: consciousness is a result of our brain
[3:35:18 AM] Zero: it's not like our brain is a hollow dreamcatcher which holds a soul
[3:35:21 AM] Zero: if youd amage it, you damage personality
[3:35:30 AM] Zero: you can SEE the causal effects of changing the state of the brain on the personhood of a human
[3:35:46 AM] Zero: the brain is made of neurons, the neurons are made of molecules, the molecules are made of atoms
[3:35:49 AM] Charles: so if you were glued back together, you would still be the same person
[3:35:54 AM] Zero: yes.
[3:35:56 AM] Zero: i am my /processes/
[3:35:59 AM] Zero: not my substrate
[3:36:06 AM] Charles: same memories. same thoughts. same body.
[3:36:11 AM] Zero: you're playing the same wesnoth no matter what computer you play it on.
[3:36:17 AM] Zero: well, unless you downloaded a new version
[3:36:23 AM] Zero: but you can just copy the save-files and the old version over
[3:36:56 AM] Zero: of /course/ i would still be the same person
[3:37:10 AM] Zero: if changing my physical body meant losing parts of my personhood that means quadriplegics are literally less human than others
[3:37:16 AM] Zero: do you /really/ want to go down that path?
[3:37:21 AM] Charles: so living creatues are nothing but a...combination of elements, and life is an aftereffect of this combination
[3:37:38 AM] Zero: life is not just an aftereffect like a splash of water after a raindrop hits the earth
[3:37:43 AM] Zero: life is a /complex/ process
[3:37:55 AM] Zero: more akin to a self-upgrading orchestra than randomness
[3:38:08 AM] Zero: but yes life is emergent from physics
[3:38:22 AM] Zero: if there were such a thing as life power we'd have catalogued it and placed it within the magisterium of physics by now
[3:38:34 AM] Zero: we figured out mitochondria a while back and we know that they fuel our cells with ATP
[3:38:47 AM] Zero: if that's not the power of human life, you aren't getting anything better
[3:39:12 AM] Zero: life, then, is /not/ a diamond which is valuable for a falsely intrinsic nature.
[3:39:21 AM] Zero: life is a beautiful sculpture of lego.
[3:39:27 AM] Zero: more than that- it's a /self assembling/ sculpture of lego.
[3:39:28 AM] Charles: so why is it possible to "remove" life by say, stabbing someone
[3:39:37 AM] Zero: it is the most impressive, most complex system we know of in reality.
[3:39:45 AM] Zero: complex in the kolgomorov sense
[3:39:51 AM] Zero: not complex in the 'holy shit that's huge' sense
[3:40:00 AM] Zero: okay, life is a process right
[3:40:02 AM] Zero: you've coded before right
[3:40:04 AM] Charles: yes
[3:40:15 AM] Zero: what happens if you just drop random ASLGIAHSOEGHASDIOGFAJSDF lines of code into a working system
[3:40:20 AM] Zero: does the system still work?
[3:40:38 AM] Zero: that's what happens when you damage someone else's physical integrity by hurting them
[3:40:43 AM] Zero: you're damaging their system
[3:40:55 AM] Zero: their internal organs are no longer operating at full capacity, or even the capacity needed to sustain life
[3:41:15 AM] Zero: if you replaced a block of lines in a program with random SRGIASORHGASIODFH the program would shut down
[3:41:17 AM] Zero: it'd /die/
[3:41:21 AM] Zero: that's what happens to people when you hurt them
[3:41:30 AM] Zero: you are destroying the fragile beauty that is their interconnected biological systems
[3:41:51 AM] Zero: or you could, say, take off a random organ system
[3:42:05 AM] Zero: cut the part of wesnoth that defines, say, damage calculations out and see how far you get when you playw esnoth
[3:42:15 AM] Zero: or even just cut the title screen, or the UMC compiler
[3:42:19 AM] Zero: these are internal organs of wesnoth
[3:42:38 AM] Charles: so, idea
[3:42:51 AM] Charles: if I could make my body never change from the way it is right this second
[3:42:56 AM] Charles: I would never die naturally
[3:43:03 AM] Zero: you'd be /frozen in time/.
[3:43:09 AM] Zero: thinking is ALSO a change in your brain.
[3:43:18 AM] Zero: potassium ion pumps through neural nets make you think.
[3:43:21 AM] Zero: stop that and you stop thinking.
[3:43:25 AM] Zero: and you can't just stop everything BUT that
[3:43:29 AM] Zero: you need blood and nutrition and oxygen
[3:43:37 AM] Zero: so you need the heart and digestive tract and lungs
[3:43:41 AM] Zero: your entire body is one big system that works together
[3:43:50 AM] Zero: you can't turn any of it off without some SERIOUS technological tinkering
[3:44:06 AM] Zero: we have replacement hearts and replacement organs and blood transfers but we haven't had any cyborgs with human brains yet.
[3:44:14 AM] Charles: our bodies decay
[3:44:16 AM] Charles: why?
[3:44:23 AM] Charles: why does everything, decay?
[3:44:23 AM] Zero: because that is the natural tendency of an ordered system
[3:44:25 AM] Charles: end?
[3:44:26 AM] Zero: order proceeds to chaos
[3:44:30 AM] Zero: this is due to the second law of thermodynamics
[3:44:31 AM] Charles: get messed up
[3:44:33 AM] Charles: lost?
[3:44:51 AM] Zero: which states that all reactions with positive entropy under a certain system of temperature and pressure proceed instantaneously and are irreversable except with the injection of more order
[3:45:00 AM] Zero: or, fundamentally, that means that decaying is a free process, but repairing decay costs order
[3:45:07 AM] Zero: the universe had a finite amount of order at the beginning
[3:45:12 AM] Zero: when we run out it will be heat death
[3:45:19 AM] Zero: unless we can somehow escape physics we cannot escape entropy
[3:45:29 AM] Zero: even worse, really
[3:45:33 AM] Zero: order and chaos are concepts of statistics, not physics
[3:45:38 AM] Charles: what would the universe be like if order never proceded into chaos?
[3:45:46 AM] Zero: are you seriously asking me to calculate that
[3:45:53 AM] Zero: philosophers and physicians have asked themselves that for AGES
[3:46:02 AM] Zero: the general consensus is that nothing would change and there would be no life
[3:46:11 AM] Zero: there are parts of our body that rely on chaotic change, you know, because it IS cheaper
[3:46:27 AM] Zero: that is, our body and mind evolved within the context of a system
[3:46:35 AM] Charles: so there is no way to grant yourself eternal youth
[3:46:36 AM] Zero: which gave us the ability to use reactions that were free but irreversable
[3:46:43 AM] Zero: there is no such thing as 'eternal'
[3:46:49 AM] Zero: the universe WILL end
[3:46:54 AM] Zero: this is not conjecture, this is scientific fact
[3:46:57 AM] Charles: a body that functions like any other, but doesn't age
[3:46:57 AM] Zero: heat death is inevitable
[3:47:03 AM] Zero: oh, sure, you could do that
[3:47:10 AM] Zero: there's plenty of ways to do that, just none we have the technology for yet
[3:47:15 AM] Zero: people are working on it though
[3:47:18 AM] Charles: so if we did
[3:47:20 AM] Zero: the movement's called Transhumanism
[3:47:25 AM] Charles: we would be immortal?
[3:47:26 AM] Zero: it means to pass beyond the limits of humanity
[3:47:37 AM] Zero: ... in the most simple way yes
[3:47:46 AM] Zero: it's more complicated than that though for economic, political, and ethical reasons
[3:48:41 AM] Charles: how do we not know there are not biological species out there that have bodies near-infinite lifespan?
[3:48:46 AM] Charles: with*
[3:48:52 AM] Zero: there ARE species with infinite lifespan
[3:48:55 AM] Zero: lobsters don't suffer senescence
[3:49:03 AM] Zero: the older they get the stronger and more lively they are
[3:49:15 AM] Zero: there are jellyfish species that bud instead of dying, meaning they can have cells that have lived forever
[3:49:25 AM] Zero: immortality is not impossible
[3:49:30 AM] Charles: so humans were just unlucky to get cheap bodies that die out after around a century
[3:49:30 AM] Zero: it is not a limit built into physics
[3:49:34 AM] Zero: not unlucky
[3:49:37 AM] Zero: we optimized for our own, human form of survival
[3:49:46 AM] Zero: we traded longevity for other factors
[3:49:53 AM] Zero: possibly speed, or strength, or reproductive prowess, or intellect
[3:50:00 AM] Zero: there are plenty of creatures worse off than us
[3:50:08 AM] Zero: most birds and livestock only live 20-25 years at MOST
[3:50:13 AM] Zero: insects live on the scale of months and weeks
[3:50:25 AM] Charles: so is this thing of Transhumanism part of evolution as well?
[3:50:27 AM] Zero: bacteria live on the scale of days
[3:50:43 AM] Charles: would it be evolving, if done my technology and not biology?
[3:50:46 AM] Charles: by
[3:50:46 AM] Zero: no
[3:50:49 AM] Zero: it would NOT be evolving
[3:50:55 AM] Zero: a critical fact of evolution is that it is /blind/
[3:51:01 AM] Zero: there are two forms of optimization in this universe.
[3:51:13 AM] Zero: that is, two paths that result in something in the end that has order and purpose
[3:51:27 AM] Zero: one is evolution, which produces self-replicating machines that are optimized to replicate more of themselves
[3:51:35 AM] Zero: our desire for living forever comes from this optimization, btw
[3:51:43 AM] Zero: as people who live longer have more chances in their life to have children
[3:51:47 AM] Zero: which means they've replicated more
[3:51:55 AM] Charles: I just don't want to die
[3:51:59 AM] Zero: noobdy wants ti
[3:52:04 AM] Zero: it's perfectly natural for humans to fear death
[3:52:12 AM] Zero: just because we know why we evolved to fear death doesn't mean it's wrong or bad
[3:52:13 AM] Charles: I don't want to just not exist
[3:52:17 AM] Zero: death is the /worst/ thing
[3:52:30 AM] Zero: you ought to hate death
[3:52:34 AM] Zero: it is the destroyer of beauty
[3:52:40 AM] Zero: every mind that exists is a crystal of brilliance
[3:52:51 AM] Charles: then why do all these novels always say "there are things worse than death"
[3:52:51 AM] Zero: the highest peak and culmination of order, complex loves and emotions and hates and fears
[3:53:01 AM] Zero: because... of a cultural thing.
[3:53:09 AM] Zero: in the ancient days, there was no point saying that death was horrible and you didnt want to die
[3:53:12 AM] Zero: youd die anyways
[3:53:17 AM] Zero: so people developed cultural defenses against the fear
[3:53:32 AM] Zero: if you let yourself get consumed by fear you'd be less capable of doing helpful things for your own survival
[3:53:49 AM] Zero: so they kept saying there are worse things than death so they wouldn't have to THINK about how horrible death is
[3:53:55 AM] Zero: because if you spend too long thinking about it, you'll probably end up insane or worse
[3:54:04 AM] Charles: well...honestly...I think there are things worse
[3:54:20 AM] Zero: in a short-term sense yes
[3:54:22 AM] Charles: I'd rather be dead than be stabbed by red hot knives until the end of time
[3:54:25 AM] Zero: there are things worse than death like eternal torment
[3:54:31 AM] Zero: however, the probability of that is
[3:54:32 AM] Zero: kind of tiny
[3:54:39 AM] Zero: most forms of immortality are going to end up a LOT nicer than that
[3:54:50 AM] Zero: you'd have to optimize for pain if you wanted to design immortality that was THAT horrible