How long is eternity ? Ever even crossed your mind ?..years ago I remember an (obvious fictitious story) told to me. Imagine the largest planet ever discovered in the universe. It is " ROXs 42Bb" an exoplanet which is 9 times the mass of Jupiter, and has a radius approx: 2.5 times that of Jupiter. It is located about 460 light years from earth and was discovered using the Keck Space Telescope in 2013…now imagine a “giant bird” that every 100 trillion years swings past this planet while in flight thru the universe, and the very tip of it’s wing brushus up against this planet, and some year in the very distant time lapse in “eternity” this planet is completely worn down to nothing…only 1 second of “eternity” has passed…case is “never ending”…THOUGHTS ?
Thoughts about your OP? Are you sure?
Yes, I understand the concept of eternity and how even heaven becomes its own hell, given the passage of enough time. More relevant than eternity I think is that human mentation requires novelty and eventually there is nothing new under the sun, so to speak. That’s a bigger problem than eternity because (1) there’s no evidence we’re actually immortal to begin with and (2) it would only take a few thousand, maybe even a few hundred years, maybe even less, for a person to not want to have any more new experiences – even in some hypothetical idealized pain-free environment. Indeed, at 68, I’m relatively satisfied with my life experiences and doubt I’d make it past 100 without being like a couple of centenarians I’ve actually known, one of whom took me aside and asked if there was some pill he could take to just check out already; “being over 100 is not all it’s cracked up to be” was his thought.
If actually interested in the reality of this, read up on hedonic tone and how its set-points work. You can fantasize about, say, being enraptured with worship in heaven all you want, but unless you become something very different than human in heaven, something a human would find repugnant – you won’t want to do that forever and ever. Just like you wouldn’t want the world’s best orgasm to last forever, it would give sex a bad name.
So let me turn the question around: have YOU really thought about how long eternity is? Not in terms of avoiding some alleged eternal divine torture, but in terms of surviving alleged eternal divine worship?
By “how long is eternity”, do you mean “mindbogglingly long time”/“time too long to imagine”, or do you mean “how long is infinitely long time”? If the former, then sorry, I’m not really interested unless you want to discuss mindbogglingly large finite but immensely large numbers, such as Graham’s number or TREE(3), and the algorithms used to generate them(*).
As far as the latter is concerned, in mathematics, you have the concept of infinity. But you also have the concept of numbers that are bigger than “ordinary” infinity. And mathematicians deal with infinitely small numbers as well, and measure uncountably large sets. See also surreal numbers, hyperreal numbers. So yeah, I have been thinking about infinity, although only at an amateur level, as I’m not a set theorist.
So, which is it?
(*) My interest in these was first raised back at university when reviewing before an exam in computer science, solving problems given in exams given in previous years. One of the problems involved recursion, the Ackermann function and an implementation of it. Yeah. Nasty problem to give to undergraduates.
I don’t deserve this matter you’re constipating your mind with and I’d like to keep it that way.
On what? It’s not clear what point you’re making or what you wish to debate?
Let me guess … another weak apologetic run-up to “X is too hard for me to think about, therefore Magic Man is real”.
See, producing this kind of pithy response is a gift, and I shall be shamelessly plagiarising that one, kudos to you sir…
Yes, consider this question:
Whichever way you consider “eternity” the measure of time doesn’t apply.
You give an example of a light brushing against a planet every 100 trillion years resulting in the planet being worn down to nothing, equating to 1 second in eternity, but that’s not correct - it’s not a matter of differences in scale, it’s a matter of scale no longer applying.
I think you first need to consider what exactly eternity is.
There are two possible definitions as I see it, timeless and linear.
Your question seems to be based on a linear eternity. X event is followed by Y event, etc., so time exists but there would be no beginning or end.
In a linear-time eternity, 1 second as we know it would still be 1 second in eternity - your bird analogy doesn’t match, because it’s not a matter of scale - length has no meaning, but the scale remains the same.
There’s also the possibility of a timeless or non-linear eternity. In this sense, there is no cause and effect, no X then Y - there may be X, Y and Z but no distinction as to any order of events.
One can consider in eternity, there is a question of purpose - if eternity can be experienced, what would be the purpose of that existence?
There is also the question/problem of comprehension - humans are very much a linear and temporal existence. Our biology, our mind, isn’t equipped to deal with eternity, and certainly not to comprehend it.
It’s an open question - one I don’t think we could ever understand substantially or meaningfully.
I agree with this.
A timeless oceanic sort of eternity is a more Eastern concept of nonduality, of oceanic egoless being without doing or individuality. This is not what I suspect most people fantasizing about eternal life are contemplating. And even for the few who may be thinking in those terms – realistically, that is something even the most ardent adepts at practices like meditation, can only approximate for short periods of time – again, because humans are not suited to it. Humans have ego because they need ego to function. In fact that dichotomy is a topic of much debate in Eastern thought … meditation does not get the laundry done.
So … it’s either timeless eternity, or what I call, SSDD (Same Shit, Different Dimension) which you suggest we are not made for, and I agree.
I addressed in another post how hedonic tone would eventually devolve a never-ending narrative or story arc for a hypothetical linear eternal life into its own hell, even if it had all suffering magically excluded from it somehow.
I have often reflected that we are story-telling monkeys, and as such, we need beginnings, middles, and yes, endings. We are creatures of time.
If you want to live outside of time, then be careful what you ask for. You might not like it. No matter how well-written, produced, directed and acted a movie is, you don’t want it to last forever. At some point it’s time to take a pee and go to bed.