Originally Posted by Xei
Add your own or talk about those under discussion.
To start off with, I have a couple of strange thoughts about infinity. I'm not sure how original they are.
Firstly, a metaphysical problem: infinite lifespans. We don't have much trouble with the concept of immortals; they are born like us, and imagining what it would be like to be one is just a matter of extrapolating from our current life experience. But what about the other direction? What about an immortal being which, additionally, has always existed? Meeting and conversing with such a being seems plausible. But what about being that being? Intuitively it seems like it's 'impossible for its consciousness to ever reach this point in time'. Why is this so different from the classic conception of an immortal? What about objects in general? Could you encounter a rock which had existed forever? Or a clock??
I think the asymmetry comes from giving the concept of time too much reality in an eternal place where an immortal could live. In such an eternal place, time is only artificially ascribed by and relative to observers. An immortal observer could ascribe time to events of the past to infinity, but I don't think saying it has lived infinitely long would be correct because that's like trying to use infinity as an objective amount of time in an eternal universe. The symmetry appears again when you see time only as a measurement of observers, the immortal could measure his memory in eternity to infinity.
Originally Posted by Xei
Secondly, a moral problem: infinite beings. We think killing is immoral in what we presume to be a finite universe. But what if we discovered that the universe was infinite? Would it be moral to destroy a planet with life on it? If you did so, you would not have reduced the amount of life in the universe at all. This is not controversial; refer to the Hilbert's Hotel analogy if you're confused. You could just find another planet with life on it (in fact you could find an identical planet) and put it where the old one was, and then replace the new empty space with another planet, and so on with different planets forever, leaving you with exactly the same arrangement as before you destroyed the planet.?
It depends on their relation to the whole; if they're about to attack a friendly, productive species out of greed, it would be morally sound to destroy them. If they are that friendly, productive species in cooperation with the well-being of the rest of the universe's civilizations, I couldn't believe nothing would be changed by dragging the replica to the same place, so I would call it immoral.
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