Saturday, December 04, 2004
Zeno never dies
Simple proof that your life does not pass before your eyes just before you die:
Let us assume that your life does play out again in your minds eye, just before you die. This is of course your complete life, from the first breath up to and including the very last second. But, during the last few seconds of your life, you were playing your life in your mind's eye. Replaying those last few seconds means you replay your life again.
Now, in that second replay, your last seconds are replayed again as well. These last seconds now contains now your life twice, because you will replay both the event of seeing your life pass by and you will also replay the replay (you actually never get to see that second replay, because the first replay already spawns yet another one).
Take this argument ad infinitum and we come to the conclusion that we will be forever replaying our lives just before we die. Ergo we don't die. There is the contradiction. Hence, we can conclude that our assumption was wrong.
So, we do not replay our lives before we die. Then what happens? Well, Terry Prachett's Death character phrases it correctly: People's whole lives do pass in front of their eyes before they die. The process is called "living".
Let us assume that your life does play out again in your minds eye, just before you die. This is of course your complete life, from the first breath up to and including the very last second. But, during the last few seconds of your life, you were playing your life in your mind's eye. Replaying those last few seconds means you replay your life again.
Now, in that second replay, your last seconds are replayed again as well. These last seconds now contains now your life twice, because you will replay both the event of seeing your life pass by and you will also replay the replay (you actually never get to see that second replay, because the first replay already spawns yet another one).
Take this argument ad infinitum and we come to the conclusion that we will be forever replaying our lives just before we die. Ergo we don't die. There is the contradiction. Hence, we can conclude that our assumption was wrong.
So, we do not replay our lives before we die. Then what happens? Well, Terry Prachett's Death character phrases it correctly: People's whole lives do pass in front of their eyes before they die. The process is called "living".
