What do rationalists think about the afterlife?

Adam Zerner

I've read a fair amount on Less Wrong and can't recall much said about the plausibility of some sort of afterlife. What do you guys think about it? Is there some sort of consensus?

Here's my take:

Rationality is all about using the past to make predictions about the future.
"What happens to our consciousness when we die?" (may not be worded precisely, but hopefully you know what I mean).
We have some data on what preconditions seem to produce consciousness (ie. neuronal firing). However, this is just data on the preconditions that seem to produce consciousness that can/do communicate/demonstrate its consciousness to us.
Can we say that a different set of preconditions doesn't produce consciousness? I personally don't see reason to believe this. I see 3 possibilities that we don't have reason to reject, because we have no data on them. I'm still confused and not too confident in this belief though.
Possibility 1) Maybe the 'other' conscious beings don't want to communicate their consciousness to us.
Possibility 2) Maybe the 'other' conscious beings can't communicate their consciousness to us ever.
Possibility 3) Maybe the 'other' conscious beings can't communicate their consciousness to us given our level of technology.
And finally, since we have no data, what can we say about the likelihood of our consciousness returning/remaining after we die? I would say the chances are 50/50. For something you have no data on, any outcome is equally likely (This feels like something that must have been talked about before. So side-question: is this logic sound?).

Edit: People in the comments have just taken it as a given that consciousness resides solely in the brain without explaining why they think this. My point in this post is that I don't see why we have reason to reject the 3 possibilities above. If you reject the idea that consciousness could reside outside of the brain, please explain why.

I've read a fair amount on Less Wrong and can't recall much said about the plausibility of some sort of afterlife. What do you guys think about it? Is there some sort of consensus?

Here's my take:

Rationality is all about using the past to make predictions about the future.
"What happens to our consciousness when we die?" (may not be worded precisely, but hopefully you know what I mean).
We have some data on what preconditions seem to produce consciousness (ie. neuronal firing). However, this is just data on the preconditions that seem to produce consciousness that can/do communicate/demonstrate its consciousness to us.
Can we say that a different set of preconditions doesn't produce consciousness? I personally don't see reason to believe this. I see 3 possibilities that we don't have reason to reject, because we have no data on them. I'm still confused and not too confident in this belief though.
Possibility 1) Maybe the 'other' conscious beings don't want to communicate their consciousness to us.
Possibility 2) Maybe the 'other' conscious beings can't communicate their consciousness to us ever.
Possibility 3) Maybe the 'other' conscious beings can't communicate their consciousness to us given our level of technology.
And finally, since we have no data, what can we say about the likelihood of our consciousness returning/remaining after we die? I would say the chances are 50/50. For something you have no data on, any outcome is equally likely (This feels like something that must have been talked about before. So side-question: is this logic sound?).

We have some data on what preconditions seem to produce consciousness (ie. neuronal firing). However, this is just data on the preconditions that seem to produce consciousness that can/do communicate/demonstrate its consciousness to us.

So you agree that brains are sufficient to explain consciousness. This consists of a1...a5.

Let Hypothesis 1 be that brains are conscious.

Then, as Hypothesis 2, you have the other conscious beings (a5...a25). Note that H2 also believes that brains are conscious. (a1...a5). So you have...

H1: a1...a5 "brains are conscious"

H2: a1...a25 "brains are conscious, and there's other types of consciousnesses outside our perception

H3:a1...a5, b1...b5: "brains are conscious, and there's a teapot on Andromeda.

H4: a1...a5, c1...c5: Brains are conscious, and there is no such thing as a consciousness outside our perception.

H5: a1...a5, d1...d5: Brains are conscious, and there are no teapots in Andromeda.

H6: a1...a5, e1...e5: Brains are conscious, and there is no water in Andromeda

H7: a1...a5, f1...f5: Brains are conscious, and there is water in Andromeda

In order of parsimony, it's obvious that H1>H2,H3,H4, H5, H6, H7, right?

Right, but your real question is: is H2 more parsimonious than H4. And you're right, practically there is no mathematically rigorous way to get the answer.

The same can be said of H3 vs H5, but you've got a strong intuition that H5 is more likely, right? Can you prove it rigorously? No, but you've got a pretty strong sense that their are no teapots to be found on Pluto.

Similarly, between H6 and H7, you've got a fair sense that there is probably water somewhere on Andromeda. In fact, it would be more complicated to describe some circumstance by which Andromeda didn't have any water.

So is consciousness more like the teapot, or more like the water molecule? Well, your description of the universe gets simpler when you don't need to explain the teapot, whereas it gets more complex when you have to explain why there is no water in Andromeda.

Consider this, like all humans you have instinctive animist tendencies. You are emotionally biased to favor H2 as something that seems possible, because you emotionally think of consciousness as a simple, basic element of reality, like water. I say, consciousness is more like a teapot than it is like water.

Does Math make special exceptions for consciousnesses that it does not make for teapots? Think about it...you can imagine water forming on a star somewhere, it's fairly simple. How do you envision these separate consciousnesses forming? All possible ways in which these extra-physical consciousnesses could form are really complex. Your description of the universe, once you add these extra consciousnesses in, is going to get larger, not smaller.

You don't automatically find yourself scrambling to explain why there might not be afterlife...rather, you find yourself searching for an explanation for why there might be one. And that's because afterlives make the description of the universe larger and more complex and therefore require you to generate a story.

I admit, this isn't a proof, and you're not going to get a proof. But it's a really strong intuition.

...I wonder if it would help, if I came up with an unrelated idea that could only be rejected using intuition-parsimony and asked you to refute it. You'll instinctively call on parsimony, and then you can apply the same methods to the afterlife hypothesis.

My point is that I don't see reason to think that we have any information about the probabilities. How can we say that "a1..a500 needs to be true in order for consciousness to remain after brain destruction"? What observations have we made that would lead us to think that? My feeling is that we've never actually made an observation that says x => unconsciousness, because we've never actually been able to infer a state of unconsciousness.
Right, but your real question is: is H2 more parsimonious than H4.

So you say that it can't be proven, but... (read more)

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