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Current time: December 12, 2024, 5:58 am

Poll: There is a door in front of you and behind it could lead to absolute paradise, absolute torture or anywhere in between (the absolute middle being completely mundane). Do you go through the door?
This poll is closed.
Yes, I go through the door.
21.21%
7 21.21%
No, I don't go through the door.
78.79%
26 78.79%
Total 33 vote(s) 100%
* You voted for this item. [Show Results]

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An odd question that came to my mind.
#31
RE: An odd question that came to my mind.
Would you be able to explain to me what risks you may think are involved?
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#32
RE: An odd question that came to my mind.
(August 16, 2010 at 10:17 am)Paul the Human Wrote: It is a choice to maintain the current reality.
Everyone would choose to keep the status quo - it's the easy option.
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#33
RE: An odd question that came to my mind.
If there were a spyhole in the door, it would save an agonising decision.
'We must respect the other fellow's religion, but only in the sense and to the extent that we respect his theory that his wife is beautiful and his children smart.' H.L. Mencken

'False religion' is the ultimate tautology.

'It is just like man's vanity and impertinence to call an animal dumb because it is dumb to his dull perceptions.' Mark Twain

'I care not much for a man's religion whose dog and cat are not the better for it.' Abraham Lincoln
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#34
RE: An odd question that came to my mind.
The possibilities of what lies behind that door cover the entire spectrum, from paradise, to eternal torture... with a 50% chance the result will fall on one side or the other. A 50% chance of a bad result is what's known in gambling circles as a 'risk'.

Personally, my life is happy enough that opening the door is not worth that risk. Sure, there is also a 50% chance my life would get better, but I'm happy enough, as is, that the possible cons outweigh the possible pros.
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#35
RE: An odd question that came to my mind.
What if it were both! What if it were paradise and torture!

It seems you think beyond the door is a mystical place. What if it were just like before, but with more knowledge.
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#36
RE: An odd question that came to my mind.
One can only choose whether or not to accept a wager based on the information available. Adding new information may change my decision, sure. It's all about risk vs. benefit. The way the decision has been framed up to this point makes that decision easy for me. Adding new factors would, naturally, be cause to reevaluate.
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#37
RE: An odd question that came to my mind.
I can barely handle stubbing my toe. There's no fucking way I'd risk "Absolute torture".
- Meatball
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#38
RE: An odd question that came to my mind.
And what would absolute paradise look like? Constant sex with the hottest chick imaginable? All the steak I can eat? Might get boring after awhile ... the steak, not the sex. Smile I would say no to the door I think.
Our Daily Train blog at jeremystyron.com

---
We have lingered in the chambers of the sea | By sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown | Till human voices wake us, and we drown. — T.S. Eliot

"... man always has to decide for himself in the darkness, that he must want beyond what he knows. ..." — Simone de Beauvoir

"As if that blind rage had washed me clean, rid me of hope; for the first time, in that night alive with signs and stars, I opened myself to the gentle indifference of the world. Finding it so much like myself—so like a brother, really—I felt that I had been happy and that I was happy again." — Albert Camus, "The Stranger"
---
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#39
RE: An odd question that came to my mind.
I read recently that person's idea of a paradise indicates what is missing from their life.

As an adult,I was taught: In the afterlife space and time cease to exist,there is only pure awareness. That what people call heaven is merging with God. All that exists is an ever present 'now' ,filled with an indescribable bliss.Hindu mystics call that state 'samhadi' and consider it only part way of the journey.

I find most notions of heaven/paradise shallow and petty, closer to my idea of hell in their stultifying banality.

Oh, I was taught "hell is that place God is not"


I'll only find out if I'm wrong,which pisses me off.Believers won't know if they're wrong. It does give me some comfort to believe a just God would admit sincere atheists to heaven, whilst sending large numbers of believers straight to hell for being insufferable cunts.Angel Cloud
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#40
RE: An odd question that came to my mind.
I agree with Schopenhauer when he wrote, "To desire immortality is to desire the perpetuation of a great mistake." So, answering the poll, I put "no"-- not because of the risk involved, but because at least two likely alternatives would involve my continued, eternal existence, something I would find loathsome. The notion of immortality is the biological drive for self-preservation projected into the metaphysical.

Even if there were such a thing as enjoying absolute pleasure (of whatever kind) or "happiness" forever or to suffer absolute misery and pain forever, or anything in between these two hypothetical extremes-- even still, none of these situations deal with existence itself.

While I don't agree with Buddhism, it is at least a bit more sophisticated than Christianity if only because it deals with this issue ontologically ("Existence = suffering"), whereas Christianity doesn't even question the notion that existence and self-preservation is "good." I find it amusing when people misunderstand the role of reincarnation in Buddhism-- this is not a reward, this is failure! The last thing a Buddhist would ever want is to be reincarnated. To exist is, for all intents and purposes, to be in hell. Nirvana is to cease to exist.

(August 19, 2010 at 12:41 am)padraic Wrote: As an adult,I was taught: In the afterlife space and time cease to exist,there is only pure awareness.

Sounds like Samuel Beckett's The Unnamable. *shudder*
“Society is not a disease, it is a disaster. What a stupid miracle that one can live in it.” ~ E.M. Cioran
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