[FRIAM] death

[gⅼеɳ ☣]

That was a lot, forcing me to cherry-pick. 8^) I disagree with the *fairly* quickly part. The time scales being traversed are huge, as you point out. When you make the argument that death happens fairly abruptly you bias that comment towards a few scales, namely the ones related to consciousness, identity, self and the foci of human awareness. But when compared to the time scales of cellular processes or chemical reactions versus life spans of (eg) elephants, or even generational evolution, those time scales are not considered. In this larger context death Doesn't Really Happen abruptly at all. It can be an extremely long process.

To go back to the thin veneer between the living and the dead theme of Samhain, it seems to me that most of us *begin* our death around age 40 or so.  I'm sure the peak of "the hill" is different for everyone, shows sensitivity to demographics/lifestyle/resources, and changes with technology and things like global climate, population, etc.  But the key point, which you refer to as well, seems to be a native sense of senescence ... a kind of programmed death, like apoptosis at the cellular layer and loss of mitochondria, or reduction in hormone production, etc. at the organism layer.  The vampires (like Thiel) seem to believe this is avoidable with trickery ... the classic cautionary tales apply.  Even when I finally crash my bike into an oncoming truck at 70 mph, my death will be nothing like instantaneous.  Even if it's too quick for my "mind" wouldn't imply it's too quick for ... like every other process in the universe. 8^)  In fact, one of my favorite arguments against atheists is to claim the afterlife is that (within epsilon) period from when you see the oncoming truck and the last few ion channels in the various and distributed (all over the grill) parts of your brain shut down.  Like Lorentz expansion of space or contraction of time, perhaps that period seems, subjectively, to stretch to eternity?

So, clearly, I don't think death is at all abrupt ... mostly because I don't believe there is such a thing as a temporally extended self.  You are merely *similar* to yourself 10 minutes ago.

On October 28, 2017 3:42:52 PM PDT, Steven A Smith <sasmyth at swcp.com> wrote:.
>
>And death of an individual is *fairly* abrupt... comas, suspended 
>animation, and similar aside.   Cessation of neural activity ,
>autonomic 
>functions like cardio pulmonary circulation usually stop abruptly. 
>Even 
>cell metabolism endures for only a few minutes. But other processes 
>(especially among the human biome) continue all the way into full decay
>unto composting (if allowed).

-- 
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