I agree with you on most of that. Obliteration is a terrifying idea, a timeout is merely sad. I also agree that it would depend on a mechanism unknown to our current understanding of reality. I do think that granted a deity of some sort, (or even a simulation of some sort), it is very plausible. A good analogy might seem to be a state snapshot if you are familiar with states in programming or something like Redux, or another good analogy might be saving a video game to the cloud, where even if the local hard drive is obliterated, and there is no physical remnant, it can be restored by an entity who has access to the state at some point. I would also agree with you that unless there is some sort of deity or observer, the probability of an afterlife seems pretty close to 0 based on what we know about reality.
I am open to the idea that there might be a level of suffering that a good god wouldn’t allow, but I don’t quite understand how to quantify what you are talking about. I can certainly imagine universes that would be much worse than ours. I’m not sure if I can imagine possible universes that are better (for example, you could say that the beauty and speed of a deer would not have occurred in a world without the fangs of a cougar, or that rockets to travel the stars are only possible in a world where you can have burning houses unless you want a completely unpredictable world, where science is impossible). Do you have any particular cutoff point in mind? The crux I am operating on there is that in a universe that is designed by a good god, the net amount of good must outweigh the amount of evil, and any evil that is allowed must be (either directly or indirectly) outweighed by the amount of good.
Also, I agree with you on the idea that violating someone’s will for an afterlife/cryonics would be wrong, and that a good actor would respect the autonomy of others.
I agree with you on most of that. Obliteration is a terrifying idea, a timeout is merely sad. I also agree that it would depend on a mechanism unknown to our current understanding of reality. I do think that granted a deity of some sort, (or even a simulation of some sort), it is very plausible. A good analogy might seem to be a state snapshot if you are familiar with states in programming or something like Redux, or another good analogy might be saving a video game to the cloud, where even if the local hard drive is obliterated, and there is no physical remnant, it can be restored by an entity who has access to the state at some point. I would also agree with you that unless there is some sort of deity or observer, the probability of an afterlife seems pretty close to 0 based on what we know about reality.
I am open to the idea that there might be a level of suffering that a good god wouldn’t allow, but I don’t quite understand how to quantify what you are talking about. I can certainly imagine universes that would be much worse than ours. I’m not sure if I can imagine possible universes that are better (for example, you could say that the beauty and speed of a deer would not have occurred in a world without the fangs of a cougar, or that rockets to travel the stars are only possible in a world where you can have burning houses unless you want a completely unpredictable world, where science is impossible). Do you have any particular cutoff point in mind? The crux I am operating on there is that in a universe that is designed by a good god, the net amount of good must outweigh the amount of evil, and any evil that is allowed must be (either directly or indirectly) outweighed by the amount of good.
Also, I agree with you on the idea that violating someone’s will for an afterlife/cryonics would be wrong, and that a good actor would respect the autonomy of others.