Neuro surgeon states helmets saves lives!

[[XAP]Bob]

PS - could this be the first thread to be moved *from* the helmet ghetto to the tea shop?

[Tangled Metal]

It was a follow on from Mick's comment about haunting members of this forum after death. I'm hoping he'll reconsider and find someone more interesting to haunt. Personally I'd like to haunt a great mind and try to learn from them. A great thinker or scientist or engineer. I like the idea that if haunting is what happens after our life we know about then why not develop your entity? Sit in on degree courses, follow great researchers, perhaps in time help them somehow.

Or for the pervs haunt a super model, actress, actor, sportsperson. Whatever floats your boat just someone more interesting than any of us no offence meant.

[mjr]

Dr who? Next you'll quote star wars. The force is strong in you you'll live for ever.

(Translation: "The saga continues. Thanks Helmet. Works in every galaxy. And on stairs." Source: www.copenhagenize.com )

[Mick F]

"The dead outnumber the living".

I remember the maths lesson about graphs and demonstrating scale and curves .............

I understand that there are more humans alive NOW that have ever lived .......... ever since we climbed down from the trees.

[[XAP]Bob]

"The dead outnumber the living".

I remember the maths lesson about graphs and demonstrating scale and curves .............

I understand that there are more humans alive NOW that have ever lived .......... ever since we climbed down from the trees.

Yes, I don't quite know if it's true - and of course you have to define when life starts to decide how many people have died...
And define human of course...

When you consider a global life expectancy is now past 70 it's probably a decent call.

-- rough working --

Assuming an ancient inter generational gap of 15 years?
Assuming a static population for a thousand years?

That's a factor of 65 (i.e. the current population needs to be 65 times greater than the steady state "generational" population to be "more")
Assume a life expectancy of 45 years?

Then the population factor is just shy of 200...

It's a fairly low factor, but if you decide to add a few zeroes to the timescale then it becomes a few zeroes longer.

Current population is 7 billion or so? Lets call it 8 so the numbers cancel out and make the maths easier
8 billion / 200 is 40 million (7 zeroes).
So take 100k years and the "ancient population" needs only be 400k (5 zeroes) to outnumber the living.
200k and 450k seem to be two common "age of humanity" figures - so a population of 200k (or 90k) with an intergenerational gap of 15 years would be about "evens" with the live population.

But "human" footprints have been aged to 1.5 million years ago - so you only need a population of 30k...
Or the 1.8 million year old "human" skull takes that down under 25k.

Remember these are all global populations...

-- rough working --

There are plenty of assumptions in there, and the calculations wildly depend on your interpretation of humanity and history - for the living outnumber the dead they needed to be very few or very young

[Mick F]

I believe that a million years ago, the human population was only a 100,000 individuals. No doubt their life expectancy was quite low. I also believe that it took until 2,000years ago that humans hit the 50,000,000 mark.

The growth in population never really got going until 1800 or so, and even then it was (only) 1,000 million.
It took until the 1920s before it doubled to 2,000 million.

[TonyR]

Dr who? Next you'll quote star wars. The force is strong in you you'll live for ever.

(Translation: "The saga continues. Thanks Helmet. Works in every galaxy. And on stairs." Source: http://www.copenhagenize.com )

Really?

[mjr]

Where's that image from?

[[XAP]Bob]

I believe that a million years ago, the human population was only a 100,000 individuals. No doubt their life expectancy was quite low. I also believe that it took until 2,000years ago that humans hit the 50,000,000 mark.

But "human" footprints have been aged to 1.5 million years ago - so you only need a population of 30k...
Or the 1.8 million year old "human" skull takes that down under 25k.

100k is way above the "steady pop" I got from my cluster of assumptions...

It probably depends on your definitions of life (do you count deaths in the minutes after childbirth? during childbirth? stillbirth?...?) and humanity (bipedal, toolmaking, iPhone holding?? - do we count the branches of Neanderthals that we don't think made it into the current description of modern man?)


There is so much variation in what could be included, and the estimates above are relatively close to each other (within an order of magnitude or so) that I'm sure both could be said to be conclusively true...

Unless of course you go for a six thousand year old planet, created in six days (and a restful seventh), in which case you're almost certainly correct

-- back to the maths...
If the population growth was a pure exponential then the "more alive now than all of history" is, I think, correct - but we all know that that just isn't the case... In England there were 4million people in the 1300s, and 1.5 million of them were killed by "the black death".
That puts a huge dent in an exponential function...

[kwackers]

You're assuming that the "me" you experience in this body is the only "me" there is...

Watch a black and white telly with poor (analogue) reception and it's wonderful, until someone shows you clear reception, or a colour set...

Maybe brain injuries just alter the perception of/interface to this world - who knows... noone.

Sorry, don't buy it.

Evolution is very efficient. Our brains are the minimum required to 'do the job'. The idea that with a bit of tweaking they'll go from b&w to full colour isn't going to happen.
I don't have any problems at all with the idea of self being an emergent behaviour that is achieved when an enormous amount of data is available to a machine who's job it is to crunch that data and which has motivation provided by the need to survive and reproduce in an (apparently) physical world.
The brain is hideously complex, the connections that it makes are ludicrous in their number. That they're honed and refined at a rate that matches our development, that by breaking connections between sections of the brain results in damage whose side effects can now be fairly well reconciled with the damage says all I need to know about me.
I'm a function of a highly evolved, very complex machine. When it malfunctions, so do I and when it stops I'll stop with it.

[[XAP]Bob]

Ok, you've got the analogy (and it is only that) backwards - damage could revert a colour set to B&W, or to poor reception...

I didn't lay it out well though, so Mea culpa

[Mick F]

I'm a function of a highly evolved, very complex machine. When it malfunctions, so do I and when it stops I'll stop with it.

Will you?

What about spirit, emotion, presence?
They could very well be a function of brain activity, so what you say is true.

What happens if it's not true?

Man has spent just about all of his existence believing that there's something more than life. Since we've dissected the brain and the body, we now think we know differently, but there are billions of people still believing that there is more to life than only a brain.

I'm not taking sides here.