‹ BackHN Continuity

Thread

One-Electron Universe

117 points · 94 comments · pella

  1. stared · · focus · HN ↗
    In the line, I recommend „The Egg” by Andy Weir <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.galactanet.com&#x2F;oneoff&#x2F;theegg_mod.html" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.galactanet.com&#x2F;oneoff&#x2F;theegg_mod.html
    1. ndarray · · focus · HN ↗
      Engage in the thought experiment that you are&#x2F;were&#x2F;will be every human for a sec. Is self-harm morally ok? Many would say yes. So &quot;the egg&quot; already gives those people a pass to hurt everyone else in this world because it&#x27;s a form of self-harm. Great. Now for those who explicitly don&#x27;t want to self-harm. &quot;The egg&quot; implies that your rebirths happen serially in meta-time. You live this life, then the next, then another,... those lives may overlap on earth, but in egg-time, they don&#x27;t. This means you can statistically expect you&#x27;ve already lived 50% of them. There&#x27;s no guarantee of this, but the distribution is normal, not uniform [1] (similar reasoning found in doomsday argument [2]). 50%, give or take, humans out there you&#x27;ve already been. Everything you do to them, you do to your PAST self. You&#x27;re not only absolved of moral accountability, but also of the physical consequences of treating them horribly. So while &quot;the egg&quot; tries to do the opposite, it really seems to justify psycho maxxing.

      [1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Central_limit_theorem" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Central_limit_theorem

      [2] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Doomsday_argument" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Doomsday_argument

      1. orangebread · · focus · HN ↗
        Everyone is hung up on the self-harm thing. This thought experiment is bigger than what most people give it credit for, in fact one could say this is the be all end all of thought experiments because the question factors in things like quantum physics, consciousness, determinism, etc. You could go up your own theoretical butthole with the kinds of philosophical extrapolations through this rabbit hole (so to speak).

        Self-harm isn&#x27;t moral or amoral, it just is. It&#x27;s as moral or amoral as deciding if you should or shouldn&#x27;t eat another animal (yes, this includes humans -- Donner party anyone?).

        Life isn&#x27;t black and white. Where I&#x27;ve landed with this thought experiment through my own meditations and readings is that the universe&#x2F;reality is a recursive fractal of spectrums within spectrums.

        And this is just scratching the surface of this stuff.

Open on Hacker News to reply ↗

Unofficial Hacker News client; not affiliated with Y Combinator.