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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. amelius · · focus · HN ↗
        1. No, self harm is not ok.

        2. Who says the living of lives does not repeat over time? Your&#x2F;our &quot;next&quot; life may start in 300 B.C.

        Two things science knows barely something about: consciousness and the arrow of time. The self is only an illusion. Physics has lots of symmetry. Therefore, it would make sense if the universe was fair in the end. So the egg theory actually makes sense, more sense than anything else I&#x27;ve heard actually.

        1. ndarray · · focus · HN ↗
          Re 1, why?

          Re 2, yes and in 300 BC you&#x27;re also expected to already have been 50% alive there.

          Your egg can&#x27;t explain consciousness or the arrow of time either. How is the person in egg limbo, the fetus being developed I mean, conscious? How does the egg limbo work at all? You&#x27;re gonna need a big hand to wave the (meta-)physics of your little egg universe away.

          1. amelius · · focus · HN ↗
            I&#x27;m not pretending to have solved the hard problem of consciousness. I just said what so far seems most likely to me, despite there being still many open questions, in many other theories as well.
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