Ask HN: Is pre-birth the same state as post-life?
I’ve previously encountered the idea of equating the state prior to my birth (nothing), with that of my death (also nothing).
From nothing springs forth my existence. What do you make of existence appearing after death?
I guess in short, is it any more absurd to be born twice than once?
75 comments
[ 3.0 ms ] story [ 130 ms ] threadI think the mystery of existence is part of what makes it special. And somehow, though it’s a kind of comfort to imagine that there is nothing in the great beyond, I sympathize with those who would hope for the best but plan for the worst.
Several traditions have differing concepts about reincarnation or transmigration: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reincarnation
The basic concept is that the soul or spirit (what makes you who you are minus your physical body) is eternal (has always existed and will exist forever) and that you will continue to live various lives or forms of existence.
Some other traditions believe that God created souls / spirits before the earth / universe existed and that physical existence on earth is a step in God's plan for those souls / spirits: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pre-existence
If they have always existed, wouldn't that imply that there is an upper limit to the number of souls and therefore the number of physical life forms?
From this one could further deduce, for example, if human population goes up then other animal population must go down?
(Not that this is something I necessarily believe, it is just something I thought about).
Yes, it's much more absurd because once you die, you don't exist anymore, you're lost to entropy forever. Things that appear after you're dead won't be you because your configuration was so rare that it might as well be unique, and more importantly because there isn't a continuous stream of consciousness to experience the pre- and post-death states.
Infinite possibilities does not mean every conceivable outcome happens.
You inconvenienced your Mom before you were born; you might not have noticed but she did. After you die your ability to annoy others drops rapidly.
I think our personality and memories didn't prexist our birth, and they don't exist anymore once we die. However, I think we are something more than our body, memories, personality and mind. The analogy that makes most sense to me is the idea that the universe is a kind of actor, and people are characters it's playing. The universe takes the form of people, with memories and so on, and it will do so again after my body dies. So I don't think there's 'nothing' on either side of life.
Perhaps somebody can better word this if they have similar views. My skills at writing are too limited here.
https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neale_Donald_Walsch
As I see it, there is the experience of reality from a certain frame of reference, from which the experience of "you" that makes up you (body, mind, perceptions, memories, ...) is observed and a story about that "you", an Ego, is inferred. Upon death, the "you" that is observed (incl. memories and the general identity you hold) dies, dissipates, and is transformed. However, how can the experience of reality itself "end"? The absence of "your" existence always passes unnoticed from your frame of reference, because by definition there is no way to observe not existing.
Therefore, to assume there is nothing after death makes no sense IMHO. It logically makes more sense to assume there will be some form of existence after this life, and although we might have no recollection of this life, it seems most optimal to assume and act as if what you do in this life will impact the next somehow, through mechanisms we might be still ignorant of.
I guess in short, is it any more absurd to eat a particular banana twice than to eat it once?
Yes. Yes it is more absurd.
Once seems less logical from a metaphysical perspective to me than multiple.
Get back to me when you have literally done it. Animal or plant, flesh is subject to entropy.
> Is it because the equation then means: (O || 1) || infinity?
Are you high or mentally ill?
In the midst there is a comforting fire to warm the hall. Outside, the storms of winter rain and snow are raging. This sparrow flies swiftly in through one window of the hall and out through another. While he is inside, the bird is safe from the winter storms, but after a few moments of comfort, he vanishes from sight into the wintry world from which he came.
So man appears on earth for a little while – but of what went before this life, or what follows, we know nothing.”
-- Bede, 7th c.
Life is a waterfall
We're one in the river and one again after the fall
Swimming through the void, we hear the Word
We lose ourselves, but we find it all
Serj Tankian, 21st c :)
Our enjoyments and progress are greatly enhanced when we learn more, and follow the good things we learn. He promised peace in this life, and the opportunity for eternal life in the world to come, if we do as he asks, but the choices are ours. (More at my site, like how I learned; nothing for sale.)
http://www.galactanet.com/oneoff/theegg_mod.html
https://qualiacomputing.com/2015/12/17/ontological-qualia-th...
Corollary: as far as we are concerned, we are immortal.
>Better Never to Have Been: The Harm Of Coming Into Existence
Has some interesting thoughts on that perspective
The only exception is the middle part looks like some kind of existence, but dreams have the same appearance.
10^100 years post death and you've really only "just" died, subjectively - if a random collection of matter suddenly flickers into existence in the appropriate configuration, then despite the distance of time "you" suddenly come back to life.
My only manifestation is just these words you are reading, and my allegations.
If pre-birth and post-death are both a nothing state, then the question is meaningless. (As is the existence between birth and death, for that matter.)
The only way for the question to have meaning is for pre-birth and/or post-death to be not nothing.
It creates weird questions... Does that person (or the possibility of that personality) exist independently of me, or is it made of me? Does that personality cease to exist upon waking, or is it "absorbed" into me? Where did "I" go when experiencing that other selfhood? What role (if any) does memory play in the continuation of consciousness?
― Ernest Hemingway
No one remembers the names of those yet to be born. The frame of reference matters a great deal here.
What happens when your code starts running? A process is allocated from memory, a class instantiates, and your program is..."born". It runs its code -- and maybe that code responds to inputs, does calculations....has....feelings....falls in love...or whatever :) Maybe it has the ability to interact with other processes and send messages to these other processes. Maybe it runs independently.
It's blissfully ignorant of the system within which it runs: The BIOS, the hardware, etc. Or maybe not! Maybe it even has the ability to probe its environment, learn about it, report on it (...run experiments on it), etc.
From your program's perspective, it is unique, it has perspective, it has experience.
And at some point, the program terminates. What happens? The code stops running. The memory is returned to the pool. Maybe new programs are launched (with no knowledge of previously-launched programs, unless they've left some sort of permanent record in a database or a file, etc.)
What is the "experience" of the program after it terminates (or before it was allocated from memory). Kind of an absurd question when you frame it that way, right? Programs don't have an experience when they're not executing! They simply don't exist at that abstraction level. But that certainly doesn't mean the computer is gone, or that other programs - that use the exact same memory - won't have similarly rich (or poor) experiences in the environment.
I know this a bit contrived...but maybe it's not? I find this logical and, frankly, it makes sense. We're all allocations from a global memory pool that continues to be recycled so long as the computer is running. And to answer OPs primary question, then: Yes, pre-birth is exactly the same as post-life, but both aren't so bad :)
Your comment reminds me that I really need to re-watch ghost in the shell!
A popular genre of anime involves high school students dying by chance and being reborn in fantasy world's where they can have the fun of living out RPG type adventures.
The problem is there isn't a shred of evidence for people being reborn. It seems like wishful thinking or just a fun fantasy.
When an ova is fertilized, the mother's cpus get to work on the program (DNA) soon creating an embryo. This is aided by cpus in the embryo DNA too. This process requires a lot of energy. After some period of time the embryos brain is sufficiently developed and has sufficient input channels to develop sensory awareness and some self awareness. But self awareness is not fully formed until sometime after birth.
All notions of "self" come from the workings of the brain. This too requires a lot of energy. When the brain is no longer supplied with energy, it shuts down and "self" no longer exists.
Here's one about "nothing":
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YkB-phz_2cA
> What is Nothing? What if nothing ever existed? Scientists claim that the universe came from nothing. But what's the nature of nothing? That's where the confusion lies. Featuring interviews with Richard Swinburne, Simon Blackburn, Robert Spitzer, Peter van Inwagen, Steven Weinberg, John Leslie, Timothy O'Connor, Victor Stenger, John Hawthorne, and Peter Forrest.