Bruh you are viral
If it were proven, and you could identify your previous identity, would you be able to claim your wealth and possessions from previous life?
If any religion with a good afterlife were proven suicide rates would rise.
Not if suicide excludes you from a good afterlife in that religion…
Interest in extreme sports would rise …
Abrahamic religions typically have suicide as a sin, for example.
As an instant-hell in some cases.
Cory Doctorow has a story set in a society where cloning complete with mind restoration exists and is pretty quick and cheap. People make regular backups of themselves and then engage in dangerous activities like mountain skiing and whatnot. I forget which story it is: might be ‘Rapture of the Nerds’.
Wasn’t that Down And Out In The Magic Kingdom?
Yeah, could be that, judging by the summary on Wikipedia. I was so weirded out by the Disney World aspect of it, that I frankly forgot to follow the plot.
did they cure pain???
Don’t remember that, alas: Doctorow’s shorter stories and even some novels are pretty weird, and I was often too baffled by some aspects and details to remember the particulars. Need to give them a reread one of these days, and in text rather than in audio.
Technically reincarnation is for realsies. Your bits and pieces will be used by nature again.
I don’t want to live forever through my work. I want to do it through not dying.
- Woody Allen
Good point. What even is reincarnation if you can’t remember a thing?
Some dinosaurs have been waiting for a loooong time.
I think about it in a slightly different way.
Once I’m dead, people will keep being born. When I think real hard about it, it’s pretty much the same as reincarnation except there’s no need for some kind of immortal soul.
There’s no functional difference between my experience of being born and someone else’s after I’m dead. In both cases, a new person wakes up inside a meat suit and thinks “this is me.” This is already reincarnation without a hard drive and a rating algorithm.
even moreso. ever meet people that are a type. where several are really similar. I have even seen and met my own type. not only will people continue being born but ones a lot like you.
To be even more technical. You are being reincarnated constantly.
We shed skin and cells and those become something else while our own body rebuilds itself constantly from other life.
The only cells in the body that dont change out are neurons and sensory receptors.
A lot of proteins stay forever though. Like bones, teeth, and probably a lot of proteins in muscles. A lot of others I’m not listing.
But the cells themselves are always dying and being remade (except neurons and receptors).
thats like the concept of buddhist reincarnation, there is no “soul”, ego is illusion in buddhism
like a stream of consciousness constantly travelling through cycles
Flesh of Theseus.
Theseus of Theseus
I’ve been vegan for over a decade, so with constant cell regrowth I’m photosynthesis with extra steps.
You’re actually right on the money. Reincarnation based on certain systems is exactly that, when look at it from it’s proper philosophical framework. But you can just pull it out from it’s framework, cram it to a completely different framework (like one that believes in individual souls) and then claim it doesn’t work.
From the perspective of nonduality, everyone is a reincarnation of everyone, always. It’s internally coherent. Also a great reason to practice compassion. Of course people don’t super love the idea of being the reincarnation on people they don’t like, dead or alive. But that’s one of the many reasons nonduality isn’t for the faint of heart.
Is that like how we are all a single consciousness simultaneously inhabiting each person across space and time? That idea appeals to me. Don’t know that I’d say I believe it, but it appeals to me.
Not quite. We have the appearance of (what we call) individuals within one single consciousness. It appears to reflect upon itself from what we take to be individual vantage points (people). That is an imperfect characterization though, try as I might. I’m pointing to consciousness before any thoughts - before you think there’s a you, separate from anyone or anything. Pure experience, before thinking ABOUT it.
There was a scifi story like this. People could remember their was reincarnation and people could remember their past lives and like rich people who reincarnated poor killed themselves and such.
Maybe it does and the queue is so long we just forget about our old life by the time our number comes up
The existence of a queue sparks the follow-up question: What happens if something is born while the queue is empty?
Donald J. Trump.
Miscarriage?
Pillars of Eternity happens.
Mushrooms.
They came before the queue got started and will be here long after it finishes.
I read a short story once that there’s only one person constantly reincarnated simultaneously, and everyone you (I) meet is actually me (you) and only realizes it after death before being born into the next person’s body,
That’s interesting. I’ve had that same thought before, it might be cool to see someone else’s take on it. Do you remember the name of the story or author?
The Egg, by Andy Weir.
It’s also on YouTube in various forms. Kurzgesagt, for example, has a version in their animation style.
Oh my god. That was Andy Weir?!
I don’t actually believe this, but it’s the perspective I try to have in life. Always treat others how you want to be treated because maybe one day it will be you.
In my story, Maizy’s Tails, I made it so that souls had to be aged for 1000 years before they could be reincarnated. Otherwise the lingering attachment (which makes souls weightless) won’t allow them to enter into a new body.
The 1000 years is just a nice, round figure the gods use as a safe baseline. Some souls might only need 200 years while others might need 950 or so. Best to just place them all into balloons and let them age in batches 👍
I guess it depends. If you’re eager to get the fuck outta this mortal coil, would having to go through childhood again really be something you’d be eager to do?
Who cares, you won’t remember anything.
It depends.
If governments don’t restrict this information and you get born in a bad family, then you use knowledge of reincarnation and can just kys and keep doing it till you get a good family and childhood…
Then kys by 18 if you dont got rich parents so you can skip the “wage slavery” phase…
Oh I bet governments will start restricting this information…
Like how they bury history books…
Childhood kinda feels nostalgic ngl…
I mean it felt very fun and intense from memory…
I just didn’y know how to appreciate it back then…
I mean me right now could consciousness transfer to 8 year old me and redo all that and I could make it perfect…
If birth rates decline, you’re gonna be stuck in purgatory for a long time
I mean 1000 years would just be a blink of eye since you wouldn’t be conscious to be aware of it…
Alternatively, maybe I get born into an advanced post-scarcity alien civilization?
See that’s exactly where my mind went. Who says you would come back human… or even on Earth with a vast universe with infinite planets?
Would it count as suicide anymore?
cylons can resurrect/reincarnate everytime they die(the show never actually showed how they did it). plus since they had no fear of death thier reincarnation, they can callously keep throwing bodies against thier enemies, and provide useful intel as well.
strategic respwan?
Rerolling. As a Civilization player, I get it. I’d be aiming for that legendary start too.
I mean I don’t see any difference between death and reincarnating without past memories.
In that case, people with retrograde amnesia are already dead and we should just consider them a new legal person…
Yes. That’s actually how that works.
If no one can identify you and you have the physical symptoms of amnesia (which can be detected… Sorry fakers!) then you get a new, legal identity.
Christianity made suicide a mortal sin because new adherents kept killing themselves to get to heaven pronto.
They would increase if any afterlife was proven. Even terrible ones ppl will convince themselves are actually good.
“Whoa, they have grilling???”
“Yes, they grill your soul over a pit of pulsing, miasmic ichor. It slowly strips you of even the concept of sanity through sheer agony.”
“I can only imagine the BTUs in grilling heaven, wow!”
The grill is heated by GPUs. Proper soul cooking requires a short bit of searing and then each side gets a good, long cook.
You know they did a good job when the heat sink fins leave those nice, crisp brown lines.
All to keep the data centers that render reality humming along!
Hard disagree, the idea of soending eternity in close confinement with “the creator” seems like it would quickly lead to theocide.
So many people romanticise hell for some reason
Probably caused at least in part by the constant shitty behavior of people who are loudly convinced that they are going to heaven, who then turn around and tell everyone else that they are going to hell.
Yeah, a lot of satanic folk, or just those that like the aesthetic, dont actually believe in a hell or satan. Its often a middle finger to the religious that want to control their lives.
My wife grew up in a Jewish household that celebrates Christmas. They never took any religion seriously. She giggles when she has to go to a catholic mass for a wedding or something. She didn’t grow up with it and its as silly to her as Satan worship or witchcraft is to other people.
What you consider normal is mostly a function of exposure.
Choose Heaven for the climate, but choose Hell for the company.
There’s a Jason Segel movie about this called The Discovery. It’s a decent watch.
Queue companies finding a way to track your respawn and apply debt from your last life.
I’d come back as a butterfly.
Nobody ever suspects the butterflies!
You’d have to come back as a caterpillar first.
Now that you mention it, I’m even more excited to experience the living goo in a shell phase!
That’s just my current life all over again. :(
I’ve seen a giant butterfly be blamed for burning down a school ;)
I’ve seen them blamed for literal hurricanes.
There is a movie about a scientist that proves the afterlife exists. A bunch of people kill themselves. And then it’s discovered that the afterlife they thought they found was not infact an afterlife but more like some time spatial recording of an alternative reality or something.
Honestly it’s still a little vague at the end how the so called evidence is really supportive of life after death.
I bet there are way more people who think their life is below average than there are below average lives
I like the idea of Death in the Discworld. You get what you believe in. That’s why some isolated tribes kill evangelist on site , hell only exists if you believe in it.
The monk that believes in reincarnation is always so excited to start again but wishes he would remember more, only remembering his other lives in the time he is dead.
The long desert that Brutha believes in is special when he decides to save Vorbis, and walks it together, even though he is like a messiah and Vorbis should be condemned to suffer his loneliness forever.
I fucking love The Small Gods book so much
What happens if someone believes that death is only temporary, and every time they die, they’ll come back to life in an even more powerful form 1 day later?
Death is a specific entity so he has to make it happen and there’s lots of things that he nopes lol Like people that become ghosts, he is always like yeah it’s weird that nobody tells you what happens next bye! and the ghost has to figure it out for themselves
Congratulations, you found Son Goku!
