What is the source of your ideas about karma? — baker

Basically shower thoughts :sweat:

I quoted Sadhguru because I was Googling for a quote that fit my article. Saw some of his video's though, very interesting!

I definitely have to read into this "Eternal return", thanks for the tips guys! Will let you know my thoughts

I share your liking of the idea, that is why I wrote this article about it. It is an idea that aligns with our values and I think we like it because it is an idea that makes us feel like our actions actually matter. And I think they do :)

My appologies for the late reply.

aspect which you discuss is a fairly contentious area by tho — Jack Cummins

However, one aspect which you discuss is a fairly contentious area by those who believe in karma. That is whether karma is a natural law of justice. You say, 'you make a choice and later the universe alters your fate in order to either reward you or to punish you.' The question is it really about reward and punishment as such? It can be argued that karma is simply cause and effect, as expressed in the principle of you reap what you sow. — Jack Cummins

This is true, however, I do not mean this to be some kind of higher form of justice. I mean that other people experience your actions, and that our definition of the "self" might not be limited to the person that we are. Hence, the experiences of those other people are the "justice" you will receive.

Please note, the familiar western notion of what goes around comes around isn't karma. Yes, karma can manifest in the present life - one's actions today producing consequences the next day or a month, or years later - but karma is usually used to refer to moral causality that carries from one life to another via reincarnation. — TheMadFool

In one way or another I would still argue it can relate to "what goes around comes around". All about definition I suppose ;)

I don't think that you are correct to say that there is a clear distinction between the idea between the Western idea of what goes comes around in Western thought and the idea of karma. The Western idea is based primarily on the Biblical notion of reaping what you sow. This can be connected to the belief in reincarnation held within the esoteric tradition of Christianity, which has been repressed, but still influential nevertheless. — Jack Cummins

Would you not agree they are just different ways of expressing the same thing? Sure, one of the explanations might explicitly mention different lives, but in the end I would say it carries the same logic/intention.

Karma as retribution is relevent here. Karma is just as relevant to the single life as it is to the reincarnated, since the dread of existence cannot be measured subjectively. And since karma relates directly to the subject, no measure of worldy diversion can deter the karmic fate of any subject. — Merkwurdichliebe

Spot on I would say. In my article I would define the subject as consciousness or experience in general. Not a single person/soul.

Perhaps I am greedy for wanting more lives and bodies. And that would incur more suffering. So I don't know what the antinatalists would make of my wish to be reborn into the world. — Jack Cummins

I think the thought of immortality is a pleasing one to many humans. However, have you thought about what it would actually mean? You would be born anew without memories of the "previous" life, in a different time or the same. Depending on what you would define for a reincarnation rather than a separate soul, I would argue that the whole of (human) existence could be many reincarnations of the same one. This is the interconnectedness I mean in my article.

Regards,
me.

Thank you for your interest, much appreciated!

Karma in general is a very appealing thought I think. Maybe something we all want to believe :wink:

I am not familiar with the law of attraction, but I think it refers a bit to the "people thing" part? Or am I wrong?

Anyway, looking forward to hear what you think of the article. Have a nice evening :smile:

Thanks Gnomon, seem to me that you are one of few people in the replies that actually bothered to read the article.

The point is very similar to the "super-human" form of justice, but what I mean is that it is an inhered form of existence, rather than some intelligence or god. We are basically shaping the environment we all live in. How you choose to interpret "all" makes the difference for my point about karma.

Very nice explanation. Also didn't know about the sleeping beauty problem, very nice thought.

Thanks guys, I've learned a lot :)

This might be true, however the point of the argument is that other probabilities do not matter. Therefor these observations are irrelevant for the argument.

I believe you hit the nail on the head.

We don't even know how to define our perspective, our consciousness. Who is to say that it is a random pick from existence at all (no god/fate references intended).

What exactly do you mean? I think even if the balls are exactly the same, the question holds. However, all viewpoints will also be the same.

Well if that's the question, the answer pretty clearly has to be no. The chance that you will be born is not related to how many people exist afert you were born. — Echarmion

True. It still makes me wonder whether we can say anything at all about the graphs though. From a mathematical point of view, yes. But I wonder if there is more to it.

Found this video about the subject btw. Nick Bostrom explains the doomsday argument very clearly:

If you would not exist, you would not be asking this question. Hence the survivership bias I mentioned. But i'm not sure it's applicable.

I have a feeling that adding time is making the argument more complex than it should be.
Breaking it down, the real question is something like: How big is the chance of you being you in a set of N people.

In the first graph, N is simply bigger than in the second.

This might not be a question of probability, as the change of you being you is 1. Saying there are more people alive in graph 1 doesn't really matter.



As for the balls:

I read somewhere that in our past, 100 billion people have lived (black balls). with roughly 8 billion currently alive (green balls):

so let's say graph 1:
100 black balls
8 green balls
1 million yellow (future humans) balls

and graph 2:
100 black balls
8 green balls

Now indeed, the chance of getting a green ball is a lot higher in the case of graph 2. I think no one is denying that.

But that's not really the question.

From the perspective of our balls, every single one of them has had a life. So basically I am not removing one ball from each bag. I am removing all balls from the bag.
The green ball knows not about the yellow balls, so when I ask him the question, he will assume graph 2 is more likely (which is true). Yet graph 1 can also be true.

But in fact the question is: Is the green ball more likely to be the green ball in the second case than in the first case?



I think we are asking something like: Is there a smaller chance of you being you when there are more people in existence.

Well, for Presentism and neo-Kantianism, the probability of living now is one :)

From the standard realist perspective, averaging over all possible futures that are consistent with current cosmological information makes the probability of living at this moment of time vanishingly small, i.e. under-determined but convergent towards zero. — sime

I think it's an interesting point.
The graph is discriminating towards humans. What about all other conscious beings that ever existed/will ever exist in the universe (that might ask the same question). I think they should also be plotted on the graph. ;)
Then indeed the possibility either way will probably be close to zero...

Simply put, the fact that we're more likely to pick 2019 from graph 2 than from graph 1 is countered by the fact that an extinction level event in the near future isn't very likely.

Sometimes physical possibility trumps a mathematical puzzle. — Michael

Still, the mathematical puzzle is interesting. I think it's worth the discussion. The physical facts do not apply to the puzzle itself :)

The Doomsday argument is an interesting one to consider:

Denoting by N the total number of humans who were ever or will ever be born, the Copernican principle suggests that any one human is equally likely (along with the other N − 1 humans) to find themselves at any position n of the total population N, so humans assume that our fractional position f = n/N is uniformly distributed on the interval [0, 1] prior to learning our absolute position.

f is uniformly distributed on (0, 1) even after learning of the absolute position n. That is, for example, there is a 95% chance that f is in the interval (0.05, 1), that is f > 0.05. In other words, we could assume that we could be 95% certain that we would be within the last 95% of all the humans ever to be born. If we know our absolute position n, this implies an upper bound for N obtained by rearranging n/N > 0.05 to give N < 20n.

If Leslie's figure is used, then 60 billion humans have been born so far, so it can be estimated that there is a 95% chance that the total number of humans N will be less than 20 × 60 billion = 1.2 trillion. Assuming that the world population stabilizes at 10 billion and a life expectancy of 80 years, it can be estimated that the remaining 1140 billion humans will be born in 9120 years. — Michael

This is exactly the name I was looking for, thanks!
One thing I don't understand from the quoted text though (still have to read the wiki): Why is the conclusion that there is a 95% chance there will be still 1140 billion humans to come? As I understand it, the chance is 5% sure that there is a 95% chance of 1140 billion humans still to come.

That's not quite how the argument goes. If we exited history and then randomly re-entered it, we might indeed be justified in reasoning we'd enter somewhere nearer the end of humanity. But the argument had been whether or not probability theory tells us there is an increased probability we are close to the end right now. — Echarmion

That's correct.

Well it’s how the argument I’ve been making goes. — AJJ

In that case I'm afraid we have had a miscommunication and have both been talking about something else :P

Let's ignore the future for a bit.

Why would it be ok to think we would had a probability of being born (as someone else) in the past (just a high one now, hence the graphs), but not ok to have the probability to have been born as someone else in the present?

I like the ball example, but as I am a simple man, the ball abstraction is the only abstraction I want to make, so let's use real numbers:

I read somewhere that in our past, 100 billion people have lived (black balls). with roughly 8 billion currently alive (green balls):

so let's say graph 1:
100 black balls
8 green balls
1 million yellow (future humans) balls

and graph 2:
100 black balls
8 green balls

Now indeed, the chance of getting a green ball is a lot higher in the case of graph 2. I think no one is denying that.

But that's not really the question.

From the perspective of our balls, every single one of them has had a life. So basically I am not removing one ball from each bag. I am removing all balls from the bag.
The green ball knows not about the yellow balls, so when I ask him the question, he will assume graph 2 is more likely (which is true). Yet graph 1 can also be true.

But in fact the question is: Is the green ball more likely to be the green ball in the second case than in the first case?

It is a question I believe not only of math, but also one of consciousness. I actually liked the answer of . Even though I don't completely understand it, I think he is thinking in the right direction here.

I’m not sure it raises the chances of being a Boltzmann brain, since for that to be likely the universe would need to have had a much longer past that it’s commonly (to my knowledge) said to have had.

And it seems to me it’s not actually possible for you (anyone) to have been anyone else, since obviously you’d not be you then. I don’t see why you being you makes it likely that everyone else is a zombie, rather than everyone else just being the particular conscious person they are. — AJJ

Is this not the same question in essence? Only instead of asking it for all humanity (or conscious beings) over time, we are asking the question for all humans currently alive.

If indeed the chance of you being you is one, then it also answers my original question. In such a case the chance of me being someone else in a different time is also zero. (Assuming that me being me is connected to me being me in the time I live in).

Scary thought...But even so, we can still hope to be the one in a billion lottery ticket.

After all, this would also raise the chance significantly on being either a Boltzman brain or the rest of humanity being philosophical zombies (I mean, what is the chance of being me in 7 billion?!). A reality I would rather avoid (as if it matters:P).

Just experimenting with this chain of thought:


Using that same logic, would it not also make sense to say that we are "far more likely" currently the largest conscious civilization that has ever and ever will exist in existence?

I mean, if over the time of the universe there would be a bigger civilization in existence, it would be more likely to be born as one of them.

Nick Bostrom uses this kind of reasoning to argue that there is a Great Filter lying ahead of us, and that we live inside a computer simulation. — Marchesk

Funny that you mention this. I'm writing an article that also references the simulation hypothesis, that's actually the reason I came to ask this question. It is exactly this question, only a substantial part of the first graph being simulated.

Whoever/whenever you are it’s always most likely that yours is the final generation. The rationale being that if the final generation is the largest one, and if a random person is always most likely to be among the largest generation/group, then it follows that you (a random person) are most likely among the final generation. — AJJ

From a random person's perspective, this will always be true (if indeed population keeps rising). However, I am wondering if this (and therefor also the simulation hypothesis) is a valid argument to make: Personally I think this is a special case of survivorship bias, in which we simply cannot see (or know) the people that havn't been born yet. A 4 dimensional survivorship bias if you will.

What are your thoughts on that?

@Bitter Crank
I like your insights on the subject. Thanks for sharing them!

Even though this article is specifically about matter over mind, I believe the other way around, or separation of the two make just as much -or more- sense in this case (I purposely avoided the word "matter" here ;P)

While I believe it is possible to understand and predict the mind. It is still inherently a silly thing to exist. Well, just as silly as anything to exist I suppose. That is what I want to communicate with this article.

As for the cat and the cake...you make a good point. Strange how two separately awesome things don't fit well together....some inspiration for the next article ;)

@Marcus de Brun Thank you for your feedback. Actually an interesting perspective on things. Do you mean that we "narrow" our field of vision in order to fit with the "norm" of how things are?

I'm afraid to ask, but what do you mean with reality? — ChatteringMonkey

Good question. In this sentence I mean more our "familiar" reality/existence. I have written an article on that as well: http://openminddough.com/familiar-existence/

I will put it on my reading list Stan, thanks for the tip!
Thanks for the advice. These idea's can be bewildering indeed. I'm counting on reality to anchor me during these thoughts.