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TravelinDan88 t1_jb7ieru wrote

There's a philosophical theory that we're all the same living being. For instance, right now I'm me, but in a past life I was my neighbor or I was Bill Gates, etc. Not really chronological past lives but parallel. The world is populated by a single life form repeated ad infinitum beside itself.

It's funky to ponder that while stoned.

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PeanutMelonKing t1_jb7zhui wrote

Egg theory?

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TravelinDan88 t1_jb80fi5 wrote

Actually, yeah. I've not heard it referred to as such but after googling it seems that short story is very similar. Andy Weir is one of my favorite authors, I'm surprised I haven't read that story yet.

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VitaminPb t1_jb8miqn wrote

The concept is far far older than Weir’s story.

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teflong t1_jb8gqns wrote

I find this concept interesting:

If I die and everything just goes black forever, as is purposed by atheism, then I was THE ONLY real being in the universe. If I'm the only thing keeping the lights on, then I'm actually uniquely special. Because reality ceases to exist - all other life forms are not co-equal 'viewing windows' of the universe. If my individual view of the universe stops when I die, then there really isn't anybody else out there. You're all just constructs of my brain.

It seems odd to think that everything stops when I stop. I don't think that's how it goes, though.

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VictosVertex t1_jb8tuw9 wrote

Your argumentation isn't logically sound because you're missing one very important part: it "goes black" for YOU. If you died now absolutely nothing would stop for me, so your basic assumption that everything stops is already wrong.

If your argumentation was true, then this would also be true for any device with any form of sensory input.

A laptop being shut down and never turned on again also makes "everything go black" from the perspective of the laptop itself. Does that now mean that the laptop in question was the only true being in the universe? Obviously it doesn't.

And you as a human aren't special in any way shape or form either. Your singular experience ceases to exist, nothing less, nothing more. Same goes for any experiencing being that ever existed.

Everything "went black" for every single person that came and went before you.

Also it doesn't really go black. It goes nothing. Your experience is gone, thus you couldn't experience black either. Everything, including the perception of time, stops for you, thus nothing ever can happen - from your no longer existing perspective.

Now to make it interesting again: Your basic idea of being the only true being may still be true.

Scientifically speaking there is no way to prove or disprove that you aren't hallucinating everything, including me. Even if I lay out the perfect reasoning of why I exist to you, you could've just as well imagined it. From my perspective this obviously means that I may very well just explain to a hallucination of mine how I could be a hallucination of it.

This goes for every single statement that is outside of science though. God may exist, you may be a Boltzmann Brain imagining reality, this may be a simulation, this may be a single version of a multiverse like a decision tree - all these "fun to imagine" scenarios are outside the realm of science. Thus they may very well be true (or false), but we will never know.

Which is also why science never states absolute certainty and only models what agrees with observation.

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BoringEntropist t1_jb93bgt wrote

Atheism doesn't propose such a thing. It's just the philosophical standpoint that denies the existence of deities. That's all. Topics such as afterlife, souls and other metaphysical stuff is outside of its scope. There are schools of Buddhism that deny the existence of god but believe in reincarnations.

Atheism isn't a believe system. Same as "not stamp collecting" isn't hobby. Not believing in god doesn't mean a person can't believe in other supernatural stuff (UFOs, chakras, whatever).

BTW, the view that you describe about reality not existing outside of your own mind is called solipsism. That position stands on epistemological shaky grounds though.

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[deleted] t1_jb8o1xl wrote

Sorry but this is pretty nonsensical. First of all it shouldn't be this very far-fetched concept after we die according to atheism. We already have not existed for billions of years before we were born. It's just a matter of returning to the state of non existence we were in previously.

So if that whole concept of death is true then you were the only real being in the universe? I can kind of see what you're trying to convey but those are a poor choice of words. I think a better choice of words is that you're simply literally the main character. Which lots of people have already made that point before. There's a good Joe Rogan motivation clip that makes that point. But just because each person is the main character of their lives doesn't mean that everybody else isn't real.

But yeah it's kind of obvious that everybody should be the most important person for themselves. The typical exception is parent's love for their children. I will give you an interesting example of a thought i had that lines up with all of this quite perfectly. Back when i lived in Israel when i was younger i gave myself this thought experiment if i had to sacrifice myself to save the entire country of Israel and the answer i gave was that i wouldn't. It's because military is mandatory over there and that's why i was thinking about it. Because i so didn't care about protecting Israel i managed to get out of serving in the military though that's no easy feat. (had to convince them i was seriously suicidal)

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Jesse0449 t1_jb8yzy4 wrote

you referenced joe Rogan. lost me right there.

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[deleted] t1_jb98mia wrote

There may come a day when you have an open mind but today is not that day.

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JasonP27 t1_jb82yrv wrote

We're all parts of the universe observing itself

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Oahkery t1_jb83inn wrote

There's a scientific theory that there's only one electron in the universe, that every one is the same one just looping back and forth in time (the instances of it going backward are all the positrons). It's almost certainly not true (one flaw is that there are a lot more electrons than positrons, for example), but the thought helped lead to idea that particle/antiparticle pairs are the same, just reversed in time.

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mangekyo1918 t1_jb8e8bd wrote

Getting stoned gets me thinking that I could be having a better life or could have had a better past life, and now my future seems dark and twisted and it scares me. Actually, that's why I stopped smoking weed. Instead of relaxing me, it put my brain into overdrive and I end up stressed and exhausted, at the very edge of an existencial crisis. Yeah, picture me at the edge of a cliff, and the existencial crisis is waiting for me at the bottom of that chasm. I do crosswords or sudokus to get out of it

The universe is sick, it's amazing to study and all these photos of the cosmos leave so many unanswered questions and a pit in my chest. I can only hope to be alive to see any signs of intelligence. I long for that so bad.

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karlou1984 t1_jb86saw wrote

I mean if you believe in the big bounce theory over the heat death, then time should be infinite. If infinite, you should be repeated over and over again and everyone else plus more.

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Fine-Funny6956 t1_jbblett wrote

The Single Electron Theory says the same Electron travels endlessly back and forth in time, reversing charge to go backwards through time

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Emotional-Courage-26 t1_jbgp0fr wrote

Have you read about panpsychism? It is somewhat aligned with this idea. Rather than say you were someone else in another life, you could also say they were you in this life. We're all the same consciousness in all of the lives, perhaps all at once as you mentioned. We're the expression of the same fundamental force of consciousness.

Akin to saying we are all drops of water in the waves of the ocean, and at one time we were shaped as another drop of water that you know of. This is irrelevant to say because we are all part of the same body of water, and as such, are the same. We are more like features which emerge from it occasionally in various forms, constantly changing was we splash and ripple, eventually sinking back into the ocean we came from.

This isn't strictly what panpsychism is or what it means; there are plenty of hypotheses around what consciousness being a ubiquitous feature of the universe would really mean, with that being just one interpretation.

I really like to think about it. I'm not a panpsychist, but I'm not opposed to the possibilities either. I am a big fan of the idea that we're all made from the same stuff, with the same core "being", perhaps expressed differently through how our physical bodies develop. I can't be upset with people as much if I imagine their circumstance is largely a product of how their physical development played out, and more or less, they are me. Fundamentally they're exactly what I am, expressed slightly differently by forces they largely have no control over.

It's also neat to consider consciousness as a force of the universe, similar to gravity. Why does gravity exist, and what's it for? Well, maybe nothing. Same with consciousness. It's simply there. It's part of how the universe works.

Maybe we're within the atoms of a larger being, and we're conduits of its own consciousness. Like electricity flowing through a circuit to a co-processor. We're the tiny neural network within it, computing all these simulations to help it understand itself better.

Disclaimer: I don't know anything

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OKC2023champs t1_jbapg38 wrote

This is what I believe as well. I think whenever you die you’re just a different being at any point in time.

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[deleted] t1_jb7kb1j wrote

[deleted]

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TravelinDan88 t1_jb7kwzf wrote

I mean, it's philosophy. They're all just theories. We're all just meat-mechs controlled by a brain that named itself. Nothing makes sense.

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[deleted] t1_jb7l4z7 wrote

[deleted]

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MegatheriumRex t1_jb8afz1 wrote

You’re going to be a plankton a few trillion trillion trillion times.

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TravelinDan88 t1_jb7mk1s wrote

Yeah. The theory dives further into itself explaining that by experiencing all there is to experience only then can you achieve enlightenment. I'm paraphrasing in a major way as I haven't studied that theory in years, but that's the very basic gist.

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ringobob t1_jb8a6s0 wrote

And been the torturer. And a billionaire. And someone who met the love of their life and spent 80 years with them. A whole world of experiences.

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UniqueFix9 t1_jb9qqd6 wrote

Why is that in every hard science post there's also these stoner / I took too many drugs takes from philosophers?

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TravelinDan88 t1_jb9ypef wrote

Human nature, you negative Nancy.

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UniqueFix9 t1_jba0pvg wrote

Not my nature that's for sure.

It's also not science, it's useless thoughts in stoners' minds.

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