Category Archives: you always are

To realize is to realize, 1.4

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The Buddha attacked all attempts to conceive of a fixed self, while stating that holding the view “I have no self” is also mistaken. This is an example of the middle way charted by the Buddha.

— Wikipedia on Philosophy of self

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The ultimate self-fulfilling prophecies:

1. free will or not

2. god or no god

3. afterlife or not

4. future spouse exists or not

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Why self-fulfilling?

3. afterlife or not

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Whether “afterlife” exists or not depends on your definitions of “self” and “afterlife”.

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At one extreme, the definition of “afterlife exists” is that, after death, the same fixed self will continue to exist; “you” will exist in exactly the same way as before. In this definition, afterlife does not exist.

Note that even before death, during your normal lifetime, there is actually no “same fixed self”, “you” keeps changing every day and every second.

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At the opposite extreme, the definition of “afterlife exists” is that, some aspects of you continue to exist in some way. In this definition, afterlife exists.

For example, if some of your writings still exist after your death, they will preserve some of your mind.

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This question is like, when your old computer is dead and has got replaced, does it still exist?

The old computer hardware does not exist anymore. However, some of the software and the data do. But just some, not all.

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Continue to exist?

All of you?

NO

Some of you?

YES

— Me@2021-12-18 07:24:32 PM

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He attributes his lifelong habit of writing every day to an incident in 1932 when a carnival entertainer, Mr. Electrico, touched him on the nose with an electrified sword, made his hair stand on end, and shouted, “Live forever!” It was from then that Bradbury wanted to live forever and decided his career as an author in order to do what he was told: live forever.

— Wikipedia on Ray Bradbury

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2021.12.19 Sunday (c) All rights reserved by ACHK

Mirror selves, 5.2

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Anatta 3.3 | 無我 3.3

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You fight for existence, for being alive.

However, your existence is not “yours”.

The existence of you, is not your property.

The existence of you, is a property of the group you are in.

The existence of you, is a property of other people.

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To meaningfully say the statement “I exist”, you have to specify you exist with respect to whom.

To exist, you have to specify to exist in which people’s world.

— Me@2018-05-22 7:43 AM

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2018.07.02 Monday (c) All rights reserved by ACHK

The Sixth Sense, 3

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Mirror selves, 2 | Anatta 3.2 | 無我 3.2

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You cannot feel your own existence or non-existence. You can feel the existence or non-existence of (such as) your hair, your hands, etc.

But you cannot feel the existence or non-existence of _you_.

— Me@2018-03-17 5:12 PM

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Only OTHER people or beings can feel your existence or non-existence.

— Me@2018-04-30 11:29:08 AM

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2018.04.30 Monday (c) All rights reserved by ACHK

Dear Esther, 4

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cease to exist

~ cannot be found in the original region,

but is still possible to be found in the meta-region

For example, at the end of the video game Dear Esther, the character dies, computer screen turns black, you cease to exist there,

but you wake up and continue to exist outside that video game, outside that computer screen.  

— Me@2012.10.27

2014.06.01 Sunday (c) All rights reserved by ACHK

Copy Me, 9

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Reincarnation 4

Reincarnation is no different from dying unless you keep your memories, which I’ve not seen anyone who believe in reincarnation claim. If there’s both a new body, and a new set of emotions and memories, in which sense is this new person “you” ?

— Anonymous

— Quora

2014.02.07 Friday ACHK

Black hole information paradox, 3

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Among these insights that have convinced Hawking, you find Matrix theory and especially the AdS/CFT correspondence. Gravity in asymptotically AdS spaces has an equivalent description in terms of a conformal field theory living on its boundary. This conformal field theory is manifestly unitary and has no room for destruction of the information. This answers an equivalent question about gravity, too.

This brings most sane physicists to the opinion that the information is preserved and gravitational physics is not that special after all. But it does not give us a quantitative, calculable framework that would explain how does the information get out of the black holes and what do these subtle correlations that remember the initial state look like.

— Hawking and unitarity

— Lubos Motl

2013.09.05 Thursday ACHK

Single-world interpretation, 6.2.2

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Information lost, 5

In the Many-worlds interpretation (MWI), when we say that “a + b” collapses to “a”, there is a shift of definition of “you”.

MWI is in one sense correct: choice b version of you still exists. But the trick is that he is not in another universe. He is in the environment of this universe.

And perhaps in reverse, you are also part of the environment of him.

— Me@2011.11.20

This environment theory is not totally accurate. For example, in the photon double slit experiment, during the wave function collapse, 

sqrt(2) | left > + sqrt(2) | right >

–> | left >    ,

| right > as the unchosen choice, or the lost information, goes to the environment.      

However, the macroscopic reality of | photon goes left > requires not only the state of the photon but also the state of its environment, including the lost information | right >_micro. Just the lost information itself is not enough to form a macroscopic reality.

— Me@2012.04.03

2012.11.16 Friday (c) All rights reserved by ACHK

A. J. Ayer, 2

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A prevalent fallacy is the assumption that a proof of an after-life would also be a proof of the existence of a deity.

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He took the view that this world was very nasty and that there was a fair chance that the next world, if it existed, was even nastier.

— What I Saw When I Was Dead

— A. J. Ayer

2012.11.11 Sunday ACHK

A. J. Ayer

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Near-death experience

In 1988, shortly before his death, Ayer wrote an article entitled, “What I saw when I was dead”, describing an unusual near-death experience. Of the experience, Ayer first said that it “slightly weakened my conviction that my genuine death … will be the end of me, though I continue to hope that it will be.” However, a few days later he revised this, saying “what I should have said is that my experiences have weakened, not my belief that there is no life after death, but my inflexible attitude towards that belief”.

In 2001 Dr. Jeremy George, the attending physician, claimed that Ayer had confided to him: “I saw a Divine Being. I’m afraid I’m going to have to revise all my books and opinions.” Ayer’s son Nick, however, said that he had never mentioned this to him though he did find his father’s words to be extraordinary, and said he had long felt there was something possibly suspect about his father’s version of his near death experience. 

— Wikipedia on A. J. Ayer

2012.11.09 Friday ACHK

Existence, 2

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Existence is not a property of an object. It is a property of properties.

For example, when we say “X does not exist”, we do not mean that “there is an X and X has a property of non-existence.” Instead, existence is a property of the collection of other objects.

Existence is a property of the system that X is in. 

X exists

= the system has the component X

= the system has the property of “having X”

X doe not exist

= no systems have the component X

= no systems have the property of “having X”

— Me@2012.10.11

2012.10.12 Friday (c) All rights reserved by ACHK

Information lost, 3.2

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Information conservation

There is another very subtle law of physics that may be even more fundamental than energy conservation.

It’s sometimes called reversibility, but let’s just call it information conservation.

Information conservation implies that if you know the present with perfect precision, you can predict the future for all time.

But that’s only half of it. It also says that if you know the present, you can be absolutely sure of the past. It goes in both directions.

— The Black Hole War, p.87

— Leonard Susskind

2012.06.12 Tuesday ACHK