71–80 of 105 posts
"Not as far as I know."
'Then it seems like you're teaching me to be moral for a reason that doesn't actually apply in the real world.'
"Get back in the box."
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The guy in the story has as much free will as anyone does. Just because everything's stitched together with time travel, doesn't mean the individual instances of the character aren't making authentic choices in each moment. Free will doesn't mean our choices are non-deterministic and detached from our circumstances and history; I don't know why that would even be desirable. Compatibilism is the only coherent stance o…
> The guy in the story has as much free will as anyone does. Just because everything's stitched together with time travel, doesn't mean the individual instances of the character aren't making authentic choices in each moment. Free will doesn't mean our choices are non-deterministic and detached from our circumstances and history Imagine two men. I will make this extreme for sake of example: One of them is Saint Franc…
Just because a conclusion is repugnant doesn't mean it is beyond consideration.
Is there any website of more science fiction extra-short stories that are this short? I know sci-fi might not be the preferred term for stories that are this philosophical or borderline religious, but I don't know a better term.
Maybe start with this short ("I Don't Know, Timmy, Being God Is a Big Responsibility")[1] since it is similar to The Egg in my opinion.
[0] https://qntm.org/fiction [1] https://qntm.org/responsibilit
Hah, it's literally Schopenhauer's hell: Humans as both the tormenting demons and as those doing the suffering. In this case, one human -- which further frames suffering as an inescapable, masochistic cycle. "You were victimizing yourself" says the demiurge. That everything is predetermined and that time is nonlinear is also something that should trouble every contemplative person. It's basically a devil's brew of ni…
Another (very) short story that plays with this idea is Neil Gaiman's Other People: https://xpressenglish.com/our-stories/other-people/
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> The guy in the story has as much free will as anyone does. Just because everything's stitched together with time travel, doesn't mean the individual instances of the character aren't making authentic choices in each moment. Free will doesn't mean our choices are non-deterministic and detached from our circumstances and history Imagine two men. I will make this extreme for sake of example: One of them is Saint Franc…
> every philosopher would call a repugnant conclusion Just because a conclusion is repugnant doesn't mean it is beyond consideration.
I want, desperately, to be the best steward in providing kindness and assistance to anyone and everyone I can within my means while also living the most fulfilling life I can and sharing my knowledge with others.
If anyone asks me if I'm religious, this is the answer. I've always thought of religion - for the rational, at least - to be a sort of known double-think. A known suspension of belief as a tool. When I need that tool, I think of the egg.
Whenever I think about how cruel someone is being to others, I take some solace in imagining that at some point, they too, will experience their own cruelty. Not in a "they deserve punishment way" but in a "they will understand, someday" way.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> There's nothing any more horrifying about this than about bog-standard reincarnation. Reincarnation tends to assume at least some degree of continuity and free will. This thing assumes that you're eventually going to be, e.g., The Elephant Man, or that poor Japanese guy who got cooked by a megadose of radiation and the doctors wouldn't let him die. That, if there's a torture that you've heard of, or any cautionary…
The guy in the story has as much free will as anyone does. Just because everything's stitched together with time travel, doesn't mean the individual instances of the character aren't making authentic choices in each moment. Free will doesn't mean our choices are non-deterministic and detached from our circumstances and history; I don't know why that would even be desirable. Compatibilism is the only coherent stance o…
the being going through this in the story is not a human. a tiny part of them dips its finger into the universe created by the narrator and what is experienced is a human life, but the being experiencing those lives is not human. the human is the lower dimensional representation of the higher-dimensional being that the narrator is speaking to.
if I touch a sheet of paper, part of me exists in the same plane as the paper, but I am not a piece of paper, I am a much more complex being. It is the same for the narrator and the person who just died and believed until this conversation that they were "merely" a human. the humanity of this being is the interface between them and their past selves. once they graduate/hatch from this egg, they are much larger than the sum of all the lives that they have lived. they contain all of those experiences, and will remember them all.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Sure. I'm not saying the good outweighs the bad in every individual life. But you're explicitly picking the most extreme examples, and this is a claim being made about life in general.
I believe the point is that the person in The Egg experiences every extreme example.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The guy in the story has as much free will as anyone does. Just because everything's stitched together with time travel, doesn't mean the individual instances of the character aren't making authentic choices in each moment. Free will doesn't mean our choices are non-deterministic and detached from our circumstances and history; I don't know why that would even be desirable. Compatibilism is the only coherent stance o…
> Surely the real burden would be remembering all those billions of lives with only your paltry human mind to bear it. the being going through this in the story is not a human. a tiny part of them dips its finger into the universe created by the narrator and what is experienced is a human life, but the being experiencing those lives is not human. the human is the lower dimensional representation of the higher-dimensi…
> if there's a torture that you've heard of, or any cautionary tale you've seen reported, you are going to experience it or have already -- and without learning anything at all.
which suggests that there's something horrifying about the cycles of forgetting that take place inside the egg, while the protagonist is still human.
'Am I to understand that right now, you and I are the same person in some sort of meta-egg?' "Not as far as I know." 'Then it seems like you're teaching me to be moral for a reason that doesn't actually apply in the real world.' "Get back in the box."