241–250 of 287 posts
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You can test it out for yourself. You don’t need to identify as a Buddhist to come to the conclusion that you are not your body.
You made the stronger claim that I am not my mind either, though. You do have to identify as something in order to come to that conclusion.
”But everybody dies, and there will always be places and experiences missing from anyone’s life – the world has too much beauty and adventure for one person to see.” Damn gut punch...
I remember precisely when I had this particular epiphany. I was 12 years old, in love with books, and thanks to my parents who had signed a form, I had just gotten my first library card for the real (read: non-kiddie) section of the public library. Awed by the sheer number of tall bookshelves, intoxicated by the library smell and my newfound source of knowledge, I asked the librarian how many books they had, she said…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
...or understand you were never born in the first place.
explain
What did your face look like before you were born?
“All that is mine, beloved and pleasing, will become otherwise and will become separated from me”— Siddhartha Gautama. As a Buddhist we do “contemplation of death” meditation on a regular basis. It involves imagining our last few hours on our deathbed. It is a wonderful exercise to help put things in context. It makes you behave differently towards people you meet, even strangers.
My wife passed this year from cancer. Looking back we had no idea how close we were to the end, and in the last few weeks her beautiful mind was influenced by the disease. I’m sure someone on HN is going through this at least adjacently and my recommendation is to not wait to the end to have important conversations. For those that aren’t going through this now, maybe for a little while live life like you are...it mig…
> Looking back we had no idea how close we were to the end This rings very true for me. My dad died of brain cancer going on five years ago now. He was diagnosed in 2014. They were clear the prognosis was not good. One or two years at best. They removed the tumor as soon as they found it, and he returned basically to normal. There was a weird settling in of what it all meant and treatments that were meant to stall th…
This happened to me as well. My brother passed at age 47 in 2013. He was initially diagnosed with stage 2 colon cancer and things seemed to be going alright for about a year.
The issue was that the tumor was near a major blood vessel and surgery failed because they were afraid he would bleed to death.
Even after this failed surgery, we had hope with some experimental treatments. He lasted another year.
After a couple of rounds of chemo, he went from bad to worse within a couple of weeks. I had never experienced death like this before and it all came a a shock to me how quickly he passed away.
The worst part is that he fought the idea of death to the very end (I'm sure we all do). There were no plans for his one-man successful business and his wife had to get all of his passwords for important accounts when he was delirious from all of the drugs in his system and nearly on his death bed. He truly thought he would beat it.
The aftermath was like a bomb went off in our family.
His wife begged me to help her with his business on the day of the funeral. I realized he had been neglecting customers for 6 months+ (this is completely understandable, given his condition) and they were screaming for their money back. I spent many weeks/weekends/long nights cleaning up the business and getting the business back to a reasonable level, gaining back customers that would have been lost. This was all for free, to help her (and his kids) out. I explained to her that future work would not be free.
I also had to help her return all kinds of electronics that he bought while he was on chemo drugs. He managed to rack up $50,000 in bills because he would forget that he ordered something..and order 10 of them.
To this day, I'm not sure how she didn't notice all of these amazon packages coming to the door and thinking nothing of it.
After this was done, I told his wife that if she wanted me to continue with this business arrangement, I would need to be a partner in the business. She not only didn't want to do this, but told me I only 'answered emails' and didn't do any actual work, which was clearly not true.
She wanted to give me a free cell phone and pay me around $10/hour as compensation for future work. It was also explained that she had contacted a lawyer and it was stressed that all of the intellectual property from the business was not mine. Kind of strange to me to already assume I'm going to steal intellectual property from you when I just saved you many thousands of dollars and your business..for free.
At this point you may be thinking she's just naive and may not understand the work involved. She worked in the computer industry for a decade. This is how she met my brother. She understands the work it takes to run his business and only wanted to take advantage of me.
As an aside, my brothers business involves: tech support, software development of multiple products in at least 3 languages, and knowing the business. I have the ability do do all three, since I have been in the software/tech industry for the past 2 decades and have owned multiple successful companies. Him and I were very close and I had lots of knowledge about his business and what it entailed. We had ongoing tech discussions through email/chats/in-person for many years.
He was the one that bought me my first computer and was my mentor.
4 months later, she emailed me a contract with a proposal. I would get 5% of the profits for working on it full-time and her kids would own 100% of the business. This was a slap in my face and I declined the offer. With the declining profits in the business, this would have been like working at
The problem is that I would need to work on it full-time to actually save it from failure. If I signed the contract, only worked on it part-time, and it failed, I would be blamed. I also don't like to half-ass anything...especially when it comes to running a business.
She then proceeded to get anyone she could find to work on the business for free and started creating a wedge in my immediate family by spreading false information about the situation. She ended up roping in one of his clients, who had become a friend, to answer all emails for free.
She describes him as a 'good, christian, man'. The funny part is that she was never that religious..and I've known her for 25 years. One of her greatest traits is the ability to manipulate people. All of her friends are people that can do things for her. If she can't use you for something, you are cast off and ignored. She especially likes networking with anyone that has lots of money.
Fast forward to 2020 and the website is in terrible shape. A 7+ year out-of-date website that keeps getting hacked and badly mis-configured DNS records. I told her how to fix these on the first day, but my advice was ignored. I can only imagine how insecure the actual product is, since there have been no updates in all this time.
I also found out my other brother has been helping her for free and outright lying to me about it. I overheard a conversation a couple of days ago that they wanted to keep secret from me. He also has no idea what he's doing and badly butchered the site...but the price for his services is perfect (free).
I just wish my brother would have admit to himself that he may die and specifically write out his wishes for the business in his will. I think it would have prevented this entire situation.
I should probably thank him. It showed me that his wife is still the evil, conniving woman that she was many years ago and that she never really changed..she only got better at hiding it before he died.
But there's now these lingering issues at all family gatherings.
I now own two successful companies. I don't think I would have ever gotten to this level of success, even with a partnership in my brother's company and a business partner that would only fight me on every important decision.
I wish more people would learn about cryonics. It's either 0 or something above zero probability.
One would wonder on the rules of the forum where 500ers can downvote a comment that sparked such a nice discussion. Internet never ceases to dissapoint.
Most people come to the internet to validate their existence. I come to dismantle it.
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"How do you conflate not existing before birth to not existing after death?" How can you not? Do you remember what it was like before you were born? Do you know of anyone who told you what it is like to be dead? If we do not know what death is how do we know what life is? We only know it by it's external appearance, which really tells us nothing. I am not an existentialist or a nihilist, I am a Daoist who is indeed o…
How can you escape the cycle of birth and death if you can't even escape high-school level philosophical debate?
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I'd be worried some rich psychopath (actually, probably an AI) would resurrect people and put them into a torture dungeon for eternity. Imagine never being able to die. Only suffer. No mouth, must scream vibes. Who knows what the future holds. But in the remote chance this is what the future holds, the AI may not even need your body. It might be able to simulate you up to the moment of your death. Or find some quirk…
You really ought to read I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream. The author has already thought of basically the same thing and written a rather compelling yet disturbing short story about. In 1967, no less.
But if we're going to give unfathomable power to such an AI, it's not much more of a leap to give it the ability to resurrect people from the past and subject them to whatever it desires.
Taking it even one step further and comparing it to the Simulation Hypothesis [1], perhaps we're already there. The machine might be making us live our lives again only at some point to surprise us with some unthinkable horror or delight.
If such a machine arises and is capable of these feats, then we might currently be living in re-simulations of our past lives that have already ended.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
You can test it out for yourself. You don’t need to identify as a Buddhist to come to the conclusion that you are not your body.
That's like saying you are not your car; while you're driving the distinction is less important than keeping between the lines and watching for pedestrians.
My wife passed this year from cancer. Looking back we had no idea how close we were to the end, and in the last few weeks her beautiful mind was influenced by the disease. I’m sure someone on HN is going through this at least adjacently and my recommendation is to not wait to the end to have important conversations. For those that aren’t going through this now, maybe for a little while live life like you are...it mig…
Good luck to you and your family.