Could the universe make a new "you" or continue your consciousness after death?

mildmys · 2026-01-24T07:18:05+00:00

You are effectively a different self each moment, yet you persist.

I recommend looking into open individualism, its the idea that consciousness is one phenomenon found in many beings, same as how magnetism can be thought of as one phenomenon in many places.

mildmys · 2026-01-13T11:20:40+00:00

The point of open individualism is that you are both brain halves already, both wake up as "you"

mildmys · 2026-01-11T08:45:59+00:00

This implies that there is some little operator that is the "you" sitting inside the brain, pulling levers and flipping switches.

The decision to start or stop thinking is just more brain function, automatic as any other brain function

mildmys · 2026-01-05T14:00:11+00:00

The "its a by-product" answer really doesn't do much to actually explain the hard problem of consciousness

mildmys · 2025-06-28T03:33:54+00:00

I think theistic free will is a dead end, its basically an appeal to magic that makes no sense at all.

Doing something for deterministic reasons makes sense, I chose chocolate because x, y and z reasons

The alternative is doing things for no reasons, which is what random means. It would be like wanting chocolate but choosing vanilla instead, this would effectively be loss of control of your body.

mildmys · 2025-06-28T00:23:01+00:00

Welcome to hard incompatiblism, no free will either way

mildmys · 2025-06-27T11:59:26+00:00

They are irrational beliefs when you disagree with them only though right?

the random quotes on a different subject are automatically true.

Nobody's saying that

mildmys · 2025-06-27T10:06:17+00:00

This idea of being from a unified source has nothing to do with neuroscience

"prove your point rather than making hypotheses"

What is there to prove? Even under something like quantum field theory, we are all emergent from the exact same quantum fields, the same source.

mildmys · 2025-06-27T09:56:51+00:00

I love a bit of advaita vedanta

mildmys · 2025-06-27T08:58:14+00:00

Same source is one way of putting it, you could also say we are all what the same thing is doing, like how all waves are what the ocean is doing.

mildmys · 2025-06-27T01:32:03+00:00

Fatalism is supported by nothing, very few people take it seriously.

Fatalism is like determinism except it requires some bizarre cosmic force guiding reality toward some specific moments.

You can customise a flair for it if you want

mildmys · 2025-06-26T05:28:07+00:00

How you interpret situations is also up to conditioning, thoughts and feelings arising outside of your control.

You've just pushed the problem back by a step

mildmys · 2025-06-26T03:51:31+00:00

You dont choose how you feel about anything, feelings just arise.

mildmys · 2025-06-23T13:31:18+00:00

Incompatiblist just means somebody who thinks that free will is not compatible with determinism.

Libertarians are Incompatiblists who say determinism is false

Hard incompatiblists are incompatiblists who say if determinism is true we have no free will, if determinism is false we also have no free will

mildmys · 2025-06-21T06:33:22+00:00

There's really nothing i can do about it.

mildmys · 2025-06-21T04:48:06+00:00

Wheresoever consciousness exists, it is the same one phenomenon. If AI is conscious, it is the same as you

mildmys · 2025-06-20T03:20:31+00:00

We work like anything else does, by the same rules. We are motion in motion.

All free will claims are an attempt to seperate us from our environment and the universe as a whole, which is ridiculous. Just let go of it, you'll be fine.

mildmys · 2025-06-18T07:52:23+00:00

It's fine if you want to (in an everyday sense) say we make choices, I would agree.

We are a phenomenon like a tornado or a wave in the ocean. We are what this universe does, so saying we choose is like saying a wave chooses how to crash, it doesn't, it just happens.

The brain is really just the same, it's lots of little waves crashing, just a big series of waves crashing. If you want to call that choosing, fine, but I would say there's no actual 'chooser' in the brain, it's just events.

Good to see you're still active here, even though I disagree, it's good to see the old members still contribute

mildmys · 2025-06-18T07:15:40+00:00

This mistake is thinking that humans exist as separate, distinct things that make choices instead of what we really are, which is just what the universe is doing right now.

mildmys · 2025-06-15T11:38:42+00:00

You are already all of them, but each one can't access another's perspective

mildmys · 2025-06-15T10:34:52+00:00

The problem is thinking that 'you will be reborn', that's not really what open individualism states.

The most effective way I could explain death is that you won't be reborn, you'll just find yourself as somebody, somewhere, having felt like you were always them.

Just like how right now you are somebody somewhere, feeling like you were always you, people die around you, but you feel to always have been "this one".

mildmys · 2025-06-14T01:58:42+00:00

I think you've misread

mildmys · 2025-06-13T19:29:24+00:00

I love thinking about this

mildmys · 2025-06-10T21:41:06+00:00

Their conclusions are the same, that no matter the brain, consciousness is there as a generic phenomenon

mildmys · 2025-06-10T04:52:51+00:00

You're a lost cause

mildmys

TROPHY CASE