The Egg | Hacker News Reader

The Egg

galactanet.com

80 pointspavs20 comments

Reminds me of the story Feynman tells about Wheeler, who calls him up one day and tries to convince him that there is only one electron in the entire universe.

This single electron is bouncing forward and background through time endlessly, creating the illusion of a multitude of particles (electrons when going forward in time, and positrons when traveling back):

"I received a telephone call one day at the graduate college at Princeton from Professor Wheeler, in which he said, 'Feynman, I know why all electrons have the same charge and the same mass' 'Why?' 'Because, they are all the same electron!'"

[From http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/physics/laureates/1965/fe...]

Might make an alright Twilight Zone episode, if the exposition were dragged out a bit more.

Since the population of Earth is rapidly increasing, this poor guy is unlikely to ever live through all possible lives and level up.

C'mon.. don't you know about 2012? http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1190080/

If the Zombie Apocalypse doesn't get us first...

Humanity is finite.

And we'll end far, far before the heat death of the universe.

You are correct. Humanity will end far before the universe. It will not be call humanity anymore.

fallout? ejecta?

Humans can't live without the sun. In some way, the sun is an integral part of what all life is. If you take away the sun, you take away the life of the individual human. All humans share this one body part (the sun) so in some way all humans share their existence. Kind of like sharing a kidney.

What happens when humans start fooling around melding minds, utilizing software to augment our minds and building strong AI that is a vast improvement over our minds and bodies? I suppose that is where the entity is investigating different ways to exist.

The Buddhists and Hindus thought of this thousands of years ago, but they went into much greater depth and came to the realization that humans (and anything else) can't live (exist) without anything else. It is perfectly OK to say that the universe (and you) depends on just a single grain of sand (and vice versa).

See:

https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Prat%C4%ABtya...

Though the wiki doesn't do a very good job discussing the topic. See also the section there "Madhyamaka and Pratityasamutpada" which goes a bit further in depth, but I recommend outside reading as well if you're interested.

What's interesting about this, is that when you put it that way some people are put off and call it "mysticism", when actually it is very precise and scientific, and in fact is simply another way of stating the First Law of thermodynamics.

I think that I and the universe can do just fine without that single grain of sand :)

I assure you, your existence depends on that grain of sand.

You're welcome to disagree, similarly as a child would insist on the existence of Santa Claus or a Christian on the existence of a paternal God-head.

Though that's not a perfect analogy, as proving either of those postulates wrong is impossible, and here we have a situation where there actually is strong evidence for the existence of sand granules (I hope you'll agree).

So in this case it actually is rather easy to see if you're correct. If you can "do just fine without it" then go and erase it out of existence. Come back when you are through and you'll have proven me wrong. :-)

Impossible.

You know, this little story is very close to the truth actually. Hi me!

Hey! You wrote this story! So did the guy posting it. Seems a little hypocritical, him complaining about losing the byline - who cares? Its all him.

Ouch! Ok, I'll stop trying to be funny.

What's with the buddhist bent YC? What does it have to do with hacking or business? I realize intelligent minds are attracted to buddhism and hinduism, but it's still pretty off topic, in addition to the idea of reincarnation being offensive to the scientifically inclined. At least feed the hackers some serious philosophy. We're smarter than this.

Wooah. Now I have no interest myself in Buddhism etc. but I dont think:

in addition to the idea of reincarnation being offensive to the scientifically inclined

Is all that true.

I like to think us scientifically minded people are above being actually "offended" by such things!

Smarter than to take everything in the most crassly literal way possible? I would hope so.

I don't much like the story, and I don't believe in reincarnation, but to suggest that serious philosophy cannot be contained in a story that involves reincarnation is a pretty shallow view. At any rate, the whole "learn to become a god" thing that's the ultimate crux of the story is much more closely affiliated with Mormonism than Buddhism or Hinduism as far as I know.

I am an atheist (not the annoying kind) and I feel that this short story has an interesting philosophical perspective if you can get past the literal interpretation of "god" and "reincarnation".

As to what is On topic. From http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

"Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity."

56 (as of now) people thinks this gratifies intellectual curiosity.

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