I've said before that the most plausible explanation to me for what happens after death is the end of "I," since we as "I's," necessarily cannot comprehend a state of "not-I." We can know it exists, we can experience its effects from others, and we can severely impair it with psychedelic poisons, but to decohere into a state of "!i" is, to borrow from GEB, the song that breaks the record player.
Great post. Alex Danco is consistently good.
By defining an individual unit of something as information, they've taken something we only had metaphors and analogies for and concretized it as a category of things that behave like information. I've applied it to something else we only have metaphors and analogies for, and am sounding out whether it provides any additional insight.
The only part that's missing is "...with the goal of avoiding suffering".
To the parent: actually I think this "death of decoherence" pretty closely matches the Buddhist doctrine of interdependent arising, so not sure about the disagreement there.
Keep in mind that Buddhism is deeply rooted in a time when the only way to avoid suffering was to ignore all desire, because it wasn't going to be fulfilled anyway. So, if you want a primer course on Buddhism, read the "4 Noble Ways" and "The Eightfold Path" (about a 30 second read for both) - while these sounds esoteric, they basically summarize Buddhism in a very clear, concise, and logical way; which is that Buddhism is nothing by asceticism and a way to let go of wordly desires and ignore the outside world, to ease suffering.
Everything else is fluff by pseudo-intellectuals who will flood below this post.
As a side note "Altered Traits" was a useless, garbage, author-self-promotion book with no actual info, thanks for nothing HN.
What makes this book good?
Just to be clear, I am genuinely interested, but I want to know more as to why you are recommending it.
However, there are some practical advice which I found to be nicely explained,
- Book has a chapter on meditation and I think it does get to the point without fluff, for example. It talks about Samatha (such as focus on breath) and Vipassana meditation.
- Talks about some important sutras such as Kalama sutra which is all about how to live your life as a Buddhist as a layman (as opposed to a monk).
Can't we?
Just think of nothing. Before you were born. Dreamless sleep. The gap of nothing between standing and feeling funny and waking up later on the ground that one time you passed out. That kind of thing.