Ask HN: Is pre-birth the same state as post-life? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Is pre-birth the same state as post-life?

39 pointsdesertraven72 comments

I’ve previously encountered the idea of equating the state prior to my birth (nothing), with that of my death (also nothing).

From nothing springs forth my existence. What do you make of existence appearing after death?

I guess in short, is it any more absurd to be born twice than once?

View on HN

One of the best, simple, grokkable mental models I've ever encountered on this (admittedly existential) topic is one that we HNers should all appreciate:

What happens when your code starts running? A process is allocated from memory, a class instantiates, and your program is..."born". It runs its code -- and maybe that code responds to inputs, does calculations....has....feelings....falls in love...or whatever :) Maybe it has the ability to interact with other processes and send messages to these other processes. Maybe it runs independently.

It's blissfully ignorant of the system within which it runs: The BIOS, the hardware, etc. Or maybe not! Maybe it even has the ability to probe its environment, learn about it, report on it (...run experiments on it), etc.

From your program's perspective, it is unique, it has perspective, it has experience.

And at some point, the program terminates. What happens? The code stops running. The memory is returned to the pool. Maybe new programs are launched (with no knowledge of previously-launched programs, unless they've left some sort of permanent record in a database or a file, etc.)

What is the "experience" of the program after it terminates (or before it was allocated from memory). Kind of an absurd question when you frame it that way, right? Programs don't have an experience when they're not executing! They simply don't exist at that abstraction level. But that certainly doesn't mean the computer is gone, or that other programs - that use the exact same memory - won't have similarly rich (or poor) experiences in the environment.

I know this a bit contrived...but maybe it's not? I find this logical and, frankly, it makes sense. We're all allocations from a global memory pool that continues to be recycled so long as the computer is running. And to answer OPs primary question, then: Yes, pre-birth is exactly the same as post-life, but both aren't so bad :)

Nicely put.

Your comment reminds me that I really need to re-watch ghost in the shell!

my code maintains state when it restarts. Is it immortal?

Oh great question and ahh now we're getting into the good stuff! If you make a copy of your brain (or upload your brain or teleport) do you die and get reborn or are you a continuous conscious entity? :) :)

“It seems to me, your highness, that the life of man on earth is like the swift flight of a single sparrow through the banqueting hall where you are sitting at dinner on a winter’s day with your captains and counsellors.
In the midst there is a comforting fire to warm the hall. Outside, the storms of winter rain and snow are raging. This sparrow flies swiftly in through one window of the hall and out through another. While he is inside, the bird is safe from the winter storms, but after a few moments of comfort, he vanishes from sight into the wintry world from which he came.

So man appears on earth for a little while – but of what went before this life, or what follows, we know nothing.”

-- Bede, 7th c.

Life is a waterfall

We're one in the river and one again after the fall

Swimming through the void, we hear the Word

We lose ourselves, but we find it all

Serj Tankian, 21st c :)

Never knew the System of a Down song used this quote. Beautiful.

I’ve heard it compared to a 3 act play. When all you have is the second act, the play is hard to understand. Or, to put it in more modern terms, it is like trying to make sense of Empire Strikes Back, but you never have any knowledge of Star Wars or Return of the Jedi.

I believe this, because of some things I have come to know (confirm) for myself. We lived with God, the father of our spirits, before we were born to mortality. We grew and learned, wanting to become more like Him, so he made a plan, sometimes called the Plan of Happiness, which we accepted, and by which we could come here, to get a physical body (which will be immortal later on), to learn from experiences of contrasts & good & bad, & to practice choosing right from wrong. After death (separation of the spirit from the physical body), we continue to have our same individual identity, we keep learning (everyone will have a chance to learn what they need, to choose for themselves), we await resurrection (physical immortality) and judgement, upon which we will be able to enjoy, to the extent that we were willing enough to obey God and follow the Plan, to progress and help others.

Our enjoyments and progress are greatly enhanced when we learn more, and follow the good things we learn. He promised peace in this life, and the opportunity for eternal life in the world to come, if we do as he asks, but the choices are ours. (More at my site, like how I learned; nothing for sale.)

Remembering nothing doesn't mean there was nothing.

As I see it, there is the experience of reality from a certain frame of reference, from which the experience of "you" that makes up you (body, mind, perceptions, memories, ...) is observed and a story about that "you", an Ego, is inferred. Upon death, the "you" that is observed (incl. memories and the general identity you hold) dies, dissipates, and is transformed. However, how can the experience of reality itself "end"? The absence of "your" existence always passes unnoticed from your frame of reference, because by definition there is no way to observe not existing.

Therefore, to assume there is nothing after death makes no sense IMHO. It logically makes more sense to assume there will be some form of existence after this life, and although we might have no recollection of this life, it seems most optimal to assume and act as if what you do in this life will impact the next somehow, through mechanisms we might be still ignorant of.

This depends on your views on personal identity. It's not necessarily true that "you" exist from death to birth. Consciousness could be a singleton, and "You" could be everyone in the universe. Or perhaps "you" is only a single person-moment instantiated for a split second.

http://www.galactanet.com/oneoff/theegg_mod.html

https://qualiacomputing.com/2015/12/17/ontological-qualia-th...

Different traditions have interesting viewpoints.

Several traditions have differing concepts about reincarnation or transmigration: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reincarnation

The basic concept is that the soul or spirit (what makes you who you are minus your physical body) is eternal (has always existed and will exist forever) and that you will continue to live various lives or forms of existence.

Some other traditions believe that God created souls / spirits before the earth / universe existed and that physical existence on earth is a step in God's plan for those souls / spirits: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pre-existence

> The basic concept is that the soul or spirit (what makes you who you are minus your physical body) is eternal (has always existed and will exist forever) and that you will continue to live various lives or forms of existence.

If they have always existed, wouldn't that imply that there is an upper limit to the number of souls and therefore the number of physical life forms?

From this one could further deduce, for example, if human population goes up then other animal population must go down?

only if earth is the only place with physical life forms

Another way I have thought about this, coming from a religion that believes in "Oneness" and in Reincarnation (Sikhism), does reincarnation have to necessarily happen linearly in time? If not then there is no reason that there would have to be an upper limit on the number of beings as you could have multiple of the same soul existing at different points in time, satisfying both oneness and reincarnation.

(Not that this is something I necessarily believe, it is just something I thought about).

There's no population upper limit if the soul can travel throughout the timeline. I.e. when it's done being me it can then become a cave man next or vice versa.

There's life in the womb, just not a great view.

You inconvenienced your Mom before you were born; you might not have noticed but she did. After you die your ability to annoy others drops rapidly.

> I’ve previously encountered the idea of equating the state prior to my birth (nothing), with that of my death (also nothing).

I think some people call this concept “Eternal Oblivion”:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternal_oblivion

> is it any more absurd to be born twice than once

It depends if you’re approaching this from a scientific perspective or not.

From a scientific perspective, this isn’t something that we’ve been able to test or document in a controlled way. It’s not clear why some people claim to have vivid recollection or subtle feelings of past lives and others don’t. We also don’t know of any natural mechanism that would cause this to happen. So scientists are stuck on the hypothesis phase as no one to date has been able to construct a repeatable experiment. If no one can design a proper experiment and this hypothesis of multiple lives is unfalsifiable, then some would reference Russell’s Teapot and conclude that it’s not worth pursuing scientifically: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russell's_teapot

But if you’re approaching it from a philosophical/religious perspective, then why not? You’re free to believe whatever helps you enjoy life and decrease suffering. You don’t have to justify it to anyone and it only matters if you find it absurd or not.

> I’ve previously encountered the idea of equating the state prior to my birth (nothing), with that of my death (also nothing).

Given that there is evidence of fetal/prenatal memory, it implies there is pre-birth state, and thus not nothing:

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prenatal_memory

Some argue (small) post-birth states are the same as pre-birth states; Jerry Coyne:

> If you are allowed to abort a fetus that has a severe genetic defect, microcephaly, spina bifida, or so on, then why aren’t you able to euthanize that same fetus just after it’s born? I see no substantive difference that would make the former act moral and the latter immoral.

* https://whyevolutionistrue.com/2017/07/13/should-one-be-allo...

* Via: https://evolutionnews.org/2017/08/why-does-this-evolutionary...

"Some argue (small) post-birth states are the same as pre-birth states"

At first I thought you were going to talk about post-death states. Like how EEG activity can persist for a limited time after clinical death.

Related self-reply:

> Newborns can recognize the voices they’ve been hearing for the last trimester in the womb, especially the sounds that come from their mothers, and prefer those voices to the voices of strangers. They also prefer other languages with similar rhythms, rather than languages with very different rhythms. (Newborns indicated their preferences by how long they sucked on specially rigged pacifiers that enabled them to hear one speaker versus another, or one language versus another.)

* https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/21/well/family/language-less...

* https://archive.ph/xLDrz

> I guess in short, is it any more absurd to be born twice than once?

Yes, it's much more absurd because once you die, you don't exist anymore, you're lost to entropy forever. Things that appear after you're dead won't be you because your configuration was so rare that it might as well be unique, and more importantly because there isn't a continuous stream of consciousness to experience the pre- and post-death states.

Maybe but in case something like MUH or MWI is correct the above doesn't apply.

Not really. If you're considering multiversal interpretations then something that might be considered you exists across a multidimensional space with more axes than time, but it's still a finite and pretty much contiguous area.

Infinite possibilities does not mean every conceivable outcome happens.

The analogy is not perfect by any means, but lets look at a regular computer monitor.

Is the area/space in front of it the same (state) as the area behind the monitor?

With respect to "is there a monitor in this place" they are not that different.

But in front of the monitor is obviously different from behind the monitor. Whatever the monitor shows is only visible from the front. Likewise, what you did in your life, what you leave behind is only accessible after (admittedly also during) your life, but not before your birth.

Does the monitor project those things out of nothing? It won't work by magic, there is no creatio ex nihilo at work. Instead it has input connectors for power and display on the back. When viewed from the front it is easy to forget them, but they are mandatory to see anything. These connectors are like your pre-birth, your parents, your family history, their manners, their culture, the broader circumstances of your birth and life-to-come. These pre-birth things are the inputs that get transformed by you in your life into the things you project into your after-life.

Well, I think of it like this. I’ve had big nights that I don’t remember at all, from drunkenness. That doesn’t mean that I didn’t experience those events. I just don’t remember them. Similarly, I’ve had experiences in dreams that don’t make sense when spoken about, because there’s no frame of reference. How can you can you adequately describe or make sense of colors which don’t exist in our reality?

I think the mystery of existence is part of what makes it special. And somehow, though it’s a kind of comfort to imagine that there is nothing in the great beyond, I sympathize with those who would hope for the best but plan for the worst.

Here's a thought. Just think of yourself in a much broader context - life on earth. In the same way one of your cells comes and goes while your body seems to be continuously present, so too you are one tiny part of the tree of life. Your influence is greatest while you're present, but the effects can last beyond your time here. I would argue from the PoV of consciousness you were not here before and won't be here later, but then it was never about you anyway. Gotta destroy the ego to find your proper place in a larger context - then your question become moot.

As far as I'm aware, there's no consciousness after death.

There definitely is consciousness before birth. Check out the book: "Handbook of Prenatal and Perinatal Psychology", a Springer textbook.

I'll give you a quote:

> The NYU authors discovered that the offspring of women who were in their second month of pregnancy during the height of the Arab-Israeli war in June of 1967 (the “Six-Day War”) displayed a significantly higher incidence of schizophrenia over the following 21–33 years. The study also showed that the pattern was gender specific, affecting females more than males. It’s a very striking confirmation of something that has been suspected for quite some time,” said Malaspina. “The placenta is very sensitive to stress hormones in the mother,” explains Malaspina, “these hormones were probably amplified during the time of the war.”

You can be traumatized, and experience lifelong effects from that trauma if unresolved, before you're born!

There are also strong links between prenatal trauma and attachment/bonding issues; there's a whole chapter on that in the textbook.

Springer book: https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-030-41716-1

> I guess in short, is it any more absurd to be born twice than once?

I guess in short, is it any more absurd to eat a particular banana twice than to eat it once?

Yes. Yes it is more absurd.

Why is it more absurd? Is it because the equation then means: (n=O || n=1) || n>=2? Meaning the deduction leads to "strictly zero or once" OR "many more than 1"

Once seems less logical from a metaphysical perspective to me than multiple.

> Why is it more absurd?

Get back to me when you have literally done it. Animal or plant, flesh is subject to entropy.

> Is it because the equation then means: (O || 1) || infinity?

Are you high or mentally ill?

> Are you high or mentally ill? Neither - just think differently ;) The visceral reaction leads me to believe you might understand the possibility, but may reject it mentally, of any number of birth over "0" leads to a higher probability of "many" than "1".

or that I don't think that what you said makes any sense at all. Not even coherent enough to be wrong.

'existence' is some network states of the brain, they don't exist before a certain brain development and certainly not after it disintegrates

I have a very mechanistic view of this. Inside a body is an army of cpus just constantly running programs to create or repair components of the body. At a certain level, the cpus and programs look the same, because they are both realized by complex molecular chains and collections.

When an ova is fertilized, the mother's cpus get to work on the program (DNA) soon creating an embryo. This is aided by cpus in the embryo DNA too. This process requires a lot of energy. After some period of time the embryos brain is sufficiently developed and has sufficient input channels to develop sensory awareness and some self awareness. But self awareness is not fully formed until sometime after birth.

All notions of "self" come from the workings of the brain. This too requires a lot of energy. When the brain is no longer supplied with energy, it shuts down and "self" no longer exists.

> "I guess in short, is it any more absurd to be born twice than once?"

If pre-birth and post-death are both a nothing state, then the question is meaningless. (As is the existence between birth and death, for that matter.)

The only way for the question to have meaning is for pre-birth and/or post-death to be not nothing.

Digression: I've had dreams where I am a completely different person; different body, different personality, different memories, different family, etc... and it's only upon waking up and reorienting myself to myself (whatever "myself" is) that I can relate to the dream self (such as "wow, I enjoyed being that other person, I wish I could be more like that in real life" or "I am disturbed to have experienced being that person, I don't want to be like that").

It creates weird questions... Does that person (or the possibility of that personality) exist independently of me, or is it made of me? Does that personality cease to exist upon waking, or is it "absorbed" into me? Where did "I" go when experiencing that other selfhood? What role (if any) does memory play in the continuation of consciousness?

My view is your existence doesn't spring from nothing, it springs from atoms that your mother ate, and that somehow agglutinate to form a body that hosts your brain, which in turn creates an illusion of consciousness that calls itself 'I', and that we call 'you'.

The atoms in your body and near it seem to conspire to keep this illusion of consciousness alive for a while, but then at some point the whole thing falls apart for some reason, and the illusion of consciousness disappears.

That illusion of consciousness corresponds for any given day to the particular arrangement of atoms in your body and near it (so that, if you had a machine which could exactly replicate the arrangement of atoms that constitute your self, then, you'd be able to completely clone yourself, a sort of second birth, if you will).

Anyways, call me a materialist.

I can see the "self" being an illusion, but I don't understand how consciousness can be an illusion. Isn't it the only thing that we could concretely say isn't illusory? Since a sense of self and consciousness aren't the same thing, as your "self" can melt away through meditation or drugs, but consciousness remains.

(I'm also a materialist, I just don't quite understand how that means consciousness is illusory.)

Indeed. Consciousness itself is quite real (mine is anyway). It's the experience and awareness of my place in this simulation of the world that my meat-based computer is running. Turn off my simulation (sleep, anestesia, death) and consciousness goes away.

Obviously this is just my opinion. Apologies if my answer seems vague or waffly – I think our ability to analyse these kinds of things with words is limited.

I think our personality and memories didn't prexist our birth, and they don't exist anymore once we die. However, I think we are something more than our body, memories, personality and mind. The analogy that makes most sense to me is the idea that the universe is a kind of actor, and people are characters it's playing. The universe takes the form of people, with memories and so on, and it will do so again after my body dies. So I don't think there's 'nothing' on either side of life.

Perhaps somebody can better word this if they have similar views. My skills at writing are too limited here.

Conversations with god has a similar concept of universe/god = light = light needs to be separated onto smaller particles to be able to observe itself, you and me are just little dims of that total light. or something like that I remember from the read a few years back lol

https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neale_Donald_Walsch

If you believe that all effects have causes, then births and deaths and identities and consciousness are all perhaps contained and encoded in the initial conditions of the universe and its physical laws.

Your particular identity is a mode or process by which one local part of the universe experiences itself in a certain way (through your eyes, as it were). When you die, countless other lives and existences will continue to be modes through which the universe experiences itself, but not through the same identity.

This was captured by Carl Sagan, who said: "The cosmos is within us. We are made of star-stuff. We are a way for the universe to know itself."

> We are a way for the universe to know itself.

What else is there for the universe to know?

I obviously have no answer to that question but I will say you may enjoy the Closer to Truth series.

Here's one about "nothing":

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YkB-phz_2cA

> What is Nothing? What if nothing ever existed? Scientists claim that the universe came from nothing. But what's the nature of nothing? That's where the confusion lies. Featuring interviews with Richard Swinburne, Simon Blackburn, Robert Spitzer, Peter van Inwagen, Steven Weinberg, John Leslie, Timothy O'Connor, Victor Stenger, John Hawthorne, and Peter Forrest.

Panpsychism is the belief that consciousness, however minimal, is an emergent property of all matter, not just brain matter. From that perspective, there was some kind of consciousness before all of the matter came together to be "you" and something will remain once "you"'re gone.

Personally I think consciousness is an emergent property only under certain narrow circumstances. Death is defined as exactly those circumstances ceasing to be. I think it's the same before as after: "nothing".

There are certainly science fiction and religious traditions where people are born twice. (A James Bond book/ movie has the fun title "You Only Live Twice") One recent thought experiment is the idea that we are in a ancestor simulator and will be born again in a heaven simulator.

A popular genre of anime involves high school students dying by chance and being reborn in fantasy world's where they can have the fun of living out RPG type adventures.

The problem is there isn't a shred of evidence for people being reborn. It seems like wishful thinking or just a fun fantasy.

One interesting take I heard from Culadasa on a podcast referencing reincarnation in a Buddhist context...there may be rebirth (and there are ancient, ongoing lineages of practice with which you can allegedly explore and remember past lives), yet the nothingness which serves as the continuity between lives effectively renders "continuity" incoherent. Sort of, "yes born twice", but also is that really distinguishable in any meaningful way from not being reborn.

Pre-birth, there is 9 month period that slowly goes from nothing to something. Post-death, there is nothing. So they are not the same obviously.

Death is generally not an event, it is a process; there is a period of time (sometimes several days) where you slowly go from something to nothing.

I think by pre-birth OP meant pre-conception. At least, that is how I interpreted it.

Yeah, I had assumed that's what was meant, I read it as: Is [the time before your existence/consciousness] the same state as [the time after your existence/consciousness]?

Some interesting stuff about reincarnation in Netflix Surviving Death. There are some other topics in there like spirits, etc. But I found the out of body experience and reincarnation parts particularly interesting. Even if they turn out to have some other explanation, I think that it's an interesting mystery and wonder how to prove such things.

“Every man has two deaths, when he is buried in the ground and the last time someone says his name. In some ways men can be immortal.”

― Ernest Hemingway

No one remembers the names of those yet to be born. The frame of reference matters a great deal here.

The more I read, the more I think I'm a P-Zombie: I have no sentience, and pre-birth, life and post life are identical.

The only exception is the middle part looks like some kind of existence, but dreams have the same appearance.

Well when you get down to it the thing about pre-birth and post-death is time: both those periods are arbitrarily long, but subjectively instant between moments when your conscious experience was running.

10^100 years post death and you've really only "just" died, subjectively - if a random collection of matter suddenly flickers into existence in the appropriate configuration, then despite the distance of time "you" suddenly come back to life.

You can't be a P-Zombie if you're having a conscious experience right now.

How can you say I'm having a conscious experience?

My only manifestation is just these words you are reading, and my allegations.

I didn't say you're having a conscious experience. I just said that if you're having a conscious experience (which I would assume you are, but it's impossible to prove), then you're not a P-Zombie, by definition.

Hmm, would it be second birth if all brain activity were to cease and then restart again? Some personality or memories likely kept, but would that still be considered birth?

There is no state perceptible to us either pre or post life. As far as we are concerned, they do not exist.

Corollary: as far as we are concerned, we are immortal.

Your corollary is interesting - I've pondered the topic a lot myself, and your corollary is a dedication I hadn't considered. Love the concept!

Pre-birth you were just a possibility.

>Better Never to Have Been: The Harm Of Coming Into Existence

Has some interesting thoughts on that perspective

Is the IO monad in the same state at the start of execution of a program, and at the end of execution of a program?

Nitpicking here: Wouldn't the terms pre/post-life or pre-birth and post-death be more consistent?

my sister in law recently asked my 4 year old nephew what was he before being a boy whether a dog or a worm, he thought for a bit and said : I was an egg before. Then I started dividing.

He definitely didn't say this.

Does null == null ?

Yes, unless null is NaN, and then you are in trouble

No if you are using Postgres, yes if you are using Oracle.

what's next? HN featuring horoscope?

I don't think my response will be much appreciated here, but you'll get a great deal more insight into your question by taking 5g psilocybe mushrooms or 600mcg of LSD [1] than from any comment in this thread.

[1] These are fairly high doses. Take appropriate medical and psychological precautions before participating in such ceremonies.

It's certainly not terrible advice, but for those wanting a primer on such things before committing themselves any further, I would suggest reading a book titled "One River" by Wade Davis.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com