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Comment by stared | Hacker News Reader

In the line, I recommend „The Egg” by Andy Weir https://www.galactanet.com/oneoff/theegg_mod.html

Engage in the thought experiment that you are/were/will be every human for a sec. Is self-harm morally ok? Many would say yes. So "the egg" already gives those people a pass to hurt everyone else in this world because it's a form of self-harm. Great. Now for those who explicitly don't want to self-harm. "The egg" implies that your rebirths happen serially in meta-time. You live this life, then the next, then another,... those lives may overlap on earth, but in egg-time, they don't. This means you can statistically expect you've already lived 50% of them. There's no guarantee of this, but the distribution is normal, not uniform [1] (similar reasoning found in doomsday argument [2]). 50%, give or take, humans out there you've already been. Everything you do to them, you do to your PAST self. You're not only absolved of moral accountability, but also of the physical consequences of treating them horribly. So while "the egg" tries to do the opposite, it really seems to justify psycho maxxing.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Central_limit_theorem

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doomsday_argument

Everyone is hung up on the self-harm thing. This thought experiment is bigger than what most people give it credit for, in fact one could say this is the be all end all of thought experiments because the question factors in things like quantum physics, consciousness, determinism, etc. You could go up your own theoretical butthole with the kinds of philosophical extrapolations through this rabbit hole (so to speak).

Self-harm isn't moral or amoral, it just is. It's as moral or amoral as deciding if you should or shouldn't eat another animal (yes, this includes humans -- Donner party anyone?).

Life isn't black and white. Where I've landed with this thought experiment through my own meditations and readings is that the universe/reality is a recursive fractal of spectrums within spectrums.

And this is just scratching the surface of this stuff.

1. No, self harm is not ok.

2. Who says the living of lives does not repeat over time? Your/our "next" life may start in 300 B.C.

Two things science knows barely something about: consciousness and the arrow of time. The self is only an illusion. Physics has lots of symmetry. Therefore, it would make sense if the universe was fair in the end. So the egg theory actually makes sense, more sense than anything else I've heard actually.

Re 1, why?

Re 2, yes and in 300 BC you're also expected to already have been 50% alive there.

Your egg can't explain consciousness or the arrow of time either. How is the person in egg limbo, the fetus being developed I mean, conscious? How does the egg limbo work at all? You're gonna need a big hand to wave the (meta-)physics of your little egg universe away.

I'm not pretending to have solved the hard problem of consciousness. I just said what so far seems most likely to me, despite there being still many open questions, in many other theories as well.

The thing that makes harming others wrong is the lack of consent. That allows us to avoid the sticky question of what is "harm." For self-harm, consent implied, what is "harm?" Exercise with a risk of injury? Failing to exercise, with a risk of decreased life span? Failing to optimize your exercise routine? Surgery? Drinking alcohol? Dating the wrong person?

Most of your examples would not be considered harm for another...

The situation described in The Egg replaces morality with a direct reason not to harm others, because you are the person who will suffer because of it. So if you're complaining that the story's premise kinda eliminates our usual ideas about morality, my response is: Yes. That's part of what makes it an interesting story.

As for the meta-time thing, functional decision theory [1] solves this. The application is particularly clean because your memories are erased between lives. There's no factor of 2 free lunch from temporal ordering.

[1] https://arxiv.org/pdf/1710.05060

> The situation described in The Egg replaces morality with a direct reason not to harm others, because you are the person who will suffer because of it.

Or you've already been said person, in which case it won't harm you anymore. Not to mention that it's inevitable that you will hurt the victim because it already happened from the victim's POV, who you've already been. The egg is in a fundamentally contradictory realm anyway because it's asserting free will and same-universe time travel at the same time.

> the story's premise kinda eliminates our usual ideas about morality

Allowing for psycho maxxing, yes. You can take "I should be a good person" from it, but so far you haven't made a compelling case. There's no reason why you shouldn't be an exploiter in 1-10% of your lives, living off the direct and indirect suffering of the 90%. Kind of like within a modern life you can choose to suffer 90% of the time (work, gym, studying,...) to get a halfway decent 10%.

I don't think you're "absolved" if you don't know you're harming, in fact, yourself. Guilt is all about intention.

Assuming the premise of the short story is true, of course. Otherwise, what's the point. I can't simultaneously grant the premise and pretend that I didn't just grant it, by denying my knowledge of the rebirth mechanism.

What is moral? It is not a law of the universe. It is a subjective and culture-defined human construct. It is very ineffective to try and understand metaphysics through the ever-shifting lens of morality.

> Is self-harm morally ok?

Is self-harm ok? What could be considered good about it?

I probably should have phrased it "do you have a moral right to self-harm"? The starting point is usually that you're allowed to do anything you want, total freedom, and then we blacklist everything we deem immoral. You don't have an explicit license to breathe either, it's just not blacklisted, not by your gov, nor morally. As far as I can tell, many people refuse to morally blacklist self-harm, because there's no victim other than the perpetrator. This is doubly true in the egg scenario where you are also everyone who suffers any secondary harm from the self-harm, like also being every saddened family member. To make a long story short, I'm not asking about goodness of anything here, "ok" just means "granted."

That's such a great read.

Asimov's 'The Last Question' is another good one that's in line: https://users.ece.cmu.edu/~gamvrosi/thelastq.html

I love both of these, and I wonder why would I need mainstream religion when stories like these are deep enough to provide answers, hope and meaning for those who seek it. If the message resonates with you, why not adopt it? Nobody could ever prove they’re just fantasy.

Sorry for the digression, I’m just an atheist with a love for philosophy and spirituality.

If you're going to be content with "nobody could ever prove it wrong", what do you have against mainstream religion?

Fantasy is fantasy. Either it's true to what's really there, or it isn't.

Unlike the other religions, "The Egg" doesn't impose morals or pretend to be an infallible historical record, prophet of things to come, or explainer of the universe. It's just a cute philosophical story that exists entirely within the imagination to make us feel better and less lost.

That is to say, it just lacks the same "baggage" of the others.

I’m not against, I’m just saying one can find answers to the deep questions of life without having to buy into religion wholesale. No one ever told me this was even an option, especially due to the toxic discourse around atheism and Christianity by Americans that have poisoned the conversation for everybody else (quelle surprise…)

Conviction influences behavior. You can believe whatever you want: and we believe things based on experience, and personal knowledge. And we 'stick' to those beliefs for certain reasons.

There is a friction to being pushed into believing something else: read up on Plato's 'Allegory of the Cave' for an idea of what I'm talking about.

Your own personal beliefs can become a religion if you start to shape your life around it: that is, you start thinking of, and living by, principles or guidelines that affect your behavior. The stories offer up core ideas or beliefs, but no principles or guidelines to live by.

If you find the story interesting, and don't form rigid guidelines or rules to live by: then perhaps you've just been influenced in a positive way, a way that resonates with you.

The problem with conviction, is when people try to force it onto others. It's something that has to be grown from within.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h6fcK_fRYaI

(animated version)

I go against the grain and say that I dislike the egg. It is spiritually stupid and heretic and morally fake enlightened.

I don't know. I just read it now—my thought was that it was an interesting idea (thankfully now overly long).

"“Seriously? You’re asking me for the meaning of life? Isn’t that a little stereotypical?”"

I think the word he was looking for was clichéd.

Amazing. So, I am most of you commenting here, and the author of this incredible short story. Thank [myself] for sharing!

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