Honestly, even from a purely selfish standpoint, I’d be much more concerned about a plausible extinction scenario than just dying. Figuring out what to do when I’m dead is pretty much my life’s work, and if I’m being completely honest and brazenly flouting convention, the stuff I’ve learned from that research holds a genuine, not-at-all-morbid appeal to me. Like, even if death wasn’t inevitable, I’d still want to see it for myself at some point. I definitely wouldn’t choose to artificially prolong my lifespan, given the opportunity. So personally, death and I are on pretty amicable terms. On the other hand, in the case of an extinction event… I don’t even know what there would be left for me to do at that point. It’s just the kind of thing that, as I imagine it, drains all the hope and optimism I had out of me, to the point where even picking up the pieces of whatever remains feels like a monumental task. So my takeaway would be that anyone, no matter their circumstances, who really feels that AI or anything else poses such a threat should absolutely feel no inhibition toward working to prevent such an outcome. But on an individual basis, I think it would pay dividends for all of us to be generally death-positive, if perhaps not as unreservedly so as I am.
I have a taboo on the word “believe”, but I am an academic researcher of afterlife evidence. I personally specialize in verifiable instances of early-childhood past-life recall.
You still haven’t actually provided verifiable instances, only referenced them and summarized them as adding up to an insight; if you’re interested in extracting the insights for others I’d be interested, but right now I don’t estimate high likelihood that doing so will provide evidence that warrants concluding there’s hidden-variable soul memory that provides access to passwords or other long facts that someone could not have had classical physical access to. I do agree with you, actually, in contrast to almost everyone else here, that it is warranted to call memetic knowledge “reincarnation” weakly, and kids knowing unexpected things doesn’t seem shocking to me—but it doesn’t appear to me that there’s evidence that implies requirement of physics violations, and it still seems to me that the evidence continues to imply that any memory that is uniquely stored in a person’s brain at time of death diffuses irretrievably into heat as the body decays.
I’d sure love to be wrong about that, let us all know when you’ve got more precise receipts.
Apologies for the absence; combination of busy/annoyance with downvotes, but I could also do a better job of being clear and concise. Unfortunately, after having given it thought, I just don’t think your request is something I can do for you, nor should it be. Honestly, if you were to simply take my word for it, I’d wonder what you were thinking. But good information, including primary sources, is openly accessible, and it’s something that I encourage those with the interest to take a deep dive into, for sure. Once you go far enough in, in my experience, there’s no getting out, unless perhaps you’re way more demanding of utter perfection in scientific analysis than I am, and I’m generally seen as one of the most demanding people currently in the PL-memory field, to the point of being a bit of a curmudgeon (not to mention an open sympathizer with skeptics like CSICOP, which is also deeply unpopular). But it takes a commitment to really wanting to know one way or the other. I can’t decide for anyone whether or not to have that.
I certainly could summarize the findings and takeaways of afterlife evidence and past-life memory investigations for a broad audience, but I haven’t found any reason to assume that it wouldn’t just be downvoted. That’s not why I came here anyways; I joined to improve my own methods and practice. I feel that if I were interested in doing anything like proselytizing, I would have to have an awfully low opinion of the ability of the evidence to speak for itself, and I don’t at all. But you tell me if I’m taking the right approach here, or if an ELI5 on the matter would be appropriate and/or desired. I’d not hesitate to provide such content if invited.
Based on evidence I’ve been presented with to this point—I’d say high enough to confidently bet every dollar I’ll ever earn on it. Easily >99% that it’ll be put beyond reasonable doubt in the next 100-150 years, and I only specify that long because of the spectacularly lofty standards academia forces such evidence to measure up to. I’m basically alone in my field in actually being in favor of the latter, however, so I have no interest in declining to play the long game with it.
Thanks for asking. I’ll likely be publishing my first paper early next year, but the subject matter is quite advanced, definitely not entry-level stuff. It takes more of a practical orientation to the issue than merely establishing evidence (the former my specialty as a researcher; as is probably clear from other replies, I’m satisfied with the raw evidence).
Honestly, even from a purely selfish standpoint, I’d be much more concerned about a plausible extinction scenario than just dying. Figuring out what to do when I’m dead is pretty much my life’s work, and if I’m being completely honest and brazenly flouting convention, the stuff I’ve learned from that research holds a genuine, not-at-all-morbid appeal to me. Like, even if death wasn’t inevitable, I’d still want to see it for myself at some point. I definitely wouldn’t choose to artificially prolong my lifespan, given the opportunity. So personally, death and I are on pretty amicable terms. On the other hand, in the case of an extinction event… I don’t even know what there would be left for me to do at that point. It’s just the kind of thing that, as I imagine it, drains all the hope and optimism I had out of me, to the point where even picking up the pieces of whatever remains feels like a monumental task. So my takeaway would be that anyone, no matter their circumstances, who really feels that AI or anything else poses such a threat should absolutely feel no inhibition toward working to prevent such an outcome. But on an individual basis, I think it would pay dividends for all of us to be generally death-positive, if perhaps not as unreservedly so as I am.
Do you believe in an afterlife?
I have a taboo on the word “believe”, but I am an academic researcher of afterlife evidence. I personally specialize in verifiable instances of early-childhood past-life recall.
You still haven’t actually provided verifiable instances, only referenced them and summarized them as adding up to an insight; if you’re interested in extracting the insights for others I’d be interested, but right now I don’t estimate high likelihood that doing so will provide evidence that warrants concluding there’s hidden-variable soul memory that provides access to passwords or other long facts that someone could not have had classical physical access to. I do agree with you, actually, in contrast to almost everyone else here, that it is warranted to call memetic knowledge “reincarnation” weakly, and kids knowing unexpected things doesn’t seem shocking to me—but it doesn’t appear to me that there’s evidence that implies requirement of physics violations, and it still seems to me that the evidence continues to imply that any memory that is uniquely stored in a person’s brain at time of death diffuses irretrievably into heat as the body decays.
I’d sure love to be wrong about that, let us all know when you’ve got more precise receipts.
Apologies for the absence; combination of busy/annoyance with downvotes, but I could also do a better job of being clear and concise. Unfortunately, after having given it thought, I just don’t think your request is something I can do for you, nor should it be. Honestly, if you were to simply take my word for it, I’d wonder what you were thinking. But good information, including primary sources, is openly accessible, and it’s something that I encourage those with the interest to take a deep dive into, for sure. Once you go far enough in, in my experience, there’s no getting out, unless perhaps you’re way more demanding of utter perfection in scientific analysis than I am, and I’m generally seen as one of the most demanding people currently in the PL-memory field, to the point of being a bit of a curmudgeon (not to mention an open sympathizer with skeptics like CSICOP, which is also deeply unpopular). But it takes a commitment to really wanting to know one way or the other. I can’t decide for anyone whether or not to have that.
I certainly could summarize the findings and takeaways of afterlife evidence and past-life memory investigations for a broad audience, but I haven’t found any reason to assume that it wouldn’t just be downvoted. That’s not why I came here anyways; I joined to improve my own methods and practice. I feel that if I were interested in doing anything like proselytizing, I would have to have an awfully low opinion of the ability of the evidence to speak for itself, and I don’t at all. But you tell me if I’m taking the right approach here, or if an ELI5 on the matter would be appropriate and/or desired. I’d not hesitate to provide such content if invited.
I invite you. You can send me this summary in private to avoid downvotes.
If you don’t like the word “believe”, what is the probability you assign to it?
Based on evidence I’ve been presented with to this point—I’d say high enough to confidently bet every dollar I’ll ever earn on it. Easily >99% that it’ll be put beyond reasonable doubt in the next 100-150 years, and I only specify that long because of the spectacularly lofty standards academia forces such evidence to measure up to. I’m basically alone in my field in actually being in favor of the latter, however, so I have no interest in declining to play the long game with it.
do you have any published papers on this? or, what are the top papers on the topic?
Thanks for asking. I’ll likely be publishing my first paper early next year, but the subject matter is quite advanced, definitely not entry-level stuff. It takes more of a practical orientation to the issue than merely establishing evidence (the former my specialty as a researcher; as is probably clear from other replies, I’m satisfied with the raw evidence).
As for best published papers for introductory purposes, here you can find one of my personal all-time favorites. https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/Development-of-Certainty-About-the-Correct-Deceased-Haraldsson-Abu-Izzeddin/4fb93e1dfb2e353a5f6e8b030cede31064b2536e