Reincarnation as a trivial scientific fact

[Gord_in_Toronto]

That could well be the case. Maybe the main reason of the spreading of deserts (e.g. Sahara) after the last ice age is primarily caused be a lack of enough bio-mass. If the vegetation spreads to regions near the poles, then a shortage of needed psychons can be the result in regions near the equator, where survival conditions have become more difficult. Only 18'000 years ago, the location I sit now (Vaduz, Liechtenstein, Europe) was covered by hundreds of meters of ice.

BTW, the always changing climate on Earth has been a main driving force of evolution in general, and the last glacial period of around 100,000 years a main driving force of our evolution in special.

"The last glacial period was the most recent glacial period within the current ice age, occurring in the Pleistocene epoch. It began about 110,000 years ago and ended between 10,000 and 15,000 BP. During this period there were several changes between glacier advance and retreat." (Wikipedia)

"Unlike the psychons of atoms and simple molecules, the more complex psychons of enzymes, cells and animals evolved over billions of years on earth. Because of the limits in space and other resources, only a limited number of every kind of psychons could evolve. This limitation is empirically relevant. Unlike the output of chemical production processes, the output of biotechnological production processes cannot always be increased just as one likes." (Empirical Relevance of Psychons)

"The saturation thesis is relevant not only to humans but to all organisms. It can hardly be denied that many animal populations remain rather constant in size without Malthusian struggles for survival. There are also limits on animal breeding and plant cultivation. There is even a saturation for pathogens like bacteria and viruses. A pathogen of a local epidemic cannot be a threat to mankind, nor can genetically engineered pathogens." (The Demographic Saturation Theory)





Probability theory can easily resolve such questions.

"According to the saturation model, the endpoint of demographic transition is a fertility oscillating near direct-replacement fertility, resulting in a rather constant population. In reality, however, the effect of direct-replacement fertility after demographic transition can interfere with other effects. Despite being already saturated, populations of child-oriented countries or groups, having lower prevalence of contraception and abortion, can still increase at the expense of evolutionarily related less child-oriented countries or groups. The reason is simple: evolutionarily related countries or groups can be seen as subpopulations of a unit, having as a whole a maximum potential population. So if something hinders one subpopulation from replacing its deaths by births then another subpopulation can further grow at the expense of the first. The more evolutionarily-related subpopulations are, the easier they can grow at the expense of each other." (Classification in subpopulations and evolutionary relatedness)

"The most important long-ranging factor confounding the demographic saturation model is migration." (The effect of migration on direct-replacement fertility)

Cheers, Wolfgang

You know, I'm almost sorry I asked. But with a reply that concise, so elegant and explanatory . . . No, I am sorry I asked.

 

[Cardelitre]

How else do we account for this, Eddy-P, MartinV, ... all surfacing (or re-surfacing) in the same fortnight?

Isn't it full moon already?

 

[jsfisher]

Isn't it full moon already?

Yes, but right this moment it is in full eclipse.

 

[Loss Leader]

Japan is the best example to test the saturation-thesis because migration is very low, and migration is the most important factor confounding demographic saturation. In a saturated population, the number of births is limited by the number of deaths, because all souls are alive and no child can be born without a soul.

I know I'm late to the party but WTF?

God can reincarnate souls but he can't move them out of Japan?

What about Japanese people who die while on vacation? Do they reincarnate back in Japan or do they reincarnate in San Francisco? And who are the builders of Riverworld? Will the fabulous riverboat finally tell us the answers?

 

[Loss Leader]

Because if he raised, everyone might fold

I like it. So, you think God is slow playing us.

 

[JoeEllison]

I know I'm late to the party but WTF?

God can reincarnate souls but he can't move them out of Japan?

No wonder all those Japanese ghosts are so angry!

 

[bruto]

....A pathogen of a local epidemic cannot be a threat to mankind....

How does any epidemic begin if not locally?

 

[six7s]

How does any epidemic begin if not locally?

They are borne in the Psychoⁿ nebula and ride in the slipstream of Occam's razor as it cuts a swathe through the Panpsychistic belt, dropping the Trousertron field shielding Uranus

 

[quarky]

They are borne in the Psychoⁿ nebula and ride in the slipstream of Occam's razor as it cuts a swathe through the Panpsychistic belt, dropping the Trousertron field shielding Uranus

not damn likely.
that would create a quantum non-singularity in the morphic field.

epidemics, like every thing else, begin locally...as long as the big bang remains big.

 

[Loss Leader]

not damn likely.
that would create a quantum non-singularity in the morphic field.

Not with the proper resonance modulation, it wouldn't.

 

[wogoga]

The relationship between quanta and psychons

Isn't it strange that people believing in all the many animals (epicycles) of the current particle zoo of orthodox physics (e.g. neutrinos, quarks, gravitons, gluons) invoke Occam's razor against the wonderfully simple and elegant psychon concept, having explicative power from biochemistry to one of the oldest philosophical problems, the body-mind problem?

... But he did not actually say the word "quantum".

Is it difficult to recognize that the psychon concept is related to the concept of quanta as conceived by Einstein?

Albert Einstein named Spinoza as the philosopher who exerted the most influence on his world view (Weltanschauung). (Wikipedia)​

As far as I know, Einstein even acknowledged an influence from Spinoza on his concept of quanta.

Spinoza uses a concept 'individuum', which can be translated as 'individual unit' or 'individual part'. Such 'individual units' of matter are e.g. molecules and atoms.

Two quotes from Ethics, PART II:

By particular things, I mean things which are finite and have a conditioned existence; but if several individual things concur in one action, so as to be all simultaneously the effect of one cause, I consider them all, so far, as one particular thing.

The human body is composed of a number of individual parts, of diverse nature, each one of which is in itself extremely complex.​

The first who recognized that even electromagnetic radiation consists of such 'individuals' was Einstein. Max Planck had assumed, that due to some not yet understood mechanism, radiation is emitted and received as quanta, but that the radiation itself is a continuous phenomenon. (In a similar way one can decrease or increase the continuous quantity of a soup by quantized values of soup-spoons.)

According to Spinoza, the universe (i.e. Deus sive Natura, God or Nature) has two aspects we can can recognize: the material aspect (res extensa) and the psychic aspect (res cogitans). In taking seriously the mind aspect of Spinoza's 'individua', one directly arrives at the psychon concept. In doing that, I consider myself a consistent and straightforward follower of Einstein.

Nevertheless, the additional quantization of interactions between (real) quanta (e.g. repulsive forces between two electrons) is primarily a consequence of Planck's original error of attributing the origin of the light-quanta effects not to the light-quanta themselves but to the processes of emission and reception. Only this additional quantization leads to such concepts as 'virtual photons', 'gravitons' and 'gluons'. Thus the concept 'virtual photon' is completely different from Einstein's light quanta.

"In some respect, QM was an attempt not to admit that Einstein was right after experiments (Compton 1923, Bothe and Geiger 1925) had shown that Bohr was wrong (e.g. Bohr, Kramers and Slater) and Einstein right. The fathers of QM tried to save as much as possible from their previously advocated but now experimentally refuted positions, taking refuge with obscure mathematics." (...)

Cheers, Wolfgang

 

[jsfisher]

So?

 

[Loss Leader]

And now he has said the word "quanta." And it looks like the officials are going to drop the cow. Yes, yes, they've dropped the cow. They've dropped the cow.

 

[Gord_in_Toronto]

Is it difficult to recognize that the psychon concept is related to the concept of quanta as conceived by Einstein?

<< SNIPPITY SNIP SNIP SNIPPITY >>

Cheers, Wolfgang

Well, at least you didn't use the word "eigenvector".

{Gord waits patiently}

 

[MattusMaximus]

Is it difficult to recognize that the psychon concept is related to the concept of quanta as conceived by Einstein?

As far as I know, Einstein even acknowledged an influence from Spinoza on his concept of quanta.

Spinoza uses a concept 'individuum', which can be translated as 'individual unit' or 'individual part'. Such 'individual units' of matter are e.g. molecules and atoms.

The first who recognized that even electromagnetic radiation consists of such 'individuals' was Einstein. Max Planck had assumed, that due to some not yet understood mechanism, radiation is emitted and received as quanta, but that the radiation itself is a continuous phenomenon. (In a similar way one can decrease or increase the continuous quantity of a soup by quantized values of soup-spoons.)

According to Spinoza, the universe (i.e. Deus sive Natura, God or Nature) has two aspects we can can recognize: the material aspect (res extensa) and the psychic aspect (res cogitans). In taking seriously the mind aspect of Spinoza's 'individua', one directly arrives at the psychon concept. In doing that, I consider myself a consistent and straightforward follower of Einstein.

Nevertheless, the additional quantization of interactions between (real) quanta (e.g. repulsive forces between two electrons) is primarily a consequence of Planck's original error of attributing the origin of the light-quanta effects not to the light-quanta themselves but to the processes of emission and reception. Only this additional quantization leads to such concepts as 'virtual photons', 'gravitons' and 'gluons'. Thus the concept 'virtual photon' is completely different from Einstein's light quanta.

Cheers, Wolfgang

 

[Mercutio]

Wog, how do you discern between souled people and folks like SilentKnight and myself who have none?

 

[MattusMaximus]

Wog, how do you discern between souled people and folks like SilentKnight and myself who have none?

Mercutio, Mercutio, the answer is so simple: you just don't exist!

 

[jsfisher]

Mercutio, Mercutio, the answer is so simple: you just don't exist!

Either that, or he can exist only in Japan, since Japan is fresh out of souls.

 

[GeeMack]

Wog, how do you discern between souled people and folks like SilentKnight and myself who have none?

You wear the special glasses, of course.

 

[wogoga]

...

"Doesn't that kind of thing happen at the level of other living things, such as algae? Insects?"

Yes, if that kind of thing is valid for us, then it is also valid for our fellow animals, for insects, for algae and so on.

"You appear to be suggesting that all living things are ensouled, but is there a finite number of souls to go around there too?"

Yes.

"If so, what is that number?"

Around 7 or 7.5 million in the case of human souls. Maybe two trillion in the case of honeybee souls (see).

"Is it even calculable, and if calculable is it useful?"

In principle at least the order of magnitude should be calculable in all cases. I'm sure it will be useful to calculate the soul numbers of e.g. farm animals, of honey bees or of tuna stocks. In any case, statements such as "aquaculture is a way of overcoming the problem of diminishing tuna stocks" must be reassessed, because the souls of farmed tuna are of the souls of former wild tuna. The one-egg-one-fish-hypothesis, a rather obvious and direct prediction of reductionist materialism, obviously does not work.

"... if reincarnation exists across the boundaries of species (even if we exclude plants), how could the human population be limited in any practical way? There are probably more mosquitoes in my back yard on a summer day than there are people in Tokyo. A shift in the relative numbers that doubled the human population on earth would be trivial if all living things have souls."

Reincarnation (according to panpsychist evolution) does not exist across the boundaries of species. Demographic data strongly suggests that it is now quite improbable for a typical Japanese soul be born outside Japan. So we can exclude that a mosquito is reborn as something different from a mosquito. A soul represents a huge amount of information concerning species and individual characteristics.

Cheers, Wolfgang

Still four centuries ago heliocentrism seemed as ridiculous as reincarnation today