Doug Casey on Reincarnation, Taoism, stoicism, and simulation theory

Doug & Matt discuss life philosophies -

Transcript:
Matt: what I find interesting is that it all is about this, about being able to balance, in the physical world, ambition with the sense that it doesn't actually matter anyway, it's like having one foot in the room and one foot out of the room seems like the right way to function in life.

Doug: Yeah, I agree. And that's, that's why the kind of world religions, I think the Taoists have the best grip on it, you know, they're in the world, but not of the world kind of.

Matt: that it's similar to the Stoics, which I tend to tended to gravitate to more, that you're supposed to strive, but, the hard thing is, is. Like, uh, you, you, it's easy to go think that you, not be of the world, you have to go in a cave and just get away from things and not really care about outcomes, but you really have to. I mean, and, and certainly, in stoicism, there's an ethical obligation to act.

Doug: An ethical obligation to act. That's right. So, yeah. Yeah, well, it's all interesting. And, and, and who the hell knows what happens when I talked to him yesterday, [unnamed] intimated his, a belief in reincarnation and future lives. I don't know about that. I've thought about that a lot. , I think it's quite logical possible.

Anyway, the only problem I have with reincarnation is that... I may have remembered things from past lives. Actually. It's interesting. I've done this past live drill and come up with a lot of things. Where did they come from? Are they from movies? Are they snippets from books that I've read that? In the back of my mind that have come to the front, I don't know, but I've had, it actually had past life experiences and I always wanted to, and then I had some, so that was good.

But the question is, is if you're reincarnated, where are all these extra people coming from? Where are all these, all these entities that are inhabiting these bodies coming from? . In other words, fine. I can go back into a new body. That's being born. Okay. But, , if there's 8 billion people in the world and there used to be just 3 billion, 50 years ago, where the other 5 billion come from, they're not reincarnated.

They came from someplace else.

Matt: Well, there's been a reduction of, uh, insects in the world I've read about. And if we are mostly reading, cutting across the species spectrum,

Doug: well, that's a possibility, isn't it? Sure. Yeah. I mean in a really good dog could come back as a person, I guess you would think so.

And it really isn't at all

and well, in a really bad person could come back as North warm or something too, I suppose.

Matt: There is some, there is some beauty in that idea.

The simulation idea more though. I really do. I think that's um. you've heard of a, probably Nick Bostrom. who originally came up with this idea.

Doug: Yeah, yeah. That we're all living in a simulation. Yeah. And then there could be simulations within simulations, within simulations.

Matt: And so that's why it's because, because there could be an infant and a number of simulations, it's far more likely that we are. In one, then that we are a civilization on an arc where that could be where that is actually achievable. And that it's unlikely. We are on that one civilization, that's going through this evolutionary process where we develop the technology enough to be, be able to create a virtual reality.

That's is believable as a, you know, as a, as a physical reality without destroying ourselves first. , it's less likely that we happen to be those people right now, then that we've already gone past that. And we're one of the infinite number of simulations.

Doug: Yeah. That's really fascinating. It's, it's kind of like a wrapped up Chinese conundrum where.

Uh, somebody Chinese philosopher was asked, well, what's the earth sitting on? And he said, it's sitting on a turtle. Yeah. But what's the turtle setting on. And he says, it's turtles all the way down

Matt: turtles all the way down. Yup.