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Current time: March 28, 2024, 1:46 pm

Poll: Are you with Leibniz or Cicero?
This poll is closed.
Leibniz
28.57%
4 28.57%
Cicero
71.43%
10 71.43%
Total 14 vote(s) 100%
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Are you with Leibniz or Cicero?
#11
RE: Are you with Leibniz or Cicero?
(May 30, 2016 at 12:21 pm)IATIA Wrote: Same conditions, same outcome.

Why? There are several branches one can take.
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#12
RE: Are you with Leibniz or Cicero?
Cicero for me.

Does Leibniz assume that I will carry forward knowledge and experience from my previous existence? I don't know. If I didn't the enterprise would be worthless from my perspective because without knowledge of my previous experience I would not be experiencing the next life.

I can easily dream of numerous benefits if I was allowed to live life again with full understanding that my new circumstance would provide a unique set of trials and for this reason alone makes the idea attractive. The problem I would have is living knowing that I have left behind the loves I have in this life. Will my new life have baseball? The music I like? Toilet paper? These are all superficial and can be replaced by better games, better music and the three seashells from Demolition Man. What I can't reconcile is knowing that the personal relationships of my life will never be. Although a future existence will likely have different meaningful relationships, how many cycles of wash, rinse and repeat will it take until what makes this life enjoyable becomes transitory, mundane and routine? 

I think the following clip is germane to the conversation:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WLzJAebfEIg
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#13
RE: Are you with Leibniz or Cicero?
(May 30, 2016 at 12:26 pm)abaris Wrote:
(May 30, 2016 at 12:21 pm)IATIA Wrote: Same conditions, same outcome.

Why? There are several branches one can take.

Without knowledge of the first run, why would you choose differently?
You make people miserable and there's nothing they can do about it, just like god.
-- Homer Simpson

God has no place within these walls, just as facts have no place within organized religion.
-- Superintendent Chalmers

Science is like a blabbermouth who ruins a movie by telling you how it ends. There are some things we don't want to know. Important things.
-- Ned Flanders

Once something's been approved by the government, it's no longer immoral.
-- The Rev Lovejoy
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#14
RE: Are you with Leibniz or Cicero?
(May 30, 2016 at 12:41 pm)IATIA Wrote: Without knowledge of the first run, why would you choose differently?

Why not? We're not computers or robots following a premade routine.
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#15
RE: Are you with Leibniz or Cicero?
If one assumes 'free will' then all the choices you made were based on personal decisions that would be the same. (remember, we are discussing a redo, same conditions, same outcome.) If there is no 'free will' then your choices were determined. There is also the possibility that your choices were just random. In that case, improvement would have to rely on 'luck'.
You make people miserable and there's nothing they can do about it, just like god.
-- Homer Simpson

God has no place within these walls, just as facts have no place within organized religion.
-- Superintendent Chalmers

Science is like a blabbermouth who ruins a movie by telling you how it ends. There are some things we don't want to know. Important things.
-- Ned Flanders

Once something's been approved by the government, it's no longer immoral.
-- The Rev Lovejoy
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#16
RE: Are you with Leibniz or Cicero?
(May 30, 2016 at 12:58 pm)IATIA Wrote: If one assumes 'free will' then all the choices you made were based on personal decisions that would be the same. (remember, we are discussing a redo, same conditions, same outcome.)  If there is no 'free will' then your choices were determined.  There is also the possibility that your choices were just random.  In that case, improvement would have to rely on 'luck'.

But you don't know if you would be at the same exact spot at the very same time, meet the exact same people at the exact same time. That would be indeed something like Groundhog day or fate. Just the basics of origins, time and location of birth, don't provide for that. Circumstances and decisions might still change.
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#17
RE: Are you with Leibniz or Cicero?
In which case you are suggesting that choices are random and that others would also make random choices, ergo, the luck of the draw again.
You make people miserable and there's nothing they can do about it, just like god.
-- Homer Simpson

God has no place within these walls, just as facts have no place within organized religion.
-- Superintendent Chalmers

Science is like a blabbermouth who ruins a movie by telling you how it ends. There are some things we don't want to know. Important things.
-- Ned Flanders

Once something's been approved by the government, it's no longer immoral.
-- The Rev Lovejoy
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#18
RE: Are you with Leibniz or Cicero?
(May 30, 2016 at 12:13 pm)IATIA Wrote:
(May 30, 2016 at 11:08 am)Alex K Wrote: Interesting!
I'm still a Leibniz kind of guy, barely - who knows what I'll be in a few years time.

And if your next life was one of those Ethiopian poster kids? The main problem with a 'redo'.

Leibniz has as a qualifier "on condition of passing through the same amount of good and evil"
The fool hath said in his heart, There is a God. They are corrupt, they have done abominable works, there is none that doeth good.
Psalm 14, KJV revised edition

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#19
RE: Are you with Leibniz or Cicero?
Relative terms, regardless, I would still choose Cicero.
You make people miserable and there's nothing they can do about it, just like god.
-- Homer Simpson

God has no place within these walls, just as facts have no place within organized religion.
-- Superintendent Chalmers

Science is like a blabbermouth who ruins a movie by telling you how it ends. There are some things we don't want to know. Important things.
-- Ned Flanders

Once something's been approved by the government, it's no longer immoral.
-- The Rev Lovejoy
Reply
#20
RE: Are you with Leibniz or Cicero?
Would you necessarily have the same mindset if everything around you played out exactly the same? How much spontaneity is there in the world - or in one's will - to allow that your circumstances might be drastically altered even if the state at, say, birth, were largely or even precisely the same?

It's a tough choice if you imagine also having to relearn everything, that is, taking on the same ignorance that children must eventually shed. Of course, there's the small chance that you'll be given a similar life but with extraordinarily good parents (in other ways than perhaps you presently view yours to have been) or possess a natural gift of wisdom, though there's also the chance that you'll come back as Donald Trump's great grandchild.
He who loves God cannot endeavour that God should love him in return - Baruch Spinoza
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