People say you come back. Reincarnation. Do you think so? Well, it doesn’t seem mathematically possible to me, man. Uh, 'course at one time what we had on the earth was six people, you know. I avoid “two” because it’s controversial but six… most people agree, “fuck, yeah, we had six at one time.” Six people, six souls… cool. They died, souls went back to the place; six new people souls- still six souls. Now we have four billion people… claiming to have souls. Someone is printing up souls… and it lowers their value, you know.
There’s no particular reason to think souls and reincarnation would follow the normal flow of time. If you can be reincarnated in a different place from where you lived, why not a different time? Maybe you could be reincarnated as anyone who had ever lived, or anyone ever will live. Taken to the extreme, there could be just one soul and we’re all reincarnations of each other. It’s all woo, so why not?
– George Carlin
There’s no particular reason to think souls and reincarnation would follow the normal flow of time. If you can be reincarnated in a different place from where you lived, why not a different time? Maybe you could be reincarnated as anyone who had ever lived, or anyone ever will live. Taken to the extreme, there could be just one soul and we’re all reincarnations of each other. It’s all woo, so why not?
Reminds me of the short story “The Egg” by Andy Weir (same guy who wrote The Martian and Project Hail Mary (which is an amazing book, btw)).
I recommend the egg. It’s a quick read.
Never seen double parentheses like that outside of algebraic expressions.