Althouse: "Don’t be a stranger, okay? 'Even chance meetings'... how does the rest of that go?"

April 3, 2019

"Don’t be a stranger, okay? 'Even chance meetings'... how does the rest of that go?"

"'Are the result of karma.'"/"Right, right... But what does it mean?"/"That things in life are fated by our previous lives. That even in the smallest events there’s no such thing as coincidence."

From "Kafka on the Shore" by Haruki Murakami, which I just started reading this morning, after I'd blogged "Karma is an unkind mistress," so it felt like a coincidence, hearing "karma" come up again, and even in the smallest events there’s no such thing as coincidence.

52 comments:

n.n said...: Perhaps not a coincidence, but rather a confluence.; 4/3/19, 5:27 PM
Michael said...: Hope the rest of it is better than that dialogue, which sounds numbingly dullsville.

If not, you could try Einstein on the Beach.; 4/3/19, 5:29 PM
tim in vermont said...: even in the smallest events there’s no such thing as coincidence.

Isn’t this the religion that says that there is no god, but somehow something is accounting for every little thing every living thing does and dishing out comeuppances?

But what he says may be true in well written novels, where the best way to understand them is to view them the same way a paranoid schizophrenic views life.; 4/3/19, 5:34 PM
Seeing Red said...: Karma may be unkind if you’re receiving it. Watching or hearing about someone else getting it could be cause to happy dance.; 4/3/19, 5:58 PM
Heartless Aztec said...: Unkind nuthin'. Karma is a certain bitch/bastard.; 4/3/19, 6:18 PM
Be said...: Karma, Dharma, Wheel of Samsara. I remember reading about all this in college. Sort of thinking that I should crack that copy of IQ84 that came home with me for whatever reason.; 4/3/19, 6:23 PM
Bay Area Guy said...: "Karma is an unkind mistress."

Ain't that the truth, baby! And so was Stormy Daniels....; 4/3/19, 6:34 PM
Charlie Currie said...: As Dirk Gently says, everything is connected.; 4/3/19, 6:46 PM
Laslo Spatula said...: "...so it felt like a coincidence, hearing "karma" come up again, and even in the smallest events there’s no such thing as coincidence."

I discussed karma (in relation to Biden and Clarence Thomas) in last night's cafe at 4/3/19, 6:53 AM, before any of Althouse's subsequent karma riffs today.

A very small event indeed, but obviously no coincidence.

Tomorrow's reoccurring theme will concern magnets.

I am Laslo.; 4/3/19, 6:49 PM
JAORE said...: Karma is a certain bitch/bastard.

Karma is only a bitch if you are.; 4/3/19, 7:02 PM
SDaly said...: I read Kafka on the Shore last month, after Killing Commendatore, based upon your fondness for Murakami.

I enjoyed them both, and will read Norwegian Wood next.; 4/3/19, 7:04 PM
Lucien said...: Nature chooses only the longest threads to weave the fabric of the universe, so that even the smallest part reveals the organization of the whole.

— Richard Feynman; 4/3/19, 7:48 PM
effinayright said...: This comment has been removed by the author.; 4/3/19, 8:08 PM
Christy said...: I loved Kafka on the Shore and the look at Japanese spiritually. The private library enchanted me completely.; 4/3/19, 8:17 PM
stephen cooper said...: == no real physicist believes that there are "many worlds" in the sense that there are other worlds where people almost exactly like us are living.

There is not enough possible energy in any plausible collection of universes, and no plausible source of such energy, to power anywhere near the variety of universes that would be necessary to include even very very rough and vague mimics of people living in this universe.

The best you can hope, according to what we now know of physics, is that there is some universe somewhere where someone like you = but not you, albeit like you = does not know who he she or it is and does not have any memory of this universe but vaguely feels something - you, in that universe, do not know who you are and you vaguely feel something, but although it might have some vague shadowy relation to something you feel in this universe, there is no way the version of you in that universe will have any idea of the similarity.

On the other hand, God - the creator of everything visible and everything invisible - loves us all, and everybody who has ever loved, even for a moment, their little puppy dog or even some unloveable crabby cat, just because it is the nature of the human heart to love those with whom we share our homes, will get to spend eternity with God, if they trust and believe in the name of Jesus, and will have every righteous hope of love and kindness and desired memory fulfilled. And yes their dogs and the crabby cats will share heaven with them.

Proverbs 8 is the place to begin if you want to independently figure out why that is true. And everything Jesus said that echoed Proverbs 8, and everything similar that Saint Paul and Saint Peter and Saint James and Saint Jude and Saint John too.; 4/3/19, 8:28 PM
Maillard Reactionary said...: Lucien knows the words of the sage Feynmann, an imperfect human being, who may have been a nearly perfect scientist. I never met him, and am not wise enough to judge in either connection.

What I am fairly certain about, is that there is no such thing as Karma. I strongly suspect that that is also true about coincidences.

But who knows, coincidences may be a result of QM entanglement from an experiment in another galaxy. Or perhaps all particles are entangled with all other particles. As a practical matter, it may not matter as a practical manner in ordinary life.

Einstein said, in a letter to the widow and family of Michel Besso after his death (whom he used to send his papers to, before publication, to check his math):

"Now he has departed from this strange world a little ahead of me. That signifies nothing. For those of us who believe in physics, the distinction between past, present and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion."

In light of the above, although many worthy people believe in it, I think that Karma is a pathetic notion.

Having said that, Murakami's books are quirky and entertaining, although sometimes, disappointing when all is said and done.; 4/3/19, 8:33 PM
stephen cooper said...: I am not in a good mood tonight or else I would explain in a way that you probably have never heard the role that crabby cats will have in the future, the role that they have in the present, and the role that, in the past, they have - to my certain knowledge - played in salvation history.

Well, relatively crabby cats, anyway, I am an expert on fairly crabby cats, but as far as really crabby cats go, I have only met a few, and it was always at somebody else's house, and nobody ever believed me when I said I could make the cats much less crabby if they let me try. Believe it or not, many people who know me do not consider me very persuasive when I talk about these things - crabby cats, and similar subjects. Sad!; 4/3/19, 8:34 PM
stephen cooper said...: Einstein's quote would have been better if he left out "stubbornly".

And "persistent".

Smart guy, but he needed to work a little bit harder on his adjectives and adverbs, as so many of us do.; 4/3/19, 8:37 PM
Lewis Wetzel said...: I don't understand the "many worlds" hypothesis.
Where are these other worlds?
How can you show that they exist anywhere other than in the human imagination?
Spinoza tells us how to determine if a thing is real:
"I understand Reality to be that which is in itself and is conceived through itself: I mean that, the conception of which does not depend on the conception of another thing from which it must be formed."
If this is true, how can the "many worlds" hypothesis be true?; 4/3/19, 8:42 PM
tim in vermont said...: “ plausible”

There’s a word that leaves a lot of room for playing around. It’s kind of “implausible” that there is as much energy and matter in the Universe as there seems to be, all come from one highly improbable variation in the quantum substrate or whatever it is that happened.; 4/3/19, 8:47 PM
Maillard Reactionary said...: stephen cooper: He wrote in German, which I do not speak. Perhaps he was more precise, or well-spoken, in his native tongue. I found this transcription some years back on the internet, who knows who was the translator.

Personally, I have enough to try to wrap my mind around what he was getting at, without worrying too much about the details of the verbiage. Certainly, our mathematical models of physics as we understand it today are time-symmetrical, yet, yet, that is not the world that we see.

I'm not sure if he was right or not. Even today, theoreticians get headaches over trying to make sense of what appears to be the observational fact of "the arrow of time".

If they sort this out within our lifetimes, that would be great, but I am not holding my breath about it.; 4/3/19, 8:53 PM
effinayright said...: Lewis Wetzel said...
I don't understand the "many worlds" hypothesis.

"""""""""""

Google it.; 4/3/19, 8:53 PM
effinayright said...: stephen cooper said...

== no real physicist believes that there are "many worlds" in the sense that there are other worlds where people almost exactly like us are living.
***********

That's not the concept. Please google the term.

My main point was to say that even in *this* world, the idea that karma addresses/resolves/punishes actions taken in one's previous life in the present one is unsupportable.

It's like Hindus, major proponents of reincarnation, who say to their children: "See that filthy man sweeping the streets. In his last life he did many bad things." (which in fact what Hindus believe and teach. THAT is Karma.)

Many World seems to say that if I die in a car accident in this world, in another world/universe I keep tootling along. If I then die in a spacecraft hitting planet X in *that* world, I will survive in yet another universe.

I know that's crude, but that's what it seems to say to me as a layman.; 4/3/19, 9:04 PM
stephen cooper said...: "Plausible" - let's talk about plausibility.
is it plausible that, as the digits of pi go towards infinity, nearly infinitely larger stretches of those digits almost repeat (asterisk), or is it more plausible that, as the digits of pi go towards infinity, it becomes infinitely less likely that any near infinite stretch of digits would repeat itself (second asterisk).

(asterisk) - such "almost repeating" scenarios would be necessary for a multiple universe scenario to result in near carbon copies of this universe; unfortunately, for those who want there to be similar universes to ours , there is no mathematical theory that comes close to describing a naturally occurring (for example, the digits of pi) progression of numbers where it is likely that there are more repeating similar near-infinities than there are non-repeating similar near-infinities - and the ratio only gets worse for almost repeating near-infinities, as compared to dissimilar repeating near-infinities, the closer one gets to infinity. And there is no stretch of infinity where the ratio reverses because that is what infinity means - always leaving behind simpler numbers (always leaving further behind the possibility of a stretch of near-repeating near-infinities, that is, always leaving behind the possibility for similar universes in a multiverse).

(second asterisk) - in which case energy would need, at a minimum, to be not only infinitely physical with respect to observable physical matter but also infinitely physical with respect to any "idea" of unlimited matter. There is no physical theory that begins to hint that such a possibility is plausible. No room for playing around. There simply is no theory that begins to hint at it.

So it is either God and we see each other in heaven, or random infinite numbers that will always get further from what we once knew.
That is, Sydney or the Bush (an old outback pilot phrase); 4/3/19, 9:07 PM
narciso said...: Well there was a physicist Everett, who came up with the multiverse, it stemmed from his research on nuclear strategy if memory served.; 4/3/19, 9:07 PM
stephen cooper said...: wholelottasplain'

--- thanks for the advice to google the term, but I don't need to.

Hindu theology is interesting .

Wrong, and a human invention, but nevertheless interesting.; 4/3/19, 9:10 PM
effinayright said...: I deleted my previous post to add this at the end:

So....Althouse is down with the idea of reincarnation.....OoohKaaaayyy..........not uncommon for people of a Certain Age.

Myself, I always wondered why the "Many Worlds" hypothesis doesn't mean that somewhere, somehow in one of those other Worlds, I will continue to live forever.

Just not in this one, and just not anything my consciousness can ever tap into, either before I live or after I die.

Very satisfying, no?

I feel I've delivered an "Early Woody Allen" kind of comment here.

As when he said, "I don't want to die, and I don't want to live on in the hearts of my friends".

"I just want to live on."; 4/3/19, 9:11 PM
Mark O said...: Karma? I'll give you Karma (although as a Duke fan it hurts):

It was perhaps Karma's greatest feat that Duke lost the Elite Eight game for the reason that not enough fouls had been called on Duke in the half.

I dare you to top that.; 4/3/19, 9:11 PM
stephen cooper said...: narciso -
Everett merely extrapolated the work of Cantor, in turn based on the work of Gauss and Euler, to what he understood (which was not all that much, to be fair) of the then-current mix of quantum mechanics and the force equation of general relativity.

If you don't want to buy a book, read Peter Woit's blog for criticisms of Tegmark's romance novel about this "mathematical universe"; 4/3/19, 9:12 PM
effinayright said...: stephen cooper said...
wholelottasplain'

--- thanks for the advice to google the term, but I don't need to.
&&&&&&&

And there's no way I could ever do justice to the idea in a blog comment. So I sent you out to those who claim they can.; 4/3/19, 9:13 PM
tim in vermont said...: The many-worlds interpretation is an interpretation of quantum mechanics that asserts the objective reality of the universal wavefunction and denies the actuality of wavefunction collapse. The existence of the other worlds makes it possible to remove randomness and action at a distance from quantum theory and thus from all physics.

This is impossible to prove or disprove, so it’s just a comforting myth, like “in the beginning.... “ The best “interpretation” of QM so far, and the only useful one, is “Shut up and calculate.”; 4/3/19, 9:13 PM
Howard said...: Karma is the hindu/buddyism proxy for the consequences of pride.; 4/3/19, 9:16 PM
narciso said...: Thanks for that, it does seem an impractical scenario, but it wasnt conjures out of whole cloth.; 4/3/19, 9:18 PM
Sebastian said...: "That things in life are fated by our previous lives."

Why would you believe that?; 4/3/19, 9:20 PM
narciso said...: Woit is not impressed:
https://www.math.columbia.edu/~woit/wordpress/?p=6551; 4/3/19, 9:24 PM
tim in vermont said...: Here’s my proof of many worlds.

The Big Bang happened, proving it’s possible.

Over an infinite period of time and an infinite space any possible thing will happen an infinite number of times.

Euler has a pretty good proof that a steady state universe is impossible, and what I am describing above amounts to a steady state universe, or multiverse, a foam of universes, so it would only work if each “Universe” was self enclosed so that light and gravity couldn’t escape, or, as Euler has convincingly proven, we would be awash in the light. But if that’s true, you are always alive somewhere or other.; 4/3/19, 9:25 PM
stephen cooper said...: narciso - I find him (Woit) very convincing on the subject, but he knows a lot more about it than I do and i am sure he does not care much about my opinion.
Although if he is reading this I hope he remembers I lent him 20 bucks on the subway one Manhattan Thursday night in the early 80s he said he would pay me back soon but I gave him a phony name I thought he would realize that but I guess he didn't, I never saw that 20 again, I always overestimate people's potential to understand, I guess it is better that way; 4/3/19, 9:31 PM
narciso said...: There should be real life observation behind such a theory, now I can see where it stems from in principle, what we do or choose not to do creates new possibilities.; 4/3/19, 9:39 PM
Obadiah said...: Off topic but had to share:
Garnier Fructis Introduces The Biden Collection
https://babylonbee.com/news/garnier-fructis-introduces-the-biden-collection; 4/3/19, 9:56 PM
themightypuck said...: Pewdiepie gives it 4/5. https://www.reddit.com/r/pewdiepie/wiki/pewdiepierecommendations; 4/3/19, 10:47 PM
narciso said...: How did they miss this?
https://www.theguardian.com/food/shortcuts/2018/dec/10/should-you-stop-eating-blood-avocados; 4/3/19, 11:41 PM
Lewis Wetzel said...: "Blogger wholelottasplainin' said...

Lewis Wetzel said...
I don't understand the "many worlds" hypothesis.

"""""""""""

Google it.

4/3/19, 8:53 PM"

I don't think it would help, because physicists make aren't good at philosophy.
If Spinoza says a thing is real has to be "that which is in itself and is conceived through itself: I mean that, the conception of which does not depend on the conception of another thing from which it must be formed."
Then something that is proven to be "real" by a mathematical model ( a concept foreign to the thing itself) is not real.; 4/4/19, 1:21 AM
Kevin said...: You must watch Beto’s hands.

You must watch Biden’s hands.

Coincidence?

Karma: No!; 4/4/19, 5:16 AM
rhhardin said...: Karma virumque cano, Troiae qui primus ab oris. Italiam, fato profugus...; 4/4/19, 6:10 AM
Nichevo said...: Believe it or not, many people who know me do not consider me very persuasive when I talk about these things - crabby cats, and similar subjects. Sad!

--Shocking.

Although if he is reading this I hope he remembers I lent him 20 bucks on the subway one Manhattan Thursday night in the early 80s he said he would pay me back soon but I gave him a phony name I thought he would realize that but I guess he didn't, I never saw that 20 again, I always overestimate people's potential to understand, I guess it is better that way

--Sir, you are perverse.

If Spinoza says a thing is real has to be "that which is in itself and is conceived through itself:

If you're looking for a shorter version, reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away.; 4/4/19, 6:32 AM
tim in vermont said...: This comment has been removed by the author.; 4/4/19, 6:48 AM
tim in vermont said...: "As Niels Bohr used to say, Physics is not a tool to describe how the reality is. Physics is a tool to say right things about what we can see."

I guess that the two geniuses, Bohr and Spinoza agree. Many worlds is a desperate attempt to hold on to the certainties of classical physics. It’s a kind of denial. It’s metaphysics.; 4/4/19, 6:50 AM
Lewis Wetzel said...: Well, yeah, otherwise you could have absurdities like a mathematical proof of a universe where mathematics can not be used to create a proof.; 4/4/19, 6:55 AM
effinayright said...: rhhardin said...
Karma virumque cano, Troiae qui primus ab oris. Italiam, fato profugus...
**********

Which I would rebut by saying: sum esse fui futurus; 4/4/19, 8:27 AM
buwaya said...: I prefer the idea of being a stranger in paradise, as in the musical "on a theme by Borodin".

Granted the music was better than the production.

The idea though, of being a stranger, is romantic and appealing, of the enticement of discoveries at every turn, and, though not without risk, are also at least as likely to be delightful. Karma is out of the picture, in this fantasy all is free will and chaotic chance.; 4/4/19, 8:41 AM
Amexpat said...: I have a Japanese friend who loves to read books in Japanese. I asked her what she thought of Murakami and she said that she read Norwegian Wood and didn't like it because it was too sentimental and the protagonist was too passive. After going to Japan, I brought her back a copy of Kafka on the Shore as it doesn't have the "faults" of Norwegian Wood. She thought Kafka was too scary. Must have identified with the cats.; 4/4/19, 10:33 AM
stephen cooper said...: Nichevo - I disagree with you on reality, or at least, as far as I understand what you are trying to say, I think I do..

Reality is that which people who care about you consider to be reality.

If they really care.

In my case, they do --

I am not a shocking person,not at all.

Trust me.

Or don't, trust God.

And when you trust God, and have trusted God for a long time, ask God if I was trustworthy. I know what the answer will be.

And for the record I have never seen a crabby cat who did not look me in the eye and think ----- here is a person, a man, a creature of the Lord, who understands crabby cats!

It has been a nice life, the life I have lived. If you, like me, know what it is to be the sort of person that crabby cats look upon with love in their heart, then you will know what I am talking about.

Thanks for reading.

By the way: Next time you see a crabby cat don't talk about the time you made fun of me. The crabby cats will not be amused!
Sad! It would be so amusing if they were amused, but they probably wouldn't be, and that is not my fault.

Thanks for reading. Spinoza would have died a happy man if he knew what I knew about reality.
I do not stop believing in the love of God for all of us.

If I did, it wouldn't go away.

The difference between me and little Spinoza is I can name it.

That which endures forever is the love of God for us, and in addition to that the kindness and courage so many people express, during hard times, and during easy times.

If you were trying to insult me, that is ok, insults do not bother me at all, and if you were just trying to communicate, God bless you, you have no idea how much respect I have for people who try to communicate. God bless you.; 4/4/19, 9:01 PM