Friedrich Nietzsche's Eternal Return

[DanielR]

A thought experiment or a possibilty?

What do you think?

This concept fascinates me, though I always wondered if Nietzsche's thought this through to the end, what I never understood is what is with disabled born children for example or sick children that day before the age of 10 or whatever, is it their destiny to relive their lifes for all eternity??

Am I missing something in his theory, or would he reply that the universe just doesn't care about that?

For those who don't know what I'm talking about

Eternal return - Wikipedia

 

[McBell]

I would say "faulty premise".

If space and time are infinite, then logic follows that our existence must recur an infinite number of times.

 

[Brickjectivity]

It sounds equivalent to saying time is an illusion, which is what Relativity suggests I am told.

...One could say that time is a parameterization of a dynamical system that allows the geometry of the system to be manifested and operated on. It has been asserted that time is an implicit consequence of chaos (i.e. nonlinearity/irreversibility): the characteristic time, or rate of information entropy production, of a system. Mandelbrot introduces intrinsic time in his book Multifractals and 1/f noise...

That is a blurb about Dynamical Systems from the article on Time in Physics on Wikipedia. It is thought by almost all Physics researchers that time is a parameter, and though you cannot reverse time or go backward in time, past events still exist and are still 'Happening' in the past. This appears to me equivalent to saying they happen an infinite number of times.

 

[viole]

A thought experiment or a possibilty?

What do you think?

This concept fascinates me, though I always wondered if Nietzsche's thought this through to the end, what I never understood is what is with disabled born children for example or sick children that day before the age of 10 or whatever, is it their destiny to relive their lifes for all eternity??

Am I missing something in his theory, or would he reply that the universe just doesn't care about that?

For those who don't know what I'm talking about

Eternal return - Wikipedia

Well, even if eternal return were true, those poor children would not relive their experiences.

Since the experience has not necessarily recollection of the previous one, the damage would not cumulate. So to speak.

For all practical purpose, the experience will be only one.

Ciao

- viole

 

[DanielR]

Well, even if eternal return were true, those poor children would not relive their experiences.

Since the experience has not necessarily recollection of the previous one, the damage would not cumulate. So to speak.

For all practical purpose, the experience will be only one.

Ciao

- viole

that's true, I didn't think about this lol, but it sounds incredibly unfair, what would Nietzsche say about that the unfairiness that is, anyone know?

or maybe the universe just doesn't care

 

[Nietzsche]

A thought experiment or a possibilty?

What do you think?

This concept fascinates me, though I always wondered if Nietzsche's thought this through to the end, what I never understood is what is with disabled born children for example or sick children that day before the age of 10 or whatever, is it their destiny to relive their lifes for all eternity??

Am I missing something in his theory, or would he reply that the universe just doesn't care about that?

For those who don't know what I'm talking about

Eternal return - Wikipedia

From an outside perspective, they're going to be doing that forever, forwards & backwards, for eternity, yes. But as someone else stated, there is no way (that we know of) for them to realize this. Which I would argue is worse, because that means it's a fresh new hell. There is never a chance to acclimate.

that's true, I didn't think about this lol, but it sounds incredibly unfair, what would Nietzsche say about that the unfairiness that is, anyone know?

or maybe the universe just doesn't care

Tough ****ing luck, no one cares.

That's what I'd say, and I can't help but my namesake would agree.

 

[viole]

that's true, I didn't think about this lol, but it sounds incredibly unfair, what would Nietzsche say about that the unfairiness that is, anyone know?

or maybe the universe just doesn't care

I don't think that the Andromeda galaxy, among other things in the Universe, cares about what happens here.

Ciao

- viole

 

[DanielR]

From an outside perspective, they're going to be doing that forever, forwards & backwards, for eternity, yes. But as someone else stated, there is no way (that we know of) for them to realize this. Which I would argue is worse, because that means it's a fresh new hell. There is never a chance to acclimate.


Tough ****ing luck, no one cares.

That's what I'd say, and I can't help but my namesake would agree.

Thank you, I was anticipating an answer from you don't know anyone else here who's into Nietzsche as well

 

[Willamena]

From what I read, Nietzsche embraced a healthy attitude.

...In Beyond Good and Evil, Nietzsche describes “the opposite ideal” to that of moralists and pessimists like Schopenhauer as “the ideal of the most high-spirited, alive, and world-affirming human being who has not only come to terms and learned to get along with whatever was and is, but who wants to have what was and is repeated into all eternity” (BGE 56). Put more simply: the higher type embraces the doctrine of the eternal recurrence and thus evinces what Nietzsche often calls a “Dionysian” or “life-affirming” attitude. A person, for Nietzsche, has a Dionysian attitude toward life insofar as he affirms his life unconditionally; in particular, insofar as he affirms it including the “suffering” or other hardships it has involved. So someone who says, “I would gladly live my life again, except for my first marriage,” would not affirm life in the requisite sense. Thus, we may say that a person affirms his life in Nietzsche's sense only insofar as he would gladly will its eternal return: i.e., will the repetition of his entire life through eternity. In fact, Nietzsche calls “the idea of the eternal recurrence” the “highest formulation of affirmation that is at all attainable” (EH III:Z-1; cf. BGE 56). Higher men, then, are marked by a distinctive Dionysian attitude toward their life: they would gladly will the repetition of their life eternally.

Nietzsche's Moral and Political Philosophy (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)

 

[Nous]

Eternal return - Wikipedia

This is a very weird article. The “Premise” section begins:

"The basic premise proceeds from the assumption that the probability of a world coming into existence exactly like our own is greater than zero (we know this because our world exists)."

Obviously one cannot calculate any “probability of a world coming into existence exactly like our own” from the fact that “our world exists.” What are the assumptions by which we can calculate “the probability of a world coming to existence exactly like our own”?

The next sentence states:

"If space and time are infinite, then logic follows that our existence must recur an infinite number of times.[1]"

But no assertion in that sentence follows from anything else. One cannot deduce that “our existence must recur an infinite number of times” from the premise that “space and time are infinite,” nor from a combination of that premise and the previous sentence. And why the hell is that Tegmark paper referenced? Tegmark doesn't attempt to make an argument regarding anything even vaguely resembling “eternal recurrence”:

Abstract: I survey physics theories involving parallel universes, which form a natural four-level hierarchy of multiverses allowing progressively greater diversity. Level I: A generic prediction of inflation is an infinite ergodic universe, which contains Hubble volumes realizing all initial conditions -- including an identical copy of you about 10^10^29 m away. Level II: In chaotic inflation, other thermalized regions may have different physical constants, dimensionality and particle content. Level III: In unitary quantum mechanics, other branches of the wavefunction add nothing qualitatively new, which is ironic given that this level has historically been the most controversial. Level IV: Other mathematical structures give different fundamental equations of physics. The key question is not whether parallel universes exist (Level I is the uncontroversial cosmological concordance model), but how many levels there are. I discuss how multiverse models can be falsified and argue that there is a severe “measure problem” that must be solved to make testable predictions at levels II-IV.​

http://space.mit.edu/home/tegmark/multiverse.pdf

One can find all kinds of junk in the Wikipedia.

If there is any argument by which to conclude Nietzsche's "eternal recurrence," I would like to hear it.

 

[DanielR]

Hmm, aren't the Will to Power and Eternal return two contradictory concepts?