In this thought-provoking discussion, Malcolm and Simone debate the implications if reincarnation were proven to be real. Malcolm argues it would necessitate rethinking identity, consciousness, and the meaning of emotions. Simone counters that practically, not much would change in how we live. She theorizes souls could be residue transferring between bodies and accumulating through evolution. Overall, they explore fascinating philosophical questions about the soul and metaphysical realities.

Simone: [00:00:00] Hello, Malcolm. Hello,

Malcolm: Simone. So for our topic for this one, it actually was something that was inspired by an interview we did with another podcast. Do you remember the name of the podcast, by the way?

Simone: It was the podcast weird and worthwhile.

Malcolm: Weird and worthwhile. Okay. So I want to give them a shout out if people want to check out that episode. But at one point of it, they asked us, they go, okay, so, you know, some people believe in reincarnation. I got the impression that they did. They're like, okay, so, assume reincarnation is true.

Malcolm: How does that change how you think of what you're trying to maximize for the human species? And I just went off at that point. I think what they expected is, Oh, you tweak here and here in terms of how you're modifying, like maximizing, you know, this or that. But no, if I assume that reincarnation is real.

Malcolm: Mm hmm. And I change something when we describe how people have \ belief systems about the world. We [00:01:00] describe them as like a tree, right? When then they have a lot of branching parts to them. If reincarnation is true, the core trunk of that tree. It's completely changed, which changes all of the sub-branches for us.

Simone: What? Yeah, I'm, I'm so surprised 'cause nothing changes for me so far. This is my default. Nothing is different. I'm not, no, no

Malcolm: change. Okay. So we have just scientists have confirmed, and this is something that scientists could confirm. That's a really cool thing about it. Scientists could tomorrow be like, yes, we have proven that people could know things that they could only know if reincarnation happened, right?

Malcolm: Mm-hmm. . Mm-hmm. , So, so this is something that could be concretely proven at some point, right? That means a number of other things. First, it means that humans have a soul that's separate from their physical body. Mm hmm. This is not something that we believe, right? Mm hmm. If humans have a soul that's separate from their physical body.

Malcolm: That means that some other form [00:02:00] of reality exists or some other form of material exists. And this material or form of reality is likely more important than the reality that we perceive. So let me explain what I mean by this Simone, because you're looking dubious at me. I'm

Simone: still extremely dubious. Yeah, nothing, nothing is changing still for me.

Simone: Nothing's

Malcolm: different. Okay. So if it turns out that a person's memories, for example, and this is, I think, what they mean when they, they say reincarnation if you're just reincarnating a soul, but nothing is, is carried between the two individuals. But nothing is. Okay, but that's not what we're talking about here.

Malcolm: We're talking about the people who think they can remember past lives and stuff like that. Because, this other form of reincarnation So this

Simone: is a form of reincarnation where you remember your past life, because, I'm sorry, only hippie to be people, and my Right, but I'm

Malcolm: saying, suppose scientist proves this, because it is something you

Simone: could prove, okay?

Simone: Okay. And then the, what, in that everyone is capable of remembering their past

Malcolm: lives? Doesn't [00:03:00] need to be everyone. Only needs to be one person concretely proven. If you prove just a single person, what have you proven? What you've proven is that some aspect of some human's identity, so it could turn out that not all humans have these souls, but it turns out that at least some humans have these souls or whatever you want to call them, some sort of like metaphysical imprint of their identity.

Malcolm: And this Dalai Lama.

Simone: Right. And I mean, you could argue that they've, they've proven it. I mean,

Malcolm: he picks out. I don't think that they've proven it at

Simone: all. Key things. I don't know. I mean, they would argue that they have if the person, they had

Malcolm: scientists would be going there and researching it, like you understand how much this would change every aspect.

Malcolm: By their

Simone: standards of evidence though. I mean, I think that previous Dalai Lamas have. You're acting like

Malcolm: ESP research departments didn't used to exist. They

Simone: still do. [00:04:00] There's still a lot of people researching this. I'm just saying their standards actually are a little different than

Malcolm: ours. There's people researching this.

Malcolm: No one has concretely proven ghosts exist. No one has concretely proven ESP exists. If they did, and, and Simone, YouTube habits. Okay. Yeah. I am not somebody who hasn't found this evidence because I'm not looking. Yeah. I know.

Simone: Literally. Well, see, I think the truth is out there, but the truth is not accepted per our standards of truth.

Malcolm: Literally about a quarter of all the information I consume is about cryptids or ghosts or ESP or so I'm out there consuming, but none of the information, none of the research into this that has been done has been of a standard where I was convinced. That it was accurate. Okay. Right. It, it changed my beliefs, but I am very, very open to having my beliefs changed on this subject if I felt that there was compelling evidence.

Malcolm: Okay. But if that evidence was true, like if it turned out that some aspect of an individual can be [00:05:00] transferred between individuals without like direct informational transfer between those individuals in the material plane, what that would mean is there is some aspect of, of some human's identity. Again, it could be that not everyone has a soul in some human's identity that is extra material.

Malcolm: Okay? If that's true, then that's the aspect of the human identity that is experiencing one, consciousness, two, our emotions, like pain, suffering, everything like that, right? And if that's true, What that could mean is that pain and suffering or happiness, you know, when, when we dismiss those things, right?

Malcolm: The reason I most commonly dismiss them is I believe that the reason that we feel them is just serendipitously our ancestors who had those sociological predilections and more surviving offspring. This would imply that the reason we feel those things is something else. It's something almost supernatural?

Malcolm: No,

Simone: where is that implication? That [00:06:00] implication is nowhere. It would still make perfect sense that those signals are felt because it can ensure survival and a more effective go for that time. You know, it'll help you have a more successful... round of play for that particular life so why would you not feel those stimuli in a way that helps you avoid the things that will shorten your play and reduce your

Malcolm: effectiveness?

Malcolm: So you saw this, your assumption would be that our souls evolved along with our bodies, and that they are like a tool that our bodies are using?

Simone: Yeah, either, either they're Some weird emergent property or thing that has has formed as a product of the you know, the, the way we. We developed just some weird quantum energy thing with other universes that we don't quite understand like the way that that our biological matter interacts with other dimensions or something right like I whatever you know maybe that's happening but that doesn't change the fact that we [00:07:00] evolved to do what we did and it also doesn't changed functionally how we live our lives I mean first maybe not everyone has one of these things that transfers to, maybe you transfer into a goat.

Simone: So what are you going to do about that? Or maybe you transfer into someone who doesn't have the same resources that they did before. And of course the memory transfer is imperfect in so far as I can tell the vast majority of cases. So a lot of it doesn't matter. Like if you, if you do transfer from one life to the next, you're probably going to then maintain the same objective function, but also you can't like plan for that.

Simone: It's not you can, I mean, I guess theoretically you could try to, in one life, accumulate a lot of wealth and then leave a cache that is hidden, like a, you know, buried treasure and then go get that cache to have a head start on your next life and build cumulative advantage. I'm

Malcolm: surprised that people who believe in reincarnation haven't been doing that.

Malcolm: Yeah, if you believe you have multiple lives, wouldn't you?

Simone: Yeah. But what if you're, you know, what if the vast majority of time, cause you know, many versions of reincarnation involve being born into well, maybe you'll end up a cow. Maybe you'll end up a worm. Maybe you'll end up, you know, so there's all [00:08:00] these generations who knows, like how many generations, how many rolls of the dice it takes for you to get into a human body.

Simone: And then how many rolls of the dice did it take you to. Get into a human body that is even empowered to be able to travel somewhere to get to the cash. I mean, we are in the top 1%. This is, this is

Malcolm: what I love about your thesis is it actually makes sense and it does allow you to not change much of your world perspective.

Malcolm: Well, you wouldn't. You have to think practically about what it means. Really interesting. I don't know if you. of the full implications of this theory that you've

Simone: crafted. Well, it doesn't matter, does it? Because functionally not much changes. So it's

Malcolm: just, you know, it does matter because you're assuming that the soul works in a very specific way.

Malcolm: So what, and it's not the way. Anyone I have ever heard, like you just dropped this really big idea that I have literally never heard in my entire life. I mean, I'm sure that somebody has probably thought of it before, but essentially what you are assuming is that the soul is [00:09:00] like a mechanistic entity.

Malcolm: So by that, what I mean, Is it exists in the same way that material things exist, but we just haven't discovered the properties through which it exists yet.

Simone: Well, no, no, no. I mean, I'm not saying I'm, I'm, I'm interpreting the soul through a materialistic lens because I am a pragmatist. So I care about what materialistically implications of the soul are.

Simone: The

Malcolm: point I was getting to was, was the interesting part of what you, you said is that evolution. Picked up this other type of material, you know, we'll call it like the soul or something like that. They may have existed in some sort of primordial form before evolution

Simone: got to it. It would make sense, right?

Simone: Like maybe imagine that like you have, you know, you develop at one point an antenna. And it's going to pick up some weird radio signals that were already there. Like at one point my I don't know how this happened, but my wired earbuds picked up walkie talkie signal from construction workers [00:10:00] down the street, like it is entirely possible to have one thing.

Simone: be able to pick up on another thing due to But you're not

Malcolm: even really postulating that it accidentally picked it up. What you're postulating is that evolution grabbed it and used it because through using it, it was able to increase the number of surviving meat puppets that existed.

Simone: Yeah, that would make sense, but that's not necessary.

Simone: It could be that they just Pick up, you know, the, the, the human biology, maybe, maybe all animal biology. That

Malcolm: sufficiently advanced biological systems pick up this ethereal component.

Simone: Yeah, well, or no, not even, it doesn't have to be ethereal. It could be just like, there's another, you know. Weird wavelength of another parallel universe.

Simone: It's my

Malcolm: ethereal outside of our

Simone: reality. Okay, yeah, yeah. That just sounds a little too spiritual for me. I'm feeling triggered, Malcolm. I'm not safe with that kind of word. So, if you don't mind. You

Malcolm: are a goof, and I love it. No, no, no, no. I'm [00:11:00] liking it. This is different to the conclusion I came to.

Malcolm: I immediately assumed that it must mean that there's actually weight to our emotional states. Because our emotional... Well, so... Nice try. Right now, when I ask who am I, right? I am, to some extent, a combination. Of my brain, like the neurochemical processes of my brain and my body. And if there was this other thing that is potentially even more me than the material part of me, right?

Malcolm: Then I would need to assign special weight to it when I'm determining what has value in the universe.

Simone: No more than if you had another pair of arms. It's not like another pair of arms gets, you know, precedence on be

Malcolm: like a No, I think it would be very different from another pair of arms. So here's why I think it would be different.

Malcolm: And I love videos where we disagree because I think they're probably much more interesting to our audience. We'll call this one like fight Malcolm and Simone. Fight. So, so it would be like saying that it turns out our brain isn't the center of cognitive processing. Because what [00:12:00] it would mean is that to some extent, cognitive processing is happening in parallel, not just within our brains and

Simone: I disagree.

Simone: I disagree. Because what, what I'm getting the impression is that the soul essentially is something like it's, it, it's like a, a hard drive that is collecting that, or like a piece of paper that is collecting grit that is somehow getting transferred from one entity to to another. Oh, so you would see it more as like residue?

Simone: Yeah. It's it's just, yeah. Accumulated UE

Malcolm: residue, which can be picked up. Okay. And that would also explain like ghosts, right? Mm-hmm. . So like it goes for a real too, they could work with this conception of a, a soul. Sure. And that it's ethereal residue. Which transfers either can become stuck in a physical location or transfers between bodies between generations.

Malcolm: And if that was true, then it would largely be functioning in two ways. . Either the ethereal residue exists in a discrete format in which it's one person, one soul. You know, these, these things [00:13:00] are in discrete units and like my one soul goes to a worm or something like that, potentially, or maybe they only stay within species, right?

Malcolm: But regardless, my one soul then goes to the next person, right? Or they exist as more like a fluid that gets poured back into the ethereal realm after a person

Simone: dies. Ectoplasm, if you will. I'm getting so triggered by all

Malcolm: this. So by that, what I mean, is when I die, my soul might become like 10% of 10 other people's identity instead of, you know, like dropping like a fluid with like food coloring back into the ocean or something.

Simone: Oh yeah. Well, that could help to explain why some people would remember their past, whereas others wouldn't because most like most souls get mixed up collectively to the point of abstraction. Or maybe others would get kind of like, just not get mixed up for some reason. Yeah.

Malcolm: So I just came up with a great thesis that can make a lot of the holes in the multiple life things make more sense.

Malcolm: So one of the biggest [00:14:00] problems with people who believe in multiple lives is they're very likely to believe that they were really important people in the past. No, it's true. You just, you just hear this constantly.

Simone: But I know, my my, my, my paternal grandmother just thought that she was a particular type of Native American.

Simone: She had extremely distinct memories that she believed that she had. So, no, not everyone. I think a lot of people just Not everyone, but a

Malcolm: lot of people. I'd say that, that More often than not, they believe they were important people in some way, you know. And on top of that, not everyone believes not everyone has these experiences, right?

Malcolm: If this was a universal experience that you had lived multiple lives, then just everyone would be like, Oh yeah, I know that, because I have that experience, right? So what if it turns out... That actually not everyone has a soul. Only important people have souls. We're sort of like, there's this theory, you know there's this theory that we are in a algorithmically, like we, our reality is a computer program?

Malcolm: Yeah. And some people believe that [00:15:00] there's an iteration of the theory that yes, our reality is a computer program, but it's not a fully function, like not everyone is fully programmed. Most people are just literal NPCs and there's maybe 100 to 10, 000 people in the world who are fully programmed.

Malcolm: It's similar to that theory, which is to say that not everyone has one of these souls, just the important people who change world history. And so what that means is that would explain why people keep getting these important souls because only important people have souls. We aren't important enough to get one of these souls, and it would also explain why so many people might have Cleopatra reborn, because her soul might actually exist in portions within multiple people's bodies.

Simone: Oh, interesting. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Malcolm: So, that would explain why multiple people might Simultaneously be claiming to be the same people living

Simone: multiple lives. Yeah. Because there's no, no reason why this kind of material would have to be like one to one transferred. [00:16:00] Yeah.

Malcolm: Well, and it may, and it may be like, okay, so you would have a small amount.

Malcolm: Oh, he's here. Edward Dutton is outside our house right now. Oh,

Simone: well, it was great talking with you, Malcolm, but we have to go. I actually

Malcolm: really like this one. I'd love to continue it at some point.

Simone: All right. I love you, Malcolm.

Malcolm: Thanks for this.

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