Practical connection with past lives

According to Katja Grace on LessWrong, the Dalai Lama's search for his reincarnation actually hints at a practical idea. When someone dies, there's always a person most similar to them in personality—and Grace suggests that person should inherit everything: the objects, the advice, the specific collection of photographs they'd actually love. Right now, we give a deceased person's things to their family, who might appreciate the sentiment or resale value, but rarely the actual contents. Grace makes a personal case: she wishes she could access the life wisdom of someone just like her who'd already figured out how to function well. It's a clever thought experiment about knowledge transfer—less mysticism, more personality matching.

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