Kamma in Bohm's Interpertation

This post is a sequel to previous two posts, the Karma-Quantum Interpretations-Bell's inequality, and Physics needs Buddhism. I am still reading the book "Time Reborn" by Lee Smolin and the second part is quite heavy in terms of food for thought, so I decide to just run the articles as I read along.

I'm reading now about Smolin's preference to the hidden variable interpretations of quantum physics, lead by de Broglie and Bohm. The reason behind the preference of this as the more fundamental explanation to quantum theory is to do away with the inherent randomness of quantum physics which violates the principle of sufficient reason. The principle of sufficient reason means that any reasonable questions should have an answer. Intrinsic randomness (without cause) is the ultimate bummer to this principle, there is no reason for the result to happen, it just happened to happen! Recall in the Karma-Quantum article, I mentioned that from a superficial outlook, karma in Buddhism which rejects no causes for things to happen and super-determinism seems to favour the hidden variable theories. This article explores this line of thinking further.

Smolin posits his own version of the hidden variable versions, that is real-ensemble interpretation. The usual ensemble interpretations involves interaction of single systems with imaginary group of ensembles and the usual sampling from statistics explains the randomness in quantum theory. Smolin modified this by rejecting the interaction with imaginary groups (which violates the principle that nothing outside the universe can act on something inside it), and says that the group that quantum systems compare to does not have to be local. Now it has been proven that local hidden variable are not possible in nature, so all hidden variable theories includes non-locality. Thus, the example of an electron would have it's copy of ensembles far away, but the universe has many of those identical fundamental particles. However, when it comes to macroscopic things like humans, we are unique, therefore there is no exact copy elsewhere in the universe and thus the quantum effects disappears.

Before he presents his theory, he speculates that the hidden variable inside quantum systems that determine the results of measurements are inherently linked to everything else in the universe via the principle of maximum freedom. This principle is that quantum physics maximizes the amount of information you need per choice. It describes the universe which can have probabilistic predictions of how systems behave where the systems has as much freedom from determinism as any physical system described by probabilities can have. So in the sense that quantum systems are free, they are maximally free. It means that the properties of each particle in the universe are maximally tied up in hidden relations to the universe as a whole. (Sorry a lot of direct copying of his exact words, I find it hard to paraphrase and still mean the same thing.)

Now onto the creative part. If we use a naive approach and directly input kamma as part of the mechanism or relations that describes these relational hidden variables, how can that help in the research in Physics from the interaction between Physics and Buddhism?

So having just thought about it, here is my naive conception of how this might work out. Below are just an overall plan, with no details of the theory, just an outline of the direction of research to work out for the idea.

From the previous post of Physics needs Buddhism, I had argued for the inclusion of mind-matter interaction relations to be described in Physics before any theory can claim the title of theory of everything. Kamma can enter into Physics via the hidden variables version of quantum physics.

First we need to know how the physical world affects and influences the mental world. This ranges from studies of biology, neuroscience (how the physical world affects the brain which in turns affects the mind), to psychology and a bit of Buddhism. Most importantly perhaps is if Penrose's speculation that the mind is quantum mechanical, is true, then this would be a major contribution.

Second, is how the mind takes the data input from the physical world and processes it to eventually translate it to further actions (kamma). This is the part where Buddhism can help fill in the blank, because it is how mind interacts with mind itself. The dependent origination and Abhidhamma explained in the previous post exactly addresses this gap.

Third is to see how action (kamma) translates to changes in the hidden variables. This is one of the mind-matter interactions which is a variable theory to be discovered and researched. Some complications may present itself here. Kamma is not only physical actions and speech, it includes mental actions. How does this translates to hidden variables is anyone's guess. However, one can speculate that mental thoughts is correlated with electrical signals in the brain, and thus can investigate how that affects the hidden variables (maybe mainly around the brain) was modified from there and how it changes a human.

Conventional kamma action theory from Buddhism can help in a rough guide here. Conventionally, what we put out in the world, goes around and changes it a little, so that it is no surprise if it comes back and hit you one day. That's social kamma. Also there is psychological kamma, which is just like the book the Secret. What you think about, you are getting prepared for it, eventually, when the opportunity comes, you'll get it naturally as much easier as compared to you not having thinking about it. But the most mysterious part of kamma is the one that just says, doer of good deeds will get their results when the conditions are right and vice versa, even onto the next life and beyond. This kinds of posits an imaginary account for kamma which the individual carries around all the time until the results ripen. In fact, Mahayana Buddhism has the eight consciousness just for this, the storehouse of kamma. The potential of relational hidden variable theory is to put this imaginary account onto the physical world or at least provides a relationship to the physical world which somehow puts the theory of how kamma works on a more rational (possibly predictable) and less mysterious track. But to complete this theory, we need one more element.

Fourth, we need to see how the hidden variables that was modified by kamma interacts with other hidden variables and comes back to hit the doer of the kamma. And this would link back to the first knowledge above, completing this chain. This might be the hardest part to figure out as it is purely a physical phenomena on unobservable quantities. The theories constructed on this part must be tested together with theories constructed for the third part and best estimates from the first part to fit in with the second part (which we currently take that Buddhism works well to describe the theory for the mind) to reproduce the description of how kamma works in Buddhism (which for this case we assume to be true and the goal of the research). So for the best case scenario that the first knowledge can be obtained from neuroscience quite well, we have four parts of a theory, 2 known, 2 unknown to equate to 1 description of kamma, which is known. We have one degree of freedom here.

I would suggest that this degree of freedom be modified to test against predictions from this theory on supernatural observations. No, I am not talking about fictional accounts of ghosts and such beings, nor claims that has been proven to be fake. We should only consider cases where it has been well documented, long standing cases which cannot be easily explained away by conventional means. And also employ experienced frauds, skeptics and neutral scientists to decide the cases to consider.

Another feature is that I believe the theory of how rebirth happens might have to be written down (or better yet, predicted from the previous theory) somewhere to guide the construction of the theory. Then the theory can be modified to fit accounts of cases of rebirth claims that has been verified which numbers thousands of data. Using this, we might be able to produce the physics of supernatural beings, predict the workings of kamma and rebirth on a person and so on to construct experiments and further test the theories.

One example of how kamma might work is that each time an action is done, it shifts the hidden variable around the doer a bit. However, habitual kamma can accumulate the shift to be significant so that it comes back to the doer in a heavy force. Being non-local, kamma may also not be stored around the doer, but actually affects the whole universe.

Another power of this description is that the concern raised by Sean Carroll here about modifying the equations of physics to fit in interactions between mind and matter is addressed. Physics at everyday scales need not change, we only need the seemingly random results of quantum measurements. We need them because they are actually a complicated play of mind-matter interactions.

Now, I hope that this article shows that the dialogue between Buddhism and Physics can drive a certain direction of research in Physics. If you are uncomfortable with thinking that Buddhism as a religion, think of the statements from Buddhism as working hypothesis or conjectures by learned ancient scholars, or one wise dude (the Buddha) who has no intention to convert anyone, just to discover the truth to live a happier life and share it.

There are just two warnings for those who wants to pursue this. First, the relational hidden variable theories may not be correct. This is one fair warning, but it never stopped theoretical physicists before. Second, The Buddha did put up a warning that to contemplate the exact workings of kamma may make one go insane. But he also said that about thinking of the origin of the universe, and this didn't stop cosmologists from discovering almost everything right down to just after the Big Bang. It might be that these statements were true to the people of that time. (Imagine them having to learn/discover modern physics first before able to start to think about these questions.) We might have some advantages due to the advances in theory made in the past. Yet, to be fair, we still do not know the origin of the universe for sure yet, thus, it might be possible that we may also not ever be able to complete the plan outlined above to complete satisfaction.

Anyway, once again I apologize for the large number of assumed knowledge of Physics and Buddhism on the part of the reader and my laziness to cite things I mentioned here. I'll do it next time.

The End of Time, non-self and Nibbana

Julian Barbour wrote a popular science book, advocating his idea of a particular interpretation of the Wheeler-DeWitt equation. The name of the book is called the end of time. The Wheeler-DeWitt equation is an early attempt to combine both quantum and gravity. The search for quantum gravity still continues today, possibly because of one problem that the Wheeler-DeWitt equation posed: there is no time in it.

Having read the book, I had saw many parallels in Buddhism that matches the description by Barbour. This article is an attempt to list down the parallels. However closely Barbour's interpretation might appear to fit in with Buddhism, I do not claim that Buddhism requires this interpretation to be the true picture of reality. This is because I have neither the empirical realisation of the truths claimed in Buddhism nor do we have the experimental data to test Barbour's interpretation. The emphasis on empirical data is in accordance to Buddhism's spirit that the ultimate arbiter of what is right is empirical experience. However philosophically, it can be said that Buddhism supports certain parts of Barbour's interpretation. I invite the readers to form their own conclusion.

I shall describe The End if Time in brief and draw the parallels with Buddhist concepts along the way when suitable. I've found that a dialogue form is nicer to read, and easier to write. So here's P, a physicist and B, a Buddhist who are knowledgeable in their area but also knows the other side well too.

P: Time does not exist in the ultimate sense. That is the hypothesis by Barbour. Time is only an agreement to track changes we see in the world with another thing that changes that are more regular and accurate. In a universe with only one particle, like an electron, there is no time, because there is nothing else to keep track of any change.

B: Indeed, for Buddhist there is only the present moment, the past is gone, the future has not come.

P: Good, but that's not what Barbour's picture is. Now Barbour invites us to image a universe with three particles only. It is possible to track their evolution by taking successive "instants of time" or pictures, with only these pictures, one can rearrange the order of them and extrapolate it's path in the past and to the future. To those three particles, what is intuitive is not the Newtonian absolute space and time we develop having lived on earth, but what is real to them is only the relative configurations of their positions. Each moment in time is just a representation of these relative configurations. The collection of all possible configurations is called Platonia, it represents all that can be. These moments in time are all also called Nows, if we add in more particles until we put in the whole universe, then Platonia becomes the space of all possible configurations.

B: That sounds more like everything exist, a doctrine of the Sarvastivada school of Buddhism.  He who affirms the existence of the dharmas of the three time periods [past, present and future] is held to be a Sarvastivadin. It might be that the Sarvastivada school acknowledged that time travel as General Relativity allows is possible but the other schools do not bother with it.

P: Time travel in Barbour's picture is possible. A point in Spacetime in General Relativity represents an event, a point in Platonia represents a Now. So in general Relativity, time travel is a closed loop around a point, but this is pointless in Platonia, the time travellers only has memory of when they came from if the Now they occupy is close but not exactly the same as Now they wanted to go back to. Barbour postulate that if time travel is possible, then it has very low probability of being realised. Of course time here is conventional speech, ultimately time does not exist. You might think that time is still needed to talk about progressions from one Now to another in Platonia. However, it is possible to attribute this persistent illusion of time and motion as just memories and histories. Barbour calls things that records the past as time capsules. We only remember and infer the existence of a time before us in the Now. It is because of time capsules that we were made to believe that we travelled in time from the past to the future when in fact, there is no travelling, no motion. Just that the person in each Now are aware of the experience of their Now including time capsules. Thus each person in their Now thinks that they came from someone from another Now (in their so-called past). 

B: Memory, it's part of the aggregate of perception in Buddhism. In Buddhism, we believe that ultimately a person is made up of 5 aggregates, of form (anything material), sensation, perception, mental factors, and consciousness. Barbour's picture if imported into Buddhist terms, would have Platonia including not just the physical world, but also at least the perception aggregate too.

P: It should include all 5 aggregate to be worthy to be called Platonia.

B: Doubtless. However, the thing is, in Buddhism we recognize 4 elements that makes up the form: Earth which represents solidity, water which represents cohesion, fire which represents heat and air which represents motion. And then there is space too. What is curious is that Barbour denies the air element. I don't think it would fit in with Buddhism anyway.

P: But don't forget, the 4 elements are meditation teachings on what humans can directly sense, not necessarily it is the fundamental way the world works.

B: It's debatable, but anyway, how do you fit in entropy here then?

P: The distinction between the past and future is only because the smaller volume and thus smaller entropy Nows are correlated with the past, while the Nows with bigger volume, are the ones with higher entropy and they also has the ability to contain time capsules that describes other Nows with lower entropy, thus they are perceived as the future.

B: I still find it hard to believe that there's a me out there in Platonia doing everything else.

P: Not all Nows are created equal. The Nows that life are breathe into are the most frequent one. This can be predicted by the wave function of the universe which is given by solving the Wheeler-DeWitt equation for the whole universe. The way to solve it is to look at the structure of all that is possible and then let them cancel each other out until you get the most likely path. It's inspired by the Hamiltonian mechanics principle of least action. Since the equation applies to the whole of Platonia which is timeless, there is no time in the equation. So our existence, what we do now, is a sum of all possible us.

B: That smacks of the lack of free will. Of fatalism. Back in Buddha's time there was many other teachers teaching many other philosophy, one of which is fatalism, Makkhali Gosala. He taught that there is no point in doing good or striving, when a person's life cycle is finished, he will automatically attain to the end of rebirth. In Buddhism, a person has the habits due to unmindfulness, which leads them to be quite predictable as a biological, social, psychological machine. Yet, if we are mindful, we can choose not to be angry when the situation presents itself. We can exercise free will to change the course of our life. It is because of free will that people can choose to follow the path of Buddhism to enlightenment.

P: Barbour calls his picture as beyond free will and beautiful. You are what you are (Now) because you are what you are (in the whole of Platonia). There's also multiple instants, so instead of one possibility, if there is choices, the wave function can split up and follow those possibilities. However, each person only sees their possibility when the choice is made. I use person here as a conventional speech, ultimately each Now has a different person in it. There's no one person who travelled from one Now to another. There's just memory of each person thinking that they did.

B: This no self thing rings well with Buddhism. The parallels I can see with Buddhism is that a central concept in Buddhism is that we are deluded into thinking that something are permanent, happy and have a self. Whereas the ultimate view if we have a clear mind is to realize that all conditioned phenomenon are impermanent, unsatisfactory and thus doesn't have an independent existence as a self. This is usually summarized as non self or emptiness, empty of inherent existence. The reasoning is that all things depend on one another, for example, the fact that you are reading this is conditioned by you having the time, energy, and relatively healthy. It is also only possible if I wrote it in the first place, and it is published. And all these can be traced back to the conditions that allow humans to exist, the conditions to form earth, the sun and indeed the whole universe. So nothing ever exist independently of other things. 

P: On the surface, Barbour's picture seemed to agree with the non self of Buddhism. Yet within each Nows, Barbour allows for independently existing entities that are not subjected to causation because there is no time for cause to become effect. There are just all the possible configurations of the world including the Now in which a person experiencing the effect remembers another Now in which he or she had done a cause for the effect. There is another Now in which the memory is different but the likelihood of that inconsistent history to happen is low. Or at least Barbour claim that it should be low if we ever manage to solve the Wheeler-DeWitt equation to that detail. Herein lies that falsibility of his theory or interpretation. 

B: Thus these independent Nows are against the spirit of non-self. Yet, one can also argue that the Nows are not entirely independent, but are bound somewhat by the Wheeler-DeWitt equation which solution in turn depends on the structure of each Nows. 

P: Wow, we might need a philosopher in here to sort out our mess.

B: One last thing, another parallel concept I see is Nibbana. You kept on using conventional and ultimate view. In Buddhism we have that too. The conventional view is that the world has time, everything changes, with it, it has no self, and is suffering. However, in Nibbana, there is no time, no impermanence, still no self and no suffering. Two out of three makes Nibbana sounds like Platonia.

P: Indeed, if Barbour is right, there's nothing really to worry about death. No one died, it's just one Nows of the Platonia, memories and so on. Maybe realizing Platonia is equal to realizing Nibbana.

B: Well, some Mahayana teachings has this thing that Samsara (the conventional world, the rounds of rebirth) is the same as Nibbana, once you realize this, you realize Nibbana. These looks nice, but I doubt it, first off, Physics has practically no idea how to quantify suffering or unsatisfaction, much less the cause and the way out of it. Buddhism however is quite expert in it.

P: Sounds to me like we should construct the mathematics of suffering to introduce to the Physics world.

B: Anyway let's have a warp. A recap of the parallels and differences.

Barbour's Picture	Buddhism
Time does not exist in the ultimate sense	The past is gone the future has not come
Nows	All exist doctrine
No one passed from one Now to another	Non-self
Platonia	Nibbana?
"Beyond free will"	Free will is important, exercised when mindful.
Denies motion	Form has the air element
Independently existing Nows?	Against the spirit of non-self.

P: So we have about 4 parallels, and 3 differences. Well, that's certainly strange, when I first read the book, I thought that it would fit in quite well. 

B: Well, that's Physics and Buddhism for you folks. No real answer, I'm going back to practicing for enlightenment. See ya! 

Higgs boson vs Rebirth

I've recently attended a talk on "Investigating Effects of Past Life on Present Life". The speakers include Ajahn Brahm and Peter Mack. Ajahn Brahm in particular had mentioned that the Higgs boson which recently had a Nobel Prize to its name have less evidence for it than rebirth, he has a Physics degree. 

For the uninitiated, Higgs boson is the last entry in the Standard Model of particle physics, the particle that explains how the rest of the fundamental particles acquire their mass. The Standard Model is used to build up subatomic particles, which leads to atoms, molecules, cells, living beings, the earth, and everything in the universe (not counting dark matter and dark energy). 

Rebirth is saying that after death, if one still have ignorance and craving, there would be a birth again, depending on the kamma (actions) of the individual, the form of the rebirth maybe in human or in other realms (most obvious to us, animal realms). So after death, the kamma and ignorance (including memories, some personalities) are transferred from one body to another. 

Well, seeing that I have a Physics degree too and I'm a Buddhist too, I decided to investigate this.
http://cms.web.cern.ch/news/observation-new-particle-mass-125-gev http://www.atlas.ch/news/2012/latest-results-from-higgs-search.html
From these two websites, the way to find Higgs, an elementary particle is to find the evidence of the things it decays into. If there are events above and beyond the known background noise, then above a certain threshold (which is 5 sigma, or one in a million chance that this is due to the background noise) then the discovery can be claimed. The fact that two different detectors did it without sharing data to each other makes it all the more certain that this is not a fluke, it's real. The way that they know how to find these events is also to gather a lot of data, throw out the useless ones that doesn't fit into the model for detection, and then choose the ones that gives the signal. In a sense, even through it is just two different laboratory announcing the same discovery, the discovery was made by at least a thousand events on each energy levels (or a few hundred events above the background noise) selected among many more collisions events per second, running 24 hours daily in the LHC back in 2012.

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S037026931200857X This paper detailed how some events are only predicted and expected to be observed to have about 100 or less events per energy level for the distribution. Regardless of the actual no. of events, the statistical analysis would confidently suggests that the Higgs is very unlikely to be a fluke and thus verified.

Now let's see the evidences for rebirth.

It would be instructive to see a case for rebirth first. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sT0B4V_kowo

James, a little boy in an American Christian family knows a lot about planes have nightmares about crashing in planes. He said that he was fighting the Japanese in World War Two in a boat called Natoma, as in a previous life where his name was James. There was no normal way for the boy to learn about planes as he was looking at children programmes. Investigation by the skeptical parents and Carol Bowman eventually revealed that there was a pilot named James in the mission in world war two, the plane crashed, and the pilot died. They eventually found previous life James' sister and information no one else could have known were shared. They also had a closing burial for the previous James in the middle of the sea where the boy James broke down and cried. 

http://www.medicine.virginia.edu/clinical/departments/psychiatry/sections/cspp/dops/dr.-stevensons-publications/STE17.pdf
This paper by Ian Stevenson on cases on reported rebirth by American children gave an indication on how the cases for rebirth are investigated. It is mainly through interviews, and cases are considered solved only if there are verifiable names or details about the previous lives that could be found in the real world but would not be possible for the child to learn in any normal way possible (abnormal way would include telepathy, the hypothesis about rebirth is that the knowledge came from memory of the past life). Not only they have to provide the verifiable details many of them are around 20+ details, those details has to confirm with what is found in reality for the cases to be solved.

The paper, published in 1983 said that there was over 2000 cases of such types around the world, assuming half of them are from India, which has 77% of solved cases, it means 770 cases of solid rebirth data to support the theory of rebirth. However, we need to think if we only need one data to show that the worldview of "there is no rebirth" to be false and untenable or do we need more? Typically, more is better, as statistics can be used to determine if the case is by chance or a fluke. However, it is hard to imagine how one can fluke a solid case of rebirth where according to this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z-1BvpDZwiw and various other sources, there are cases where the family is not a believer of rebirth, there are cases where the children and family do not stand to gain by giving such data to the researchers and there are cases where it is impossible to explain the particular knowledge to be gained by the children other than rebirth. The knowledge can be the habits of the previous lives, the exact hiding place for a secret stash of cash, the shortcuts and knowledge of roads far from the main street, the knowledge of how things were arranged when they were alive in the previous life, and most of all, the emotional connection that cannot be faked between the previous family and the new child.

Criticism of such research can be that rebirth cases are mainly by one person: Ian stevenson, what if he decided to fake all his data? http://monkeywah.typepad.com/paranormalia/past-life-research.html this website shows a lists of past life researchers: Jürgen Keil, Ian Stevenson, Jim B. Tucker, Satwant K. Pasricha, Erlendur Haraldsson, Majd Abu-Izzeddin, Titus Rivas, Antonia Mills, and many others. This list itself has more support than Higgs boson in terms of no. of independent observation of data of rebirth.

In addition, many books has been published for the public over the years on this type of research: http://letusponder.hubpages.com/hub/10-books-about-Reincarnation this website lists 10 books.

Looking at the evidences part, I would say that rebirth has a stronger case for it if only because the evidences and research for it has been around longer than the Higgs, and there are many more independent researchers on the same topic.

The main difference between these two is obviously public opinion which is largely shaped by opinions of scientists and certain religions. http://www.comparativereligion.com/reincarnation3.html#reincarnation3 in this website for example, the author had looked at evidences for rebirth, even in early Christianity, yet reject it because of philosophical grounds (that if rebirth and kamma are true, there would be no beginning and no end, obviously the author has not come across the 4 Noble Truths) and attachment to certain words in the current Bible. The bias in public opinion is not only fueled by attachments to current forms of certain religion (the YOLO, you only live once, meme popular nowadays can also count as part of a belief system) it is also fueled by scientific dogmatism.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JKHUaNAxsTg Ajahn brahm also mentioned this, the video has actually been removed from the official TEDx website. In this video, it says that the worldview of most people are that science has explained everything we know about the world and the rest is just details to be filled in. This is a belief system. He said that there are 10 dogmas we take for granted from this belief system, none of them stand up very well under close observation.

1. Nature is mechanical, we are machines,
2. Nature is unconscious, we are just an illusion of consciousness since we are made up of atoms, 
3. Laws of Nature are fixed and the same,
4. The total amount of energy and matter is always the same,
5. There are no purposes in nature, evolution, etc...
6. Biological heredity is material,
7. Memories are stored in the brain, via connections,
8. Mind is inside our heads,
9. Psychic phenomena like telepathy are impossible, 
10. Mechanistic medicine is the only one that really works, the others maybe placebo effect etc..

These are the default worldview of "educated" people. The speaker, a scientists says that we overlook data that suggests that the constants of nature change (measurements of these changes over time and are averaged out, even these changes over the years, but it's a constant! So nobody bothered to investigate why.), or that our minds extends out of our brains (we can feel if people stare at us from behind). 

 

Alan Wallace in his book Hidden Dimensions, argued that currently the investigation of science is limited by these scientific dogma, not allowing proper research into phenomenons produced by the mind and insisting on unsuitable scientific method to investigate such a different phenomena. In the science of contemplation, he says, one should not demand that all datas to be objective, but subjective, personal experiences of an individual should be a valid data point as a foundation to begin research into the phenomena of the mind. When we investigate biology, we don't use the language of particle physics. 

 

I believe that due to this widespread delusion that scientific dogmatism is scientific method, support and acceptance for rebirth is not there even when the data in this field has been established for so long. Contrasting it with the science which has Albert Einstein, produced quantum physics, the basis of our electronic appliances, atom bombs, Physics has it easy to have the Higgs receiving so much more recognition by the public even before the scientists themselves are completely sure they have discovered it. 

 

Stephen Hawking and Leonard Mlodinow in their book The Grand Design said that a good model is

1. elegant
2. contains few arbitrary or adjustable elements
3. Agrees with and explains all existing observations
4. Makes detailed predictions about future observations that can disprove or falsify the model if they are not borne out.

In this sense, comparing two competing hypothesis of "there is rebirth" and "there's no rebirth, all evidences are coincidences or a conspiracy or anything else", we can see the hypothesis that satisfies the criterias above. 

 

1. Rebirth, having a simple, well defined way of how it happens (via kamma) and transmission of kamma and ignorance (includes memory here) from one body to another seems much more elegant compared to having to utilize all sorts of different explanations depending on the weakness of a particular case of rebirth. 
2. Rebirth contains far less arbitrary or adjustable elements (when combined with kamma) to explain why a person is borned poor or rich etc....as compared to the simple luck element which is just a summary of many different complicated variables suggested by the no rebirth theory. Besides, having to use different explanations to refute each individual cases, the no rebirth theory would have much more adjustable elements compared to rebirth theory.
3. Rebirth theory can explain all data suggesting rebirth, no rebirth theory would have a very hard time to explain most of them, in some cases, it is impossible to explain the case without assuming rebirth or very performed telepathy/ miracle. The alternative explanations to rebirth is also not as elegant or they have more adjustable elements.
4. The alternative hypothesis of no rebirth cannot predict any possible thing to verify or falsify. In contrast, there is this prediction system amongst the Tulkus in Tibet where a great master would leave a prediction letter of where to find his or her next life after his passing away.  http://www.dalailama.com/biography/reincarnation

Thus having read all these, I hope that you would leave behind your scientific dogmatism, use an open and critical mind to investigate the links above, especially on evidences of rebirth to see if you're really unbiased, really scientific, what's your honest conclusion?

For me, it's as Ajahn Brahm said, rebirth has already been proven. To avoid this to be a dogma, please do your own research and read up. I did mine. Here's another case to get you started: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GCcmr6UeNSY