Hossenfelder has said that she is an instrumentalist with respect to the Schrodinger Equation. This is a valid position to take on this issue since no one knows what physical reality it corresponds to and there are no signs of an imminent breakthrough in the foundations of quantum mechanics to resolve the matter: in the meantime the Schrodinger equation is useful even without understanding what it describes.
That said, Hossenfelder is clearly not an instrumentalist when it comes to special relativity! And it would be nonsensical to adopt an instrumentalist stance with respect to special relativity (and I don’t think anyone had done this). For example, GPS satellites must correct for errors using special and general relativity because they are moving at high speed with respect to the surface of the earth and are further up the gravity well.
While it is true that karma and rebirth are multiply ill-defined (in the sense that a number of poorly defined Buddhist and non-Buddhist explanations exist), but they are not so ill-defined that we cannot rule out the possibility of all of them in one go along with all other religious ideas about the afterlife. In the world that we find ourselves in, there is and can be no life after death, sorry. And all “just world” theories are just world fallacies. The world is manifestly not fair.
But I think we have established that almost no one reading this will accept any refutation of karma and rebirth. It’s not a conclusion that folks here consider possible and whenever I say something like this the forum puts me on trial as a heretic. As enthusiastic as they are about the internet, most Sutta Central readers would happily throw all of science under a bus in order to cling to their magical beliefs. So this is not a forum in which to pursue such inquiries.
Whether Sabine Hossenfelder agrees or disagrees I don’t much care. I’m not looking for validation in that way. I know—from my own practice of science—what it tells us about life after death and just worlds.
When one massively oversimplifies a concept, then yes, it is very easy to explain. The problem here is that no pre-modern Buddhist ever described karma this oversimplified way way (you won’t find it in Pāli for example). Having investigated many different Buddhist karma doctrines, I think you have the wrong end of the snake.
Certainly all karma doctrines link actions (karma) with results (vipaka - from the vern √pac “to cook”). But there is always more to it that this! Because vipāka is, in turn, linked to rebirth. In other words the consequence of your actions, where action is equated with conscious intention, is rebirth according to the quality of your intentions.
So the concepts of “action” and “consequence” are not what we expect from the English words “actions have consequences” and the relation between action and consequence in Buddhism always involves supernatural forces and mythical realms (devaloka, niraya).
And yet this too is a massive oversimplification amounting to a grave misunderstanding. “Virtuous behaviour” comes in at least two distinct flavours.
For lay people it takes the form of following moral rules, and this can be seen as a form of virtue ethics. But this is aimed purely at gaining a fortunate rebirth (in which you are exposed to Dharma at an early age and have the opportunity to become a [male] monk).
But in Buddhism, virtuous behaviour has no soteriological value per se. It is instrumental to gaining a fortunate rebirth, but good karma is still karma, good karma still results in rebirth. If you want to end rebirth—the stated aim of all Buddhist religions—then you have to stop making karma all together. This is the cornerstone of your religion, my friend, not some flabby and vague moral rule-following.
For full-time Buddhists, śīla takes on a whole different meaning. In this sense we see ideas like “restraining the senses”, “guarding the gates”, “wise attention”, and so on. This is not morality at all, and certainly not a virtue ethics. Rather this is preparation for the psychological impact of intense sensory deprivation in meditation. The aim being to accustom oneself to low levels of sensory stimulation. Then, when one begins to withdraw attention from the senses one is less likely to encounter the typical mind wandering, fantasies, and hallucinations that sensory deprivation typically produces. It is the submergence of one’s sense of self that eliminates cetanā from decision making and liberates the Buddhist from from making karma and guarantees escape from rebirth.
Meaning that she won’t agree with you? LOL.
I have some other obligations so will have to go for now, but think it through. I’m interested in what you come up with 