Re: Aha! experiences

Spike Jones (spike66@ibm.net)
Tue, 20 Oct 1998 23:22:34 -0700

> Joe Jenkins wrote...I had a similar but less intense aha experiences
> concerning,
> evolution, nanotechnology, and immortality. My aha experience for
> identity was however, much more intense and long lasting. It started
> around 1988 when I found Engines of Creation and literally read it
> front to back...

joe you made some interesting comments about engines of creation. i had an insight about that as i realize that those experiences in life that hit us really hard are those experiences which we remember with intricate detail. thought experiment: what were you doing the morning you
heard that the challenger had exploded? bet you can write pages. ok, what were you doing the day before that? ya dont know, do you? the week before? month? nothing there, is there?

most of us have events in our lives like that one, that really hit us. in 1989 i was in a bookstore, books ink, in san jose, scanning over the science section when i saw a copy of engines of creation. thinking it was yet another treatise on creationism (k eric may have chosen an unfortunate title) i took it down to put where it belonged but then i started
reading. approximately 3 hours later i realized i had read most of that book standing there in the bookstore. my legs ached from standing. i recall intricate details of that morning in the bookstore, but i havent a clue what else i did that month. the mind is a curious computer, is it not?

spike