Re: Genderless societies [was Re: kathryn's comments]

From: Robert J. Bradbury (bradbury@aeiveos.com)
Date: Mon Mar 13 2000 - 08:16:00 MST


**** Byegones for the delayed response and/or if previously posted ****
>>> Date: Sat, 18 Sep 1999 03:15:40 -0700 (PDT) <<<<

On Fri, 17 Sep 1999, Alexander McLin wrote:

I wrote:
> >
> > Whether we can experience the contrast of diverse characteristics
> > (or postitions) simultaneously is open to question [since as other
> > threads point out we may process experiences serially.] So we
> > be stuck in the experience of one position, then another, then another
> > ad infinitum. What is the song that goes "you don't know what
> > you got till its gone..."? Maybe truer than we first think.
> > Until we get *true* parallel consciousness we are stuck with
> > perspective.
> >
>
> -when you're talking about parallel conciousness do you mean like multiple
> lodes of conciousness stemming from a single, original mentality. Perhaps
> the multiple conciousness will be of different personalities or sexuality or
> whatever.
>

When I'm conscious of my consciousness (i.e. able to grok myself;
acheiving a relative experience of enlightenment, etc.) I can
observe myself. The problem is that my thought seems single-threaded,
i.e. consciousness appears to only run on a single processor
(even though I know there is a hugh amount of stuff going on
underneath that that the attention machine is selecting from).
However, on this nice dual-cpu system that I normally work on,
I can watch the task manager profiling the system and see those
cases where both processors swing into action. I can envision the
possibility of a state where, as you point out, I might have
two complete personalities with different genders running on
separate processesors and in a "zen" state, watch both of
them operating at the same time. Now its going to get confusing
because they have to decide which one gets to control the body.
But in an uploaded state I can augment the inputs and outputs
and so have dual (or more) experiences simultaneously.

I can imagine learning how to manage this will be quite interesting.
There may be a model for this already in people with split
personalities. I believe that in some individuals that some
of the personalities can observe the others in operation but
can't intervene. In other cases the actions of the personalities
are hidden from one another. Its interesting in thinking about
this, that it seems to imply our brains normally have enough processing
capacity to handle multiple personalities but most people generally
don't have them.

Robert



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