From: Jeff Davis (jrd1415@yahoo.com)
Date: Tue Jul 01 2003 - 15:30:48 MDT
--- Hal Finney <hal@finney.org> wrote:
> We can combine Lee's proposal of a machine which
> (potentially) destroys
> and re-creates your consciousness 100 times a second
> with the idea of
> evolution evolving consciousness to produce a
> horrific concept: a world
> which has evolved consciousness which works like
> Lee's machine!
>
> In this bizarre world (call it World X), animals and
> intelligent beings
> are conscious as they are in our world, but due to a
> quirk of their brain
> chemistry, their consciousness is destroyed and
> re-created 100 times a
> second. Yet this has no impact on their behavior,
> because it happens so
> quickly.
>
> Without their knowledge, slaughter and death is
> occuring on a horrendous
> scale, with every conscious being on World X dying
> 100 times a second.
>
> The terrible part is, since this does not affect
> their behavior, there
> is no reason for evolution to avoid this outcome. A
> being which has
> continuous, connected consciousness, like us, has no
> survival advantage
> over one who suffers the fate of having his
> consciousness constantly
> being destroyed. Therefore there is a substantial
> chance that worlds
> where consciousness evolves may indeed be just like
> World X. Thank
> goodness that we were one of the lucky worlds!
>
> In fact, I just had a horrifying thought... too
> terrible to share with
> others... about our own world. I shudder to even
> imagine it. But could
> it be true?
>
> Hal
Not only could it be true, but it **is** true(gasp!).
Synaptic cycling--fire, pause to reset (horrors!),
ready once again to fire--means we are kilt and
resurrected every fraction of a second exactly as Lee
hypotheticalized(egad!). Well, perhaps not 'exactly'
so, since the synaptic firing may not be globally
synchronized, every neuron marching in step.
[Then again, I read not so long ago, that the neurons
engaged in a coherent thought all fire in a
synchronized fashion. I guess that means that, to
whatever extent you're 'incoherent' and ego-less--I
don't know how to describe this or if it even makes
sense--like say with intention and active
participation in the thought stream turned
off--Oooooohm, oooooohm, oooooohm--then your identity
is continuous since synaptic asynchronicity means some
neuronal fraction is 'always on'--some firing, some
resetting, some resting and ready to fire.
Thus, if you--there's that troublesome little semantic
conundrum: which 'you' or aspect set of a temporally
and/or compositionally dynamic 'you' construct,
slippery little devil, are we talking about here--are
in 'thought-quieted' receive mode, that you, the
thought-quieted you, is 'there' with uninterrupted
continuity (except of course at the vastly shorter
Plank time/quantized time 'interval', but never mind
that). Only when 'you' (that problem again) intrude
on this continuous asynchronicity by **responding** to
the sensory input stream (and I haven't even bothered
to consider about the automatic/reflexive
'lower-level' processing of the input stream which
that
'unconsciously'(preconsciously?) filters and shapes it
into grist for the mill of higher level thought slash
'consciousness'), and forcing the trade-off of
destructive/constructive synchronicity, only then do
you 'suffer' the fate of millisecond scale cyclic
identity extinguishment/reinitialization.
Just a thought, ...a thought, ...a thought, ...a
thought,...a thought, ...a thought, ...a thought, ...a
thought,...a thought,...a thought, ...a thought, ...a
thought,...a thought, ...]
<SYSTEM FAILURE>
Best, Jeff Davis
"That's the whole problem with science. You've got a
bunch of empiricists trying to describe things of
unimaginable wonder."
--Calvin (& Hobbes)
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