2009/4/30 Brent Meeker <[email protected]>: >> It seems to me that if the seconds of my life were according to an >> external clock being generated backwards or scrambled, I would have no >> way of knowing this, nor any way of knowing how fast the clock was >> running or if it was changing speed. > > That assumes that one second can be cleanly (no causal or other > connection) sliced from the next second with no loss, which is what I doubt.
A virtual reality program could be run and the data saved to disk at one second intervals. On the second run, the saved data could be loaded out of sequence. How would the observers in the program know if they were being implemented in sequence or out of sequence? How would they know if their second of consciousness was generated with saved data or with random data that just happened to be the same as the saved data? >> Could the question be settled by actual experiment, i.e. asking the >> subject if they noticed anything unusual? >> > Yes, I think it could - if we could do the experiment. Certainly when > I've been unconscious, either from concussion or anesthesia I've noticed > something unusual. :-) Of course in any experiment we might actually carry out with a human subject in the foreseeable future there would be noticeable gaps in consciousness, due to technical factors. What about the virtual reality experiment above? -- Stathis Papaioannou --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
