x> This raises the question of how many first person exists. I like the idea > that the answer is one. We may be all "the universal person" appearing and > reappearing like if we were already duplicated many times, which makes sense > given that we come from the same amoeba. We are like a god who lost himself > in his creation.
I like this answer though it kinda scares me) Anyway, every time i think about the me/others asymmetry, I'm coming to the same conclusion - maybe there is only one person and asymmetry becomes a convenient symmetry ... Ok, thank you all for answers, they definitely gave me some food for thoughts, and let me rephrase my question more 'rigorously'. ================================== Lets consider two "hard" questions - "why do we live in THIS universe?" (1) and "why am I me?" (2). (1) . Why do we live in THIS universe? Here we got: - string theory and anthropic reasoning present us with a landscape of 10^(10^N) universes that we can choose from. - we've got some strong constraints on the result of the choice. The choice can be random (or defined by some probability distribution on the set of all possible universes), but we should live in the universe compatible with our existence. Conclusion: we can't answer 'hard' question 'Why physical laws are described by string (M, F, whatever) theory, but we can at least ask more 'soft' question - 'Why from the set of all possible universes described by theory T the chosen one is this one". And this question sounds scientific and it seems that it should be answered before we can answer thr hard one. (2). Why am I me? Here we got nothing (?): - what is a "landscape" here, a set of all possible mes? All the people? All the people that ever lived and will ever live? All the animals? All the conscious entities? And here we stuck cause we don't know excatly what entity is conscious and what is not. Or, maybe the set contains only ONE element (only one 1st person exists ...) and there is no choice at all? - what are constraints? What machine can 'host' me (conscious entity) ? Sorry if my questions are naive, I'm new to all this stuff. Maybe we should have a FAQ or wiki with naive but popular questions (what is consciousness? what is information? is computation sufficient for consciousness? What is the difference between reality and simulation?) that are asked again and again by everyone who's starting to think about TOE ... -- 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.
