On Thu, Jan 22, 2015 at 10:34 PM, meekerdb <[email protected]> wrote:
> On 1/22/2015 4:05 AM, Telmo Menezes wrote: > > > > On Wed, Jan 21, 2015 at 8:27 PM, meekerdb <[email protected]> wrote: > >> On 1/21/2015 3:48 AM, Telmo Menezes wrote: >> >> If you completely discard the concept of "truth" and replace it >>> entirely with "evolutionary usefulness" - does that change anything? >>> >> >> I think it might. For example, suppose we all share the same >> consciousness. It is evolutionary useful to maintain the illusion that this >> is not the case (thus my previous rant). >> >> >> If you "start with consciousness" then it is fundamental that >> consciousness if not shared - otherwise I'd be conscious of it. >> > > I don't agree that that follows. You can realise this intuitively from > the experience of dreaming: you can dream that you are someone else, or in > completely different circumstances and forget that you're in a dream. > > > But that's not separate, I remember the dream. If I don't remember the > dream, is it me? Is it me because the dream and reality share a body that > can't be both at once? > Depends on what you mean by "me". If you mean the contents of the experience of being Brent, then you're someone else. But the point here is that, if we start with consciousness, then we could all be different experiential contents for the same thing. Consider this toy model: ultimate reality is a direct acyclic graph of all possible observer moments. Links represent possible transformations of one observer moment to another. Theoretical physics essentially approximates the transformation function, telling us which transformations are valid. Every observer moment is eternal in a sense, because the illusion of time arises "inside" the moment. With consciousness as a brute fact, the observer moments where I feel like I'm me and you feel like you're you are just that -- observer moments in the eternal graph. Time and separation are contents of the many dreams. Specifically, time is an illusion created by the structure of the graph: all downstream moments in terms of the generation function feel like the past. I have no confidence in this model -- I am just trying to illustrate how a single consciousness can be consistent with our perceptions of reality. Telmo. > > Brent > > > If the same consciousness dreams everything, why couldn't this > everything contain all sorts of observer moments with illusions of > separateness? > > Telmo. > > >> >> Brent >> -- >> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups >> "Everything List" group. >> To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an >> email to [email protected]. >> To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. >> Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. >> For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. >> > > -- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > "Everything List" group. > To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an > email to [email protected]. > To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. > Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. > For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. > > > -- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > "Everything List" group. > To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an > email to [email protected]. > To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. > Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. > For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. > -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
