I agree that the brain does not record past experiences with arbitrarily fine precision.
Two persons that have almost the same subjective experience are identical twins who live in the same place, go to the same school or have the same work and are treated in exactly the same way by their parents. In real life they will have different names, and slightly different preferences. We can perhaps compare it to tree growth in nature. There are no two trees that have the same branching structure. It is statistically impossible for two trees to have the exact same branching structure. When treated as mathematical networks, even a young tree with just 20 splits has over 500 million unique structural layouts, a number that scales past the total atoms in the universe for mature trees. Furthermore, because real trees grow in continuous 3D space, matching every single branch angle and length to infinite decimal places carries a probability of zero. I have heard in probability theory, the chance of pulling the exact same real number out of an infinite continuum twice is exactly 0. Finally, tree growth functions like a chaotic fractal algorithm, where tiny environmental changes - like a passing cloud or gust of wind - multiply over time to permanently alter the final shape. I guess it is this repeated multiplication and accumulation of tiny differences that creates a unique structure. Path-dependence and the sensitive dependence on initial conditions we know from chaos theory (the butterfly effect) describe two distinct aspects of complex systems: one decribes how it starts, while the other describes how it develops. Sensitive dependence triggers divergence, and path dependence locks it in. In terms of the LNC Impossibility Theorem, sensitive dependence on initial conditions guarantees that two agents A and B will inevitably begin with microscopic physical differences. Path dependence then takes those micro-differences, amplifies them through adaptation, reinforcement and environmental interactions, and bakes them permanently into the topological structure of their valuation matrices. But overall I agree it is a weak point in the whole proof. Maybe it is possible to to improve it by statistical arguments and probability theory. I never liked probability theory though. J. On September 27, 2026 12:51:31 AM GMT+02:00, Jon Zingale <[email protected]> wrote: >There is a bit more to my concern. Two people may occupy different places >and follow different paths, but why must every difference in their >histories be preserved in their present experience? I’m hesitant to assume >that consciousness, or any history-dependent system, records its past with >arbitrarily fine precision. This is one of the objections I raised in >earlier posts about the possible limits of spacetime’s fidelity (much less >the fidelity of an information-processing body embedded within it). >Distinct histories might still give rise to the same present experience. > >My own ontological inclination lately is toward a genuinely open, >generative unfolding. Still, I suspect that what a material system can >represent at a given moment is limited, more boldly even, finite. So I >would likely take the other side of that bet.
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