2009/4/30 Brent Meeker <meekerdb.domain.name.hidden>:
>> 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
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Received on Thu Apr 30 2009 - 21:47:16 PDT