Altered states of consciousness

[Bruno Marchal]

On 30 Mar 2009, at 18:23, Brent Meeker wrote:

>
> Bruno Marchal wrote:
>> Hi Kelly, and others,
>>
>> Well, thanks for your report. Did you smoke the extract? It usually
>> last for 4 minutes. It is amazing it did last so long with you, I  
>> know
>> only one case of an experience lasting 20 minutes. I am happy you  
>> found
>> your experience interesting. You can consult and discuss your
>> experience, and those of others here:
>> http://www.entheogen.com/forum/forumdisplay.php?f=135
>>
>> Now the real question is, does that experience helped in providing,  
>> for
>> example, an answer to my last remark to Quentin?
>>
>> I quote the question again. It is important concerning
>> comp-immortality, and eventually how to derive physics from computer
>> science.
>> I do think such a question is difficult, and show the weakness in
>> identifying the self with personal memories, and this justifies the
>> necessity of the AUDA move, I think.
>>
>> Of course, if you enjoy dream-state-like, you can enjoy Salvia  
>> without
>> troubling yourself with hard metaphysical questions. Yet I would be
>> interesting if Quentin or Stathis, or anyone, could acknowledge a
>> conceptual difficulty here.
>>
>> <<Hmmm...
>> I ask you, and others, this question. What is the probability "now",
>> that you will find yourself in Washington and Moscow the 24 december
>> 2009, when you are annihilated in Brussels, now, (17 March 2009) and
>> reconstituted in both Moscow and Washington the 18 March 2009, say)?
>> The problem is that the reconstitution machine did dysfunction in
>> Washington, so that, from the 18 March 2009 up to the 20 Augustus  
>> 2009
>> you (the you in Washington) suffered a  "total amnesia".  And then,
>> "you" recovered slowly and progressively from that through adequate
>> medication up to a total recall, the 23 December (and none of yous  
>> did
>> move from W or M).
>>
>> Note that with high concentrated extract of Salvia Divinorum, people
>> can "suffer" (or "enjoy") a total amnesia, where you forget not just
>> your name and memories of life, but you forget even what is a person,
>> what is space, what is time.  Yet you remain conscious. Life  
>> appears as
>> a dream, that you recall vaguely, and then forget, and then you  
>> forget
>> you did that dream. Yet "you" come back. (See the reports, I don't
>> encourage its consumption, but anyone interested by consciousness can
>> be interested by such reports).>>
>
> It seems to me this creates a problem for the idea of "closest
> continuation".  Why, having entered this memoryless, dream-like state,
> should the closest continuation be the former "you"?  Of course the  
> same
> problem arises from ordinary dreams in which you dream you are someone
> else.  The continuity of "you" through these dreams is straightforward
> on a materialist model.

Err... Well "closest continuation" is abandoned at stage UDA_3, and  
materialism at UDA_8.  You are using some non-comp hypothesis here, I  
think. No problem with that, but you should explain one day your  
theory of mind. You will need strong infinities on both the mind side  
and the body side to hang them together. But this is old discussion,  
we can come back later.

Bruno

http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/




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[Quentin Anciaux-2]

2009/3/30 Bruno Marchal <marchal@...>

On 30 Mar 2009, at 17:03, Quentin Anciaux wrote:

Hi,

2009/3/30 Bruno Marchal <marchal@...>

Hi Kelly, and others,

Well, thanks for your report. Did you smoke the extract? It usually
last for 4 minutes. It is amazing it did last so long with you, I know
only one case of an experience lasting 20 minutes. I am happy you found
your experience interesting. You can consult and discuss your
experience, and those of others here:
http://www.entheogen.com/forum/forumdisplay.php?f=135

Now the real question is, does that experience helped in providing, for
example, an answer to my last remark to Quentin?

I quote the question again. It is important concerning
comp-immortality, and eventually how to derive physics from computer
science.
I do think such a question is difficult, and show the weakness in
identifying the self with personal memories, and this justifies the
necessity of the AUDA move, I think.

Of course, if you enjoy dream-state-like, you can enjoy Salvia without
troubling yourself with hard metaphysical questions. Yet I would be
interesting if Quentin or Stathis, or anyone, could acknowledge a
conceptual difficulty here.

<<Hmmm...
I ask you, and others, this question. What is the probability "now",
that you will find yourself in Washington and Moscow the 24 december
2009, when you are annihilated in Brussels, now, (17 March 2009) and
reconstituted in both Moscow and Washington the 18 March 2009, say)?
The problem is that the reconstitution machine did dysfunction in
Washington, so that, from the 18 March 2009 up to the 20 Augustus 2009
you (the you in Washington) suffered a  "total amnesia".  And then,
"you" recovered slowly and progressively from that through adequate
medication up to a total recall, the 23 December (and none of yous did
move from W or M).

Well I think all of this depends on the fact that your memories "come back". If it doesn't then I will not be in washington, cqfd.

What if half of your memory come back?

Well, it would be a half me continuation... :-)

And in the setup explained here... Plain me continuation would be the one in Moscow... and Half me would be in washington. If me now could meet both of me plain and half ... I would certainly identify current me to be plain me. While I would care for half me, I care less of him than plain me. But if no memories at all are left I wouldn't identify him as myself like I don't identify you (nor any future you) as myself.

What you're talking about salvia (loosing your personnal identity during the experience) is only correct because you have memories of it (salvia experience) on your current self which knows he is Bruno. If you had no memories of it then it makes no sense to say you did loose your "identity".

Yes, but retrospectively, I can assert that I remain conscious, despite the loss of identity. So, why should we not take such "computational ontinuations" into account, in the immortality question, and in the hunt of 1-white rabbits? This is certainly not clear for me.

We should take in account those continuation where the memory loss is temporary... not the one where I become you. The contrary is like the believer in reincarnation, if you don't remember your past live then it is the same as you didn't have any pas live and on a personal and selfish view, totally useless to the current live. What's the point to survive/reincarnate if there is nothing left of you.. I don't call that surviving... I don't care if my body doesn't biologically survive... I care that *I* (my mind/memories/experiences) survive.
 

As for conscious dream... I don't think you *do* know you're conscious while dreaming, but you do know it after the dreaming experience.

John Mikes seems to think so too, but here I certainly disagree. Lucid dreamer, who are verifiably in the paradoxical state of dream (through EEG) , can communicate with the observer in the lab, through eyes moves or through extremity of fingers (which are not paralysed).

Well do they ? Does the dreamer remember interacting with the observer (the real one) ? I know that outside sound/temperature/... act on the dream, just because while dreaming we are never truly and completly disconnected from the outside... But it says nothing about the consciousness of the dreamer. The dreamer remember after being awake he was somehow conscious, but was he really ? I do remember conscious dream (or so I called) still do not really believe I was in the sense I was now.

 

They have made all the usual experience (singing, computing, walking, running in the dream) and they have discover it generate the same activity in the dream than in the waking life. The experience of Laberge and Dement have definitely convinced me that the hypothesis that we are unconscious during dream is badly founded. 

Consciousness should not be confused with awakeness.

Could you give me some links about those experiences ?

Thank you,
Quentin

--
All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain.

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[Brent Meeker-2]

Bruno Marchal wrote:

> On 30 Mar 2009, at 14:02, Stathis Papaioannou wrote:
>
>  
>> 2009/3/30 Bruno Marchal <marchal@...> wrote:
>>    
>>> Hi Kelly, and others,
>>>
>>> Well, thanks for your report. Did you smoke the extract? It usually
>>> last for 4 minutes. It is amazing it did last so long with you, I  
>>> know
>>> only one case of an experience lasting 20 minutes. I am happy you  
>>> found
>>> your experience interesting. You can consult and discuss your
>>> experience, and those of others here:
>>> http://www.entheogen.com/forum/forumdisplay.php?f=135
>>>
>>> Now the real question is, does that experience helped in providing,  
>>> for
>>> example, an answer to my last remark to Quentin?
>>>
>>> I quote the question again. It is important concerning
>>> comp-immortality, and eventually how to derive physics from computer
>>> science.
>>> I do think such a question is difficult, and show the weakness in
>>> identifying the self with personal memories, and this justifies the
>>> necessity of the AUDA move, I think.
>>>
>>> Of course, if you enjoy dream-state-like, you can enjoy Salvia  
>>> without
>>> troubling yourself with hard metaphysical questions. Yet I would be
>>> interesting if Quentin or Stathis, or anyone, could acknowledge a
>>> conceptual difficulty here.
>>>
>>> <<Hmmm...
>>> I ask you, and others, this question. What is the probability "now",
>>> that you will find yourself in Washington and Moscow the 24 december
>>> 2009, when you are annihilated in Brussels, now, (17 March 2009) and
>>> reconstituted in both Moscow and Washington the 18 March 2009, say)?
>>> The problem is that the reconstitution machine did dysfunction in
>>> Washington, so that, from the 18 March 2009 up to the 20 Augustus  
>>> 2009
>>> you (the you in Washington) suffered a  "total amnesia".  And then,
>>> "you" recovered slowly and progressively from that through adequate
>>> medication up to a total recall, the 23 December (and none of yous  
>>> did
>>> move from W or M).
>>>
>>> Note that with high concentrated extract of Salvia Divinorum, people
>>> can "suffer" (or "enjoy") a total amnesia, where you forget not just
>>> your name and memories of life, but you forget even what is a person,
>>> what is space, what is time.  Yet you remain conscious. Life  
>>> appears as
>>> a dream, that you recall vaguely, and then forget, and then you  
>>> forget
>>> you did that dream. Yet "you" come back. (See the reports, I don't
>>> encourage its consumption, but anyone interested by consciousness can
>>> be interested by such reports).>>
>>>      
>> It does indeed present conceptual difficulties. The problem is that
>> our notion of personal identity is dependent on the world in which we
>> evolved, where these duplication experiments don't happen. The
>> conceptual difficulties vanish if we say that there is no such
>> metaphysical entity as a person persisting through time, but rather a
>> set of observer moments, each one complete in itself and independent
>> from the others, which only associate due to their information content
>> - their psychological connectedness. In other words, we all survive
>> only momentarily, but we have the illusion of persisting through time
>> due to memory, quasi-memory or partial memory.
>>    
>
> I agree, but this does not answer the question. To extract the  
> physical laws we have to define that psychological connectness, and it  
> refers to the notion of person. It is no metaphysical than atoms  
> molecules or galaxies. Those are also mind composition which can be  
> considered as relative stable and useful constructs. We have to relate  
> those things, to extract information from the assumptions. The point  
> is no more philosophical.
>  

It's here that I find problems in the idea of person as sequence of
conscious moments.  During most moments I am not conscious of memories
or even of my identity, but in some sense I maintain the sequence of
experiences.  I speculate that the information content Stathis refers to
is mostly subconscious.  But to have a subconscious implies a
non-conscious substrate, e.g. a material brain.

Brent

>  
>> I would consider a period of consciousness with complete destruction
>> of the ego, such as induced by Salvia Divinorum, as equivalent to a
>> period of unconsciousness or an unrelated person's consciousness,
>> provided there were no memory of the event as the experience was
>> resolving.
>>    
>
> But the amnesic, the dreamer and the salvia experiencer have a memory  
> of the events. Kelly did not dream that he disappears, but that he was  
> 7 old. To eliminate the first person white rabbits, the devil comes  
> from the fact that we have to use *some* notion of person.
>
> Bruno
>
>
>
> http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/
>
>
>
>
> >
>
>  

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[Brent Meeker-2]

Quentin Anciaux wrote:

>
>
> 2009/3/30 Bruno Marchal <marchal@... <mailto:marchal@...>>
>
>
>     On 30 Mar 2009, at 17:03, Quentin Anciaux wrote:
>
>>     Hi,
>>
>>     2009/3/30 Bruno Marchal <marchal@...
>>     <mailto:marchal@...>>
>>
>>
>>         Hi Kelly, and others,
>>
>>         Well, thanks for your report. Did you smoke the extract? It
>>         usually
>>         last for 4 minutes. It is amazing it did last so long with
>>         you, I know
>>         only one case of an experience lasting 20 minutes. I am happy
>>         you found
>>         your experience interesting. You can consult and discuss your
>>         experience, and those of others here:
>>         http://www.entheogen.com/forum/forumdisplay.php?f=135
>>
>>         Now the real question is, does that experience helped in
>>         providing, for
>>         example, an answer to my last remark to Quentin?
>>
>>         I quote the question again. It is important concerning
>>         comp-immortality, and eventually how to derive physics from
>>         computer
>>         science.
>>         I do think such a question is difficult, and show the weakness in
>>         identifying the self with personal memories, and this
>>         justifies the
>>         necessity of the AUDA move, I think.
>>
>>         Of course, if you enjoy dream-state-like, you can enjoy
>>         Salvia without
>>         troubling yourself with hard metaphysical questions. Yet I
>>         would be
>>         interesting if Quentin or Stathis, or anyone, could acknowledge a
>>         conceptual difficulty here.
>>
>>         <<Hmmm...
>>         I ask you, and others, this question. What is the probability
>>         "now",
>>         that you will find yourself in Washington and Moscow the 24
>>         december
>>         2009, when you are annihilated in Brussels, now, (17 March
>>         2009) and
>>         reconstituted in both Moscow and Washington the 18 March
>>         2009, say)?
>>         The problem is that the reconstitution machine did dysfunction in
>>         Washington, so that, from the 18 March 2009 up to the 20
>>         Augustus 2009
>>         you (the you in Washington) suffered a  "total amnesia".  And
>>         then,
>>         "you" recovered slowly and progressively from that through
>>         adequate
>>         medication up to a total recall, the 23 December (and none of
>>         yous did
>>         move from W or M).
>>
>>
>>     Well I think all of this depends on the fact that your memories
>>     "come back". If it doesn't then I will not be in washington, cqfd.
>
>     What if half of your memory come back?
>
>
> Well, it would be a half me continuation... :-)
>
> And in the setup explained here... Plain me continuation would be the
> one in Moscow... and Half me would be in washington. If me now could
> meet both of me plain and half ... I would certainly identify current
> me to be plain me. While I would care for half me, I care less of him
> than plain me. But if no memories at all are left I wouldn't identify
> him as myself like I don't identify you (nor any future you) as myself.
>
>
>>
>>
>>     What you're talking about salvia (loosing your personnal identity
>>     during the experience) is only correct because you have memories
>>     of it (salvia experience) on your current self which knows he is
>>     Bruno. If you had no memories of it then it makes no sense to say
>>     you did loose your "identity".
>
>     Yes, but retrospectively, I can assert that I remain conscious,
>     despite the loss of identity. So, why should we not take such
>     "computational ontinuations" into account, in the immortality
>     question, and in the hunt of 1-white rabbits? This is certainly
>     not clear for me.
>
>
> We should take in account those continuation where the memory loss is
> temporary... not the one where I become you. The contrary is like the
> believer in reincarnation, if you don't remember your past live then
> it is the same as you didn't have any pas live and on a personal and
> selfish view, totally useless to the current live. What's the point to
> survive/reincarnate if there is nothing left of you.. I don't call
> that surviving... I don't care if my body doesn't biologically
> survive... I care that *I* (my mind/memories/experiences) survive.
>  
>
>
>
>>
>>
>>     As for conscious dream... I don't think you *do* know you're
>>     conscious while dreaming, but you do know it after the dreaming
>>     experience.
>
>
>     John Mikes seems to think so too, but here I certainly disagree.
>     Lucid dreamer, who are verifiably in the paradoxical state of
>     dream (through EEG) , can communicate with the observer in the
>     lab, through eyes moves or through extremity of fingers (which are
>     not paralysed).
>
>
> Well do they ? Does the dreamer remember interacting with the observer
> (the real one) ? I know that outside sound/temperature/... act on the
> dream, just because while dreaming we are never truly and completly
> disconnected from the outside... But it says nothing about the
> consciousness of the dreamer. The dreamer remember after being awake
> he was somehow conscious, but was he really ? I do remember conscious
> dream (or so I called) still do not really believe I was in the sense
> I was now.
>
>  
>
>     They have made all the usual experience (singing, computing,
>     walking, running in the dream) and they have discover it generate
>     the same activity in the dream than in the waking life. The
>     experience of Laberge and Dement have definitely convinced me that
>     the hypothesis that we are unconscious during dream is badly founded.
>     Consciousness should not be confused with awakeness.
>

Of course being asleep, whether dreaming or not, is not being
unconscious.  I sleep peacefully through my clock chiming, my wife
getting up and coming back to bed; but I awake instantly if my name is
whispered or there is a strange noise in the kitchen.

Brent

>
> Could you give me some links about those experiences ?
>
> Thank you,
> Quentin
>
> --
> All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain.
>
> >

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[John Mikes]

Stathis: (in your text):

...or an unrelated person's consciousness...???

I agree with you when you say: losing all memories erases your personality (consciousnessless state) - but where do you pick that 'unrelted person's one, which also can only based on that 'unrelated person's' memory etc. ????

I just cannot accept that you "lost it' by Salvia effect, if it "comes back". You still are hording all your mental content - just cannot brush it up into conscious reverberations, it is BLOCKED, not lost. Otherwise it would not come back. You did not deposit it in the cloakroom and when you present the ticket, the homuncula helps you back into it.

John M

On Mon, Mar 30, 2009 at 8:02 AM, Stathis Papaioannou <stathisp@...> wrote:

2009/3/30 Bruno Marchal <marchal@...> wrote:
>
> Hi Kelly, and others,
>
> Well, thanks for your report. Did you smoke the extract? It usually
> last for 4 minutes. It is amazing it did last so long with you, I know
> only one case of an experience lasting 20 minutes. I am happy you found
> your experience interesting. You can consult and discuss your
> experience, and those of others here:
> http://www.entheogen.com/forum/forumdisplay.php?f=135
>
> Now the real question is, does that experience helped in providing, for
> example, an answer to my last remark to Quentin?
>
> I quote the question again. It is important concerning
> comp-immortality, and eventually how to derive physics from computer
> science.
> I do think such a question is difficult, and show the weakness in
> identifying the self with personal memories, and this justifies the
> necessity of the AUDA move, I think.
>
> Of course, if you enjoy dream-state-like, you can enjoy Salvia without
> troubling yourself with hard metaphysical questions. Yet I would be
> interesting if Quentin or Stathis, or anyone, could acknowledge a
> conceptual difficulty here.
>
> <<Hmmm...
> I ask you, and others, this question. What is the probability "now",
> that you will find yourself in Washington and Moscow the 24 december
> 2009, when you are annihilated in Brussels, now, (17 March 2009) and
> reconstituted in both Moscow and Washington the 18 March 2009, say)?
> The problem is that the reconstitution machine did dysfunction in
> Washington, so that, from the 18 March 2009 up to the 20 Augustus 2009
> you (the you in Washington) suffered a  "total amnesia".  And then,
> "you" recovered slowly and progressively from that through adequate
> medication up to a total recall, the 23 December (and none of yous did
> move from W or M).
>
> Note that with high concentrated extract of Salvia Divinorum, people
> can "suffer" (or "enjoy") a total amnesia, where you forget not just
> your name and memories of life, but you forget even what is a person,
> what is space, what is time.  Yet you remain conscious. Life appears as
> a dream, that you recall vaguely, and then forget, and then you forget
> you did that dream. Yet "you" come back. (See the reports, I don't
> encourage its consumption, but anyone interested by consciousness can
> be interested by such reports).>>

It does indeed present conceptual difficulties. The problem is that
our notion of personal identity is dependent on the world in which we
evolved, where these duplication experiments don't happen. The
conceptual difficulties vanish if we say that there is no such
metaphysical entity as a person persisting through time, but rather a
set of observer moments, each one complete in itself and independent
from the others, which only associate due to their information content
- their psychological connectedness. In other words, we all survive
only momentarily, but we have the illusion of persisting through time
due to memory, quasi-memory or partial memory.

I would consider a period of consciousness with complete destruction
of the ego, such as induced by Salvia Divinorum, as equivalent to a
period of unconsciousness or an unrelated person's consciousness,
provided there were no memory of the event as the experience was
resolving.


--
Stathis Papaioannou

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[Kelly Harmon]

> Well, thanks for your report. Did you smoke the extract? It usually
> last for 4 minutes. It is amazing it did last so long with you, I know
> only one case of an experience lasting 20 minutes.

I used this liquid "extract" stuff.  You hold it in your mouth for
several minutes to get it into your blood stream.  Seems to work very
well.  The first time I tried the "Strong" dose, and it produced about
30 minutes of strong hallucinations, 20 minutes of weaker
hallucinations, and another 30 minutes of "day dream" type experiences
as I was coming out of it.

I tried another dose on saturday, and the effect was much different.
I was watching a psychodelic computer screensaver, which resulted in a
less "dream-like" and more strange experience.  This time I also took
a "Very Strong" dose, which lasted a bit longer on all stages, but I'm
not sure what impact it had otherwise.

I was back in Arkansas in the 1970's again.  But there was a much
stronger feeling that something important was about to happen, and
that I was part of the plan.  ALSO, I wasn't a kid this time.  There
was a much stronger (but intermittent) feeling of being "someone
else".

I think this may have been related to the amnesia.  I wasn't
explicitly TRYING to remember something and failing so it wasn't a
jarring experience, but still there was a lack of implicit "historical
context" for myself.  This, combined with the unfamiliar sense of
being on a "mission" (associated with the feeling that something
important was going to happen) I think made for a feeling of being
someone else.  It certainly didn't feel like the normal "what it is
like to be me", in that my mindset seemed different.

Also, in an earlier post you mention the "feminine presence".  I had
this the second time too.  BUT, the feeling I had was the "she" was
impatient.  Presumably about the important thing that was going to
happen.

The screensaver was mesmerizing though.  I stared at it for the entire
time.  Over an hour.  It was quite a show.  It didn't stop me from
seeing other things, related to Arkansas, but it did take up the bulk
of my "visual experience".  And, interestingly, it didn't get pulled
into any of the "story lines" of the dream.  The story-line of the
dream was entirely seperate.

As for the metaphysical implications of "identifying the self with
personal memories", I'll have to think about that a bit more.

All good stuff!



On Mar 30, 6:30 am, Bruno Marchal <marc...@...> wrote:

> Hi Kelly, and others,
>
> Well, thanks for your report. Did you smoke the extract? It usually
> last for 4 minutes. It is amazing it did last so long with you, I know
> only one case of an experience lasting 20 minutes. I am happy you found
> your experience interesting. You can consult and discuss your
> experience, and those of others here:http://www.entheogen.com/forum/forumdisplay.php?f=135
>
> Now the real question is, does that experience helped in providing, for
> example, an answer to my last remark to Quentin?
>
> I quote the question again. It is important concerning
> comp-immortality, and eventually how to derive physics from computer
> science.
> I do think such a question is difficult, and show the weakness in
> identifying the self with personal memories, and this justifies the
> necessity of the AUDA move, I think.
>
> Of course, if you enjoy dream-state-like, you can enjoy Salvia without
> troubling yourself with hard metaphysical questions. Yet I would be
> interesting if Quentin or Stathis, or anyone, could acknowledge a
> conceptual difficulty here.
>
> <<Hmmm...
> I ask you, and others, this question. What is the probability "now",
> that you will find yourself in Washington and Moscow the 24 december
> 2009, when you are annihilated in Brussels, now, (17 March 2009) and
> reconstituted in both Moscow and Washington the 18 March 2009, say)?
> The problem is that the reconstitution machine did dysfunction in
> Washington, so that, from the 18 March 2009 up to the 20 Augustus 2009
> you (the you in Washington) suffered a  "total amnesia".  And then,
> "you" recovered slowly and progressively from that through adequate
> medication up to a total recall, the 23 December (and none of yous did
> move from W or M).
>
> Note that with high concentrated extract of Salvia Divinorum, people
> can "suffer" (or "enjoy") a total amnesia, where you forget not just
> your name and memories of life, but you forget even what is a person,
> what is space, what is time.  Yet you remain conscious. Life appears as
> a dream, that you recall vaguely, and then forget, and then you forget
> you did that dream. Yet "you" come back. (See the reports, I don't
> encourage its consumption, but anyone interested by consciousness can
> be interested by such reports).>>
>
> Le 28-mars-09, à 20:50, Kelly a écrit :
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> > I tried Salvia for the first time yesterday.  Very similar to
> > dreaming, but more intense, with a lot more sounds.
>
> > At first I thought, "Nothing's happening".  Then I thought, "I seem to
> > be about to slide sidewise...I need to stop".
>
> > Then, I was sitting somewhere...in a tilled field I think, and I
> > couldn't remember who I was.  Then I thought, someone's going to be in
> > trouble...I need to tell my sister.
>
> > Then, for the next 30 minutes it was 1978, and I was in Arkansas, and
> > I was a kid again.
>
> > Every now and then I'd think, "What's going on???  Did I take
> > something?"
>
> > But I could never remember for sure.  A couple of times I would think
> > of the Salvia extract, but I couldn't remember if it was just
> > something I'd heard of, or if I'd actually used it.  And I'd decide,
> > "Nah, couldn't be salvia...reality doesn't work that way.  That would
> > be like magic."
>
> > After about 30 minutes of dreaming it was 1978, and I was 7, and in
> > Arkansas,  I came to enough to look at the clock, and I remember
> > thinking, "It didn't work..."
>
> > THEN, I was underwater looking up towards the surface, and there was a
> > giant squid passing over me.
>
> > About 20 minutes later, I got up and starting writing up what I'd
> > seen, but I was still drifting in and out, like I was having day-
> > dreams.  And they were still about Arkansas 1978, but it was like I
> > was there, and there was a plan, and I was part of it.  Something was
> > about to happen, and I was like part of a group that knew about it.
>
> > Over the next hour the day-dreams stopped, and within 2 hours of
> > starting it was over.
>
> > Very interesting.
>
> http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/- Hide quoted text -
>
> - Show quoted text -

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[Stathis Papaioannou-2]

2009/3/31 Bruno Marchal <marchal@...>:

>> It does indeed present conceptual difficulties. The problem is that
>> our notion of personal identity is dependent on the world in which we
>> evolved, where these duplication experiments don't happen. The
>> conceptual difficulties vanish if we say that there is no such
>> metaphysical entity as a person persisting through time, but rather a
>> set of observer moments, each one complete in itself and independent
>> from the others, which only associate due to their information content
>> - their psychological connectedness. In other words, we all survive
>> only momentarily, but we have the illusion of persisting through time
>> due to memory, quasi-memory or partial memory.
>
> I agree, but this does not answer the question. To extract the
> physical laws we have to define that psychological connectness, and it
> refers to the notion of person. It is no metaphysical than atoms
> molecules or galaxies. Those are also mind composition which can be
> considered as relative stable and useful constructs. We have to relate
> those things, to extract information from the assumptions. The point
> is no more philosophical.

A person can be well-defined in the same way as, say, the Middle Ages
can be well-defined, simply by agreeing on a particular range of
dates. But the notion of "Middle Ages" is not basic to physics. A
historian could come along and argue for one reason and another that
the Middle Ages should not be considered to have ended until the year
1800, and although we might disagree with him we can't say that he is
wrong in the same way he would be wrong if he claimed that the British
landed in Australia in 1066. Similarly with personhood, we could come
up with a definition, eg. that a person consists of the series or
person-stages such that each person-stage shares some memories with
the preceding and succeeding person-stage, but you wouldn't be wrong
if you rejected the definition, in the way you could be wrong about a
matter of fact concerning a particular person-stage.

>> I would consider a period of consciousness with complete destruction
>> of the ego, such as induced by Salvia Divinorum, as equivalent to a
>> period of unconsciousness or an unrelated person's consciousness,
>> provided there were no memory of the event as the experience was
>> resolving.
>
> But the amnesic, the dreamer and the salvia experiencer have a memory
> of the events. Kelly did not dream that he disappears, but that he was
> 7 old. To eliminate the first person white rabbits, the devil comes
> from the fact that we have to use *some* notion of person.

If memories of the event are retained then it is possible to define a
persisting person. If all memories are lost and never return, then we
may as well say the original person has died.


--
Stathis Papaioannou

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[Bruno Marchal]

Le 30-mars-09, à 22:05, Kelly a écrit :

>
>> Well, thanks for your report. Did you smoke the extract? It usually
>> last for 4 minutes. It is amazing it did last so long with you, I know
>> only one case of an experience lasting 20 minutes.
>
> I used this liquid "extract" stuff.

Very good!

> You hold it in your mouth for
> several minutes to get it into your blood stream.  Seems to work very
> well.  The first time I tried the "Strong" dose, and it produced about
> 30 minutes of strong hallucinations, 20 minutes of weaker
> hallucinations, and another 30 minutes of "day dream" type experiences
> as I was coming out of it.
>
> I tried another dose on saturday, and the effect was much different.
> I was watching a psychodelic computer screensaver, which resulted in a
> less "dream-like" and more strange experience.  This time I also took
> a "Very Strong" dose, which lasted a bit longer on all stages, but I'm
> not sure what impact it had otherwise.
>
> I was back in Arkansas in the 1970's again.  But there was a much
> stronger feeling that something important was about to happen, and
> that I was part of the plan.

This is a common, yet intriguing, feeling.

> ALSO, I wasn't a kid this time.  There
> was a much stronger (but intermittent) feeling of being "someone
> else".
>
> I think this may have been related to the amnesia.  I wasn't
> explicitly TRYING to remember something and failing so it wasn't a
> jarring experience, but still there was a lack of implicit "historical
> context" for myself.  This, combined with the unfamiliar sense of
> being on a "mission" (associated with the feeling that something
> important was going to happen) I think made for a feeling of being
> someone else.  It certainly didn't feel like the normal "what it is
> like to be me", in that my mindset seemed different.

Thanks for reporting. When you smoke extracts, this can be much more
intense, but much harder to dissect after the experience.

>
> Also, in an earlier post you mention the "feminine presence".  I had
> this the second time too.  BUT, the feeling I had was the "she" was
> impatient.  Presumably about the important thing that was going to
> happen.

Ah! I recognize her. She has quite a mood. You are lucky she was only
impatient :)



>
> The screensaver was mesmerizing though.  I stared at it for the entire
> time.  Over an hour.  It was quite a show.  It didn't stop me from
> seeing other things, related to Arkansas, but it did take up the bulk
> of my "visual experience".  And, interestingly, it didn't get pulled
> into any of the "story lines" of the dream.  The story-line of the
> dream was entirely seperate.

This happens, especially when you don't use to intense stuff. You are
in two places at once, capable of living two experience simultaneously.
It is useful to note the experience in a diary, which i suggest to do.
With Salvia the experienes evolve.

>
> As for the metaphysical implications of "identifying the self with
> personal memories", I'll have to think about that a bit more.

Thanks for trying.


>
> All good stuff!

I am happy you appreciate. Well, I guess it is an easier road than
learning mathematical logic. The advantage of logic is that you can
share 99% of the experience with ... those patient enough to learn the
technics, and to listen to the argument. The advantage of Salvia is
that you live, somehow, the thought experiences. No need to "imagine"
the situation and to deuce proposition... But some afterthought are
needed in all case, of course, Take it easy, you are in good hands :)

Best,

Bruno

>
>
>
> On Mar 30, 6:30 am, Bruno Marchal <marc...@...> wrote:
>> Hi Kelly, and others,
>>
>> Well, thanks for your report. Did you smoke the extract? It usually
>> last for 4 minutes. It is amazing it did last so long with you, I know
>> only one case of an experience lasting 20 minutes. I am happy you
>> found
>> your experience interesting. You can consult and discuss your
>> experience, and those of others
>> here:http://www.entheogen.com/forum/forumdisplay.php?f=135
>>
>> Now the real question is, does that experience helped in providing,
>> for
>> example, an answer to my last remark to Quentin?
>>
>> I quote the question again. It is important concerning
>> comp-immortality, and eventually how to derive physics from computer
>> science.
>> I do think such a question is difficult, and show the weakness in
>> identifying the self with personal memories, and this justifies the
>> necessity of the AUDA move, I think.
>>
>> Of course, if you enjoy dream-state-like, you can enjoy Salvia without
>> troubling yourself with hard metaphysical questions. Yet I would be
>> interesting if Quentin or Stathis, or anyone, could acknowledge a
>> conceptual difficulty here.
>>
>> <<Hmmm...
>> I ask you, and others, this question. What is the probability "now",
>> that you will find yourself in Washington and Moscow the 24 december
>> 2009, when you are annihilated in Brussels, now, (17 March 2009) and
>> reconstituted in both Moscow and Washington the 18 March 2009, say)?
>> The problem is that the reconstitution machine did dysfunction in
>> Washington, so that, from the 18 March 2009 up to the 20 Augustus 2009
>> you (the you in Washington) suffered a  "total amnesia".  And then,
>> "you" recovered slowly and progressively from that through adequate
>> medication up to a total recall, the 23 December (and none of yous did
>> move from W or M).
>>
>> Note that with high concentrated extract of Salvia Divinorum, people
>> can "suffer" (or "enjoy") a total amnesia, where you forget not just
>> your name and memories of life, but you forget even what is a person,
>> what is space, what is time.  Yet you remain conscious. Life appears
>> as
>> a dream, that you recall vaguely, and then forget, and then you forget
>> you did that dream. Yet "you" come back. (See the reports, I don't
>> encourage its consumption, but anyone interested by consciousness can
>> be interested by such reports).>>
>>
>> Le 28-mars-09, à 20:50, Kelly a écrit :
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>> I tried Salvia for the first time yesterday.  Very similar to
>>> dreaming, but more intense, with a lot more sounds.
>>
>>> At first I thought, "Nothing's happening".  Then I thought, "I seem
>>> to
>>> be about to slide sidewise...I need to stop".
>>
>>> Then, I was sitting somewhere...in a tilled field I think, and I
>>> couldn't remember who I was.  Then I thought, someone's going to be
>>> in
>>> trouble...I need to tell my sister.
>>
>>> Then, for the next 30 minutes it was 1978, and I was in Arkansas, and
>>> I was a kid again.
>>
>>> Every now and then I'd think, "What's going on???  Did I take
>>> something?"
>>
>>> But I could never remember for sure.  A couple of times I would think
>>> of the Salvia extract, but I couldn't remember if it was just
>>> something I'd heard of, or if I'd actually used it.  And I'd decide,
>>> "Nah, couldn't be salvia...reality doesn't work that way.  That would
>>> be like magic."
>>
>>> After about 30 minutes of dreaming it was 1978, and I was 7, and in
>>> Arkansas,  I came to enough to look at the clock, and I remember
>>> thinking, "It didn't work..."
>>
>>> THEN, I was underwater looking up towards the surface, and there was
>>> a
>>> giant squid passing over me.
>>
>>> About 20 minutes later, I got up and starting writing up what I'd
>>> seen, but I was still drifting in and out, like I was having day-
>>> dreams.  And they were still about Arkansas 1978, but it was like I
>>> was there, and there was a plan, and I was part of it.  Something was
>>> about to happen, and I was like part of a group that knew about it.
>>
>>> Over the next hour the day-dreams stopped, and within 2 hours of
>>> starting it was over.
>>
>>> Very interesting.
>>
>> http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/- Hide quoted text -
>>
>> - Show quoted text -
> >
>

http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/


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[Bruno Marchal]

Hello Quentin,

Le 30-mars-09, à 20:03, Quentin Anciaux a écrit :

2009/3/30 Bruno Marchal <marchal@...>

On 30 Mar 2009, at 17:03, Quentin Anciaux wrote:

Hi,

2009/3/30 Bruno Marchal <marchal@...>

Hi Kelly, and others,

Well, thanks for your report. Did you smoke the extract? It usually

last for 4 minutes. It is amazing it did last so long with you, I know

only one case of an experience lasting 20 minutes. I am happy you found

your experience interesting. You can consult and discuss your

experience, and those of others here:

http://www.entheogen.com/forum/forumdisplay.php?f=135

Now the real question is, does that experience helped in providing, for

example, an answer to my last remark to Quentin?

I quote the question again. It is important concerning

comp-immortality, and eventually how to derive physics from computer

science.

I do think such a question is difficult, and show the weakness in

identifying the self with personal memories, and this justifies the

necessity of the AUDA move, I think.

Of course, if you enjoy dream-state-like, you can enjoy Salvia without

troubling yourself with hard metaphysical questions. Yet I would be

interesting if Quentin or Stathis, or anyone, could acknowledge a

conceptual difficulty here.

<<Hmmm...

I ask you, and others, this question. What is the probability "now",

that you will find yourself in Washington and Moscow the 24 december

2009, when you are annihilated in Brussels, now, (17 March 2009) and

reconstituted in both Moscow and Washington the 18 March 2009, say)?

The problem is that the reconstitution machine did dysfunction in

Washington, so that, from the 18 March 2009 up to the 20 Augustus 2009

you (the you in Washington) suffered a  "total amnesia".  And then,

"you" recovered slowly and progressively from that through adequate

medication up to a total recall, the 23 December (and none of yous did

move from W or M).

Well I think all of this depends on the fact that your memories "come back". If it doesn't then I will not be in washington, cqfd.

What if half of your memory come back?

Well, it would be a half me continuation... :-)

Hmm... ":-)" indeed.

And in the setup explained here... Plain me continuation would be the one in Moscow... and Half me would be in washington.

I am not sure this makes sense.

If me now could meet both of me plain and half ... I would certainly identify current me to be plain me.

You can care about him more, but you cannot identify yourself with, in the usual first person way. 

It is some another person, from your 1-point of view.

While I would care for half me, I care less of him than plain me.

Exactly.

But if no memories at all are left I wouldn't identify him as myself like I don't identify you (nor any future you) as myself.

You could be astonished. I know you don't like the idea.

What you're talking about salvia (loosing your personnal identity during the experience) is only correct because you have memories of it (salvia experience) on your current self which knows he is Bruno. If you had no memories of it then it makes no sense to say you did loose your "identity".

Yes, but retrospectively, I can assert that I remain conscious, despite the loss of identity. So, why should we not take such "computational ontinuations" into account, in the immortality question, and in the hunt of 1-white rabbits? This is certainly not clear for me.

We should take in account those continuation where the memory loss is temporary...

This can make sense. We already know that the "probabilities" can "retro-propagate". I remain a bit skeptical, because I feel like I am the owner of memories, not like I am those memories.
The easiest self-duplication experiences show that we are not our bodies. Thought experiment with amnesia, which I have banned form my theses and publications, shows that we neither our memories. I can understand that some would conclude we are nothing, but I think we keep remaining the "universal person", the one described by the third hypostases. That entity can be conscious, even if out of time and space, indeed AUDA shows that it is the builder of time and space. I thought enough time has to be created in order for consciousness to operate, and it is here that salivia divinorum seems to force me to revise that opinion. (I am amazed, and I am sure of nothing, here. I push to the limit). This would answer a question raised a long time ago on the list: how many person are they. Answer: possibly one.

not the one where I become you. The contrary is like the believer in reincarnation, if you don't remember your past live then it is the same as you didn't have any pas live and on a personal and selfish view, totally useless to the current live. What's the point to survive/reincarnate if there is nothing left of you..

Loosing memories does not mean that nothing is left of you. Especially if you keep consciousness. You can forget your past identity, and still keep anything for having a personal identity. In particular the self-referential motor.  In the salvia experience, I belong to those who does not want really to come back. Sometimes memories ... well, I don't need them all. It is useful locally, when you are young, but it can be heavy too, especially when you are older. It is important for history learning, and for not repeating errors, but it is like a ladder, at some point it can be better to forget, and jump to something else.
Also, we forget all the time, many things. Do I die because I forget some dreams this night?

I don't call that surviving... I don't care if my body doesn't biologically survive... I care that *I* (my mind/memories/experiences) survive.

The problem is not what about we care, but how to compute the first person indeterminacy in extreme situation. According to you, the comp immortality or the quantum immortality makes sense only for those continuations which keep all or most the memories. I think, currently and without any certainty, that the notion of relative "normal worlds" or relative "normal continuations will be prevalent, possibly against our wishes. 

To take a not so funny example, suppose someone get Alzheimer, and that at some time t, he forget most of his life events. Would you say that from his own point of view, he does not feel sick and keep its memory thanks to the continuations where rare (in Everett sense) lucky quantum events prevent his disease to develop?

 

As for conscious dream... I don't think you *do* know you're conscious while dreaming, but you do know it after the dreaming experience.

John Mikes seems to think so too, but here I certainly disagree. Lucid dreamer, who are verifiably in the paradoxical state of dream (through EEG) , can communicate with the observer in the lab, through eyes moves or through extremity of fingers (which are not paralysed).

Well do they ? Does the dreamer remember interacting with the observer (the real one) ? I know that outside sound/temperature/... act on the dream, just because while dreaming we are never truly and completly disconnected from the outside... But it says nothing about the consciousness of the dreamer. The dreamer remember after being awake he was somehow conscious, but was he really ? I do remember conscious dream (or so I called) still do not really believe I was in the sense I was now.

 They have made all the usual experience (singing, computing, walking, running in the dream) and they have discover it generate the same activity in the dream than in the waking life. The experience of Laberge and Dement have definitely convinced me that the hypothesis that we are unconscious during dream is badly founded. 

Consciousness should not be confused with awakeness.

Could you give me some links about those experiences ?

I have the photocopies of the original papers, and some selected papers book. You will find the references in the chapter 3.1 of "Conscience et Mécanisme" (which is the chapter on "dreams, brains and reality").

You could also google on "laberge dement lucid", let us see:

http://www.lucidity.com/SleepAndCognition.html

This relates some of the experiences I was mentioning.

Best,

Bruno

http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/

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[Bruno Marchal]

On 31 Mar 2009, at 12:34, Stathis Papaioannou wrote:

>
> 2009/3/31 Bruno Marchal <marchal@...>:
>
>>> It does indeed present conceptual difficulties. The problem is that
>>> our notion of personal identity is dependent on the world in which  
>>> we
>>> evolved, where these duplication experiments don't happen. The
>>> conceptual difficulties vanish if we say that there is no such
>>> metaphysical entity as a person persisting through time, but  
>>> rather a
>>> set of observer moments, each one complete in itself and independent
>>> from the others, which only associate due to their information  
>>> content
>>> - their psychological connectedness. In other words, we all survive
>>> only momentarily, but we have the illusion of persisting through  
>>> time
>>> due to memory, quasi-memory or partial memory.
>>
>> I agree, but this does not answer the question. To extract the
>> physical laws we have to define that psychological connectness, and  
>> it
>> refers to the notion of person. It is no metaphysical than atoms
>> molecules or galaxies. Those are also mind composition which can be
>> considered as relative stable and useful constructs. We have to  
>> relate
>> those things, to extract information from the assumptions. The point
>> is no more philosophical.
>
> A person can be well-defined in the same way as, say, the Middle Ages
> can be well-defined, simply by agreeing on a particular range of
> dates. But the notion of "Middle Ages" is not basic to physics.

At this stage, physics is what we have to explain.

> A
> historian could come along and argue for one reason and another that
> the Middle Ages should not be considered to have ended until the year
> 1800, and although we might disagree with him we can't say that he is
> wrong in the same way he would be wrong if he claimed that the British
> landed in Australia in 1066. Similarly with personhood, we could come
> up with a definition, eg. that a person consists of the series or
> person-stages such that each person-stage shares some memories with
> the preceding and succeeding person-stage, but you wouldn't be wrong
> if you rejected the definition, in the way you could be wrong about a
> matter of fact concerning a particular person-stage.

I don't understand the analogy, because something like "Middle Ages"  
is not supposed to have an inner subjectivity. And we have to put the  
probabilities on the possible inner expectations, when trying to  
extract physics from computer science.

>
>
>>> I would consider a period of consciousness with complete destruction
>>> of the ego, such as induced by Salvia Divinorum, as equivalent to a
>>> period of unconsciousness or an unrelated person's consciousness,
>>> provided there were no memory of the event as the experience was
>>> resolving.
>>
>> But the amnesic, the dreamer and the salvia experiencer have a memory
>> of the events. Kelly did not dream that he disappears, but that he  
>> was
>> 7 old. To eliminate the first person white rabbits, the devil comes
>> from the fact that we have to use *some* notion of person.
>
> If memories of the event are retained then it is possible to define a
> persisting person. If all memories are lost and never return, then we
> may as well say the original person has died.

I am not sure. Unless you identify death and amnesia. But that is what  
makes the trouble for extracting physics from numbers.
What is your opinion for the "Alzheimer" problem I just asked to  
Quentin.

We are in deep waters here, and I apology if I am pushing too much.  
With AUDA, the math shows that the notion of person is unavoidable,  
for any sufficiently rich (Lobian) machine. I believe more in persons  
than atoms, but I have to explain the atoms from a notion of  
continuity of persons, and I think the continuity is not in the  
memories, but in the self-referential loop itself.

Bruno

http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/




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[Brent Meeker-2]

Bruno Marchal wrote:

> Hello Quentin,
>
> Le 30-mars-09, à 20:03, Quentin Anciaux a écrit :
>
>>
>>
>> 2009/3/30 Bruno Marchal <marchal@... <mailto:marchal@...>>
>>>
>>> On 30 Mar 2009, at 17:03, Quentin Anciaux wrote:
>>>
>>>> Hi,
>>>>
>>>> 2009/3/30 Bruno Marchal <marchal@... <mailto:marchal@...>>
>>>>>
>>>>> Hi Kelly, and others,
>>>>>
>>>>> Well, thanks for your report. Did you smoke the extract? It usually
>>>>> last for 4 minutes. It is amazing it did last so long with you, I know
>>>>> only one case of an experience lasting 20 minutes. I am happy you
>>>>> found
>>>>> your experience interesting. You can consult and discuss your
>>>>> experience, and those of others here:
>>>>> http://www.entheogen.com/forum/forumdisplay.php?f=135
>>>>>
>>>>> Now the real question is, does that experience helped in
>>>>> providing, for
>>>>> example, an answer to my last remark to Quentin?
>>>>>
>>>>> I quote the question again. It is important concerning
>>>>> comp-immortality, and eventually how to derive physics from computer
>>>>> science.
>>>>> I do think such a question is difficult, and show the weakness in
>>>>> identifying the self with personal memories, and this justifies the
>>>>> necessity of the AUDA move, I think.
>>>>>
>>>>> Of course, if you enjoy dream-state-like, you can enjoy Salvia without
>>>>> troubling yourself with hard metaphysical questions. Yet I would be
>>>>> interesting if Quentin or Stathis, or anyone, could acknowledge a
>>>>> conceptual difficulty here.
>>>>>
>>>>> <<Hmmm...
>>>>> I ask you, and others, this question. What is the probability "now",
>>>>> that you will find yourself in Washington and Moscow the 24 december
>>>>> 2009, when you are annihilated in Brussels, now, (17 March 2009) and
>>>>> reconstituted in both Moscow and Washington the 18 March 2009, say)?
>>>>> The problem is that the reconstitution machine did dysfunction in
>>>>> Washington, so that, from the 18 March 2009 up to the 20 Augustus 2009
>>>>> you (the you in Washington) suffered a  "total amnesia".  And then,
>>>>> "you" recovered slowly and progressively from that through adequate
>>>>> medication up to a total recall, the 23 December (and none of yous did
>>>>> move from W or M).
>>>>
>>>> Well I think all of this depends on the fact that your memories
>>>> "come back". If it doesn't then I will not be in washington, cqfd.
>>> What if half of your memory come back?
>> Well, it would be a half me continuation... :-)
>
>
> Hmm... ":-)" indeed.
>
>
>
>>
>> And in the setup explained here... Plain me continuation would be the
>> one in Moscow... and Half me would be in washington.
>
>
> I am not sure this makes sense.
>
>
>
>> If me now could meet both of me plain and half ... I would certainly
>> identify current me to be plain me.
>
>
> You can care about him more, but you cannot identify yourself with, in
> the usual first person way.
> It is some another person, from your 1-point of view.
>
>
>
>> While I would care for half me, I care less of him than plain me.
>
>
> Exactly.
>
>
>
>
>> But if no memories at all are left I wouldn't identify him as myself
>> like I don't identify you (nor any future you) as myself.
>
>
> You could be astonished. I know you don't like the idea.
>
>
>
>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> What you're talking about salvia (loosing your personnal identity
>>>> during the experience) is only correct because you have memories of
>>>> it (salvia experience) on your current self which knows he is
>>>> Bruno. If you had no memories of it then it makes no sense to say
>>>> you did loose your "identity".
>>>
>>> Yes, but retrospectively, I can assert that I remain conscious,
>>> despite the loss of identity. So, why should we not take such
>>> "computational ontinuations" into account, in the immortality
>>> question, and in the hunt of 1-white rabbits? This is certainly not
>>> clear for me.
>>>
>>
>> We should take in account those continuation where the memory loss is
>> temporary...
>
>
> This can make sense. We already know that the "probabilities" can
> "retro-propagate". I remain a bit skeptical, because I feel like I am
> the owner of memories, not like I am those memories.
> The easiest self-duplication experiences show that we are not our bodies.

Yet they assume we are our bodies; otherwise duplicating the body
wouldn't duplicate the self.  Suppose the duplication were performed
this way.  You get into a sensory deprivation tank and after and hour or
so you are duplicated, along with the tank.  Because you are still in
the tank you are not having any external perceptions.  Would there be
two of you?  Or would there only be two when one or both of you exited
the tank?

> Thought experiment with amnesia, which I have banned form my theses
> and publications, shows that we neither our memories. I can understand
> that some would conclude we are nothing, but I think we keep remaining
> the "universal person", the one described by the third hypostases.
> That entity can be conscious, even if out of time and space, indeed
> AUDA shows that it is the builder of time and space. I thought enough
> time has to be created in order for consciousness to operate, and it
> is here that salivia divinorum seems to force me to revise that
> opinion. (I am amazed, and I am sure of nothing, here. I push to the
> limit). This would answer a question raised a long time ago on the
> list: how many person are they. Answer: possibly one.
>
>
>> not the one where I become you. The contrary is like the believer in
>> reincarnation, if you don't remember your past live then it is the
>> same as you didn't have any pas live and on a personal and selfish
>> view, totally useless to the current live. What's the point to
>> survive/reincarnate if there is nothing left of you..
>
>
> Loosing memories does not mean that nothing is left of you. Especially
> if you keep consciousness. You can forget your past identity, and
> still keep anything for having a personal identity. In particular the
> self-referential motor.  In the salvia experience, I belong to those
> who does not want really to come back. Sometimes memories ... well, I
> don't need them all. It is useful locally, when you are young, but it
> can be heavy too, especially when you are older. It is important for
> history learning, and for not repeating errors, but it is like a
> ladder, at some point it can be better to forget, and jump to
> something else.
> Also, we forget all the time, many things. Do I die because I forget
> some dreams this night?
>
>
>
>> I don't call that surviving... I don't care if my body doesn't
>> biologically survive... I care that *I* (my
>> mind/memories/experiences) survive.
>
>
> The problem is not what about we care, but how to compute the first
> person indeterminacy in extreme situation. According to you, the comp
> immortality or the quantum immortality makes sense only for those
> continuations which keep all or most the memories. I think, currently
> and without any certainty, that the notion of relative "normal worlds"
> or relative "normal continuations will be prevalent, possibly against
> our wishes.
> To take a not so funny example, suppose someone get Alzheimer, and
> that at some time t, he forget most of his life events. Would you say
> that from his own point of view, he does not feel sick and keep its
> memory thanks to the continuations where rare (in Everett sense) lucky
> quantum events prevent his disease to develop?

I think we need to distinguish different stages of memory.   You can
certainly be yourself without long-term memories: memories of you
childhood or even of yesterday.  Not forming any short term, ~minutes,
memories produces confusion and difficulty in functioning but one can
still recognize the personality.  My father had Alzheimer's and that's
how he was; although in the early stages of Alzheimer's the person tends
to remember with clarity events of their youth.  But there is also very
short term, ~second, memory which allows us to perceive the continuity
of music and our surroundings.  Without that, I think it would be hard
to even be conscious.

Brent

>
>
>
>>  
>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> As for conscious dream... I don't think you *do* know you're
>>>> conscious while dreaming, but you do know it after the dreaming
>>>> experience.
>>>
>>> John Mikes seems to think so too, but here I certainly disagree.
>>> Lucid dreamer, who are verifiably in the paradoxical state of dream
>>> (through EEG) , can communicate with the observer in the lab,
>>> through eyes moves or through extremity of fingers (which are not
>>> paralysed).
>>
>> Well do they ? Does the dreamer remember interacting with the
>> observer (the real one) ? I know that outside sound/temperature/...
>> act on the dream, just because while dreaming we are never truly and
>> completly disconnected from the outside... But it says nothing about
>> the consciousness of the dreamer. The dreamer remember after being
>> awake he was somehow conscious, but was he really ? I do remember
>> conscious dream (or so I called) still do not really believe I was in
>> the sense I was now.
>>
>>  They have made all the usual experience (singing, computing,
>> walking, running in the dream) and they have discover it generate the
>> same activity in the dream than in the waking life. The experience of
>> Laberge and Dement have definitely convinced me that the hypothesis
>> that we are unconscious during dream is badly founded.
>>> Consciousness should not be confused with awakeness.
>> Could you give me some links about those experiences ?
>
>
>
> I have the photocopies of the original papers, and some selected
> papers book. You will find the references in the chapter 3.1 of
> "Conscience et Mécanisme" (which is the chapter on "dreams, brains and
> reality").
>
> You could also google on "laberge dement lucid", let us see:
>
> http://www.lucidity.com/SleepAndCognition.html
>
> This relates some of the experiences I was mentioning.
>
> Best,
>
> Bruno
>
>
> http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ <http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/%7Emarchal/>
>
> >

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[Quentin Anciaux-2]

2009/3/31 Bruno Marchal <marchal@...>

Hello Quentin,

Le 30-mars-09, à 20:03, Quentin Anciaux a écrit :

2009/3/30 Bruno Marchal <marchal@...>

On 30 Mar 2009, at 17:03, Quentin Anciaux wrote:

Hi,

2009/3/30 Bruno Marchal <marchal@...>

Hi Kelly, and others,

Well, thanks for your report. Did you smoke the extract? It usually

last for 4 minutes. It is amazing it did last so long with you, I know

only one case of an experience lasting 20 minutes. I am happy you found

your experience interesting. You can consult and discuss your

experience, and those of others here:

http://www.entheogen.com/forum/forumdisplay.php?f=135

Now the real question is, does that experience helped in providing, for

example, an answer to my last remark to Quentin?

I quote the question again. It is important concerning

comp-immortality, and eventually how to derive physics from computer

science.

I do think such a question is difficult, and show the weakness in

identifying the self with personal memories, and this justifies the

necessity of the AUDA move, I think.

Of course, if you enjoy dream-state-like, you can enjoy Salvia without

troubling yourself with hard metaphysical questions. Yet I would be

interesting if Quentin or Stathis, or anyone, could acknowledge a

conceptual difficulty here.

<<Hmmm...

I ask you, and others, this question. What is the probability "now",

that you will find yourself in Washington and Moscow the 24 december

2009, when you are annihilated in Brussels, now, (17 March 2009) and

reconstituted in both Moscow and Washington the 18 March 2009, say)?

The problem is that the reconstitution machine did dysfunction in

Washington, so that, from the 18 March 2009 up to the 20 Augustus 2009

you (the you in Washington) suffered a  "total amnesia".  And then,

"you" recovered slowly and progressively from that through adequate

medication up to a total recall, the 23 December (and none of yous did

move from W or M).

Well I think all of this depends on the fact that your memories "come back". If it doesn't then I will not be in washington, cqfd.

What if half of your memory come back?

Well, it would be a half me continuation... :-)

Hmm... ":-)" indeed.

And in the setup explained here... Plain me continuation would be the one in Moscow... and Half me would be in washington.

I am not sure this makes sense.

If me now could meet both of me plain and half ... I would certainly identify current me to be plain me.

You can care about him more, but you cannot identify yourself with, in the usual first person way. 

It is some another person, from your 1-point of view.

Well, I'm / will be every continuation that have as past event current me. So of course, in your setup I'll be the one that lost his memory... but I'll also be the one that didn't (while none of them will be the other, but current I (so me now) is a past I of both). And for what I care, it's the only thing that's needed.

 

While I would care for half me, I care less of him than plain me.

Exactly.

But if no memories at all are left I wouldn't identify him as myself like I don't identify you (nor any future you) as myself.

You could be astonished. I know you don't like the idea.

Well the day I'm you I'm no more me so it is a question of definition of what I/you/we are, what is a person, what is an individual, what is identity.
 

What you're talking about salvia (loosing your personnal identity during the experience) is only correct because you have memories of it (salvia experience) on your current self which knows he is Bruno. If you had no memories of it then it makes no sense to say you did loose your "identity".

Yes, but retrospectively, I can assert that I remain conscious, despite the loss of identity. So, why should we not take such "computational ontinuations" into account, in the immortality question, and in the hunt of 1-white rabbits? This is certainly not clear for me.

We should take in account those continuation where the memory loss is temporary...

This can make sense. We already know that the "probabilities" can "retro-propagate". I remain a bit skeptical, because I feel like I am the owner of memories, not like I am those memories.
The easiest self-duplication experiences show that we are not our bodies. Thought experiment with amnesia, which I have banned form my theses and publications, shows that we neither our memories. I can understand that some would conclude we are nothing, but I think we keep remaining the "universal person", the one described by the third hypostases. That entity can be conscious, even if out of time and space, indeed AUDA shows that it is the builder of time and space. I thought enough time has to be created in order for consciousness to operate, and it is here that salivia divinorum seems to force me to revise that opinion. (I am amazed, and I am sure of nothing, here. I push to the limit). This would answer a question raised a long time ago on the list: how many person are they. Answer: possibly one.

Well no, there are more than one and it must be so on my definition of what constitute a person (and it includes self memories/experiences). If you dismiss that as fundamental in a person then yes... but it doesn't shed any light on what we are.
 

not the one where I become you. The contrary is like the believer in reincarnation, if you don't remember your past live then it is the same as you didn't have any pas live and on a personal and selfish view, totally useless to the current live. What's the point to survive/reincarnate if there is nothing left of you..

Loosing memories does not mean that nothing is left of you. Especially if you keep consciousness.

The you that keep consciousness is no more me, so for all practical purpose it is really the same thing as saying I'm dead and a new person is there.

 

You can forget your past identity, and still keep anything for having a personal identity. In particular the self-referential motor.  In the salvia experience, I belong to those who does not want really to come back. Sometimes memories ... well, I don't need them all. It is useful locally, when you are young, but it can be heavy too, especially when you are older. It is important for history learning, and for not repeating errors, but it is like a ladder, at some point it can be better to forget, and jump to something else.
Also, we forget all the time, many things. Do I die because I forget some dreams this night?

Well it depends the amount of what you forget and what you forget... obviously forgetting what you had for dinner yesterday, dream you had last night does not constitute a death condition... but forgetting your life, your name, your friends, your previous feelings, your knowing is like death.

There must be some point in forgetting after which you 'now' is re
 

I don't call that surviving... I don't care if my body doesn't biologically survive... I care that *I* (my mind/memories/experiences) survive.

The problem is not what about we care, but how to compute the first person indeterminacy in extreme situation. According to you, the comp immortality or the quantum immortality makes sense only for those continuations which keep all or most the memories. I think, currently and without any certainty, that the notion of relative "normal worlds" or relative "normal continuations will be prevalent, possibly against our wishes. 

To take a not so funny example, suppose someone get Alzheimer, and that at some time t, he forget most of his life events. Would you say that from his own point of view, he does not feel sick and keep its memory thanks to the continuations where rare (in Everett sense) lucky quantum events prevent his disease to develop?

No, but I would say that there exists (if QI is true) some place where a "normal" continuation of him exists (at each point in the disease till total oblivion), and that's enough.

And if you want to know my next expectation in the following case:

1- next moment with full memories
2- next moment with half memories
3- next moment with no memories
4- dead

I would expect from 1st pov to only end up in 1 or 2. 3 and 4 are impossible from 1st pov. (this is an example, the next possible moments should form a continuum).

Regards,
Quentin
 

 

As for conscious dream... I don't think you *do* know you're conscious while dreaming, but you do know it after the dreaming experience.

John Mikes seems to think so too, but here I certainly disagree. Lucid dreamer, who are verifiably in the paradoxical state of dream (through EEG) , can communicate with the observer in the lab, through eyes moves or through extremity of fingers (which are not paralysed).

Well do they ? Does the dreamer remember interacting with the observer (the real one) ? I know that outside sound/temperature/... act on the dream, just because while dreaming we are never truly and completly disconnected from the outside... But it says nothing about the consciousness of the dreamer. The dreamer remember after being awake he was somehow conscious, but was he really ? I do remember conscious dream (or so I called) still do not really believe I was in the sense I was now.

 They have made all the usual experience (singing, computing, walking, running in the dream) and they have discover it generate the same activity in the dream than in the waking life. The experience of Laberge and Dement have definitely convinced me that the hypothesis that we are unconscious during dream is badly founded. 

Consciousness should not be confused with awakeness.

Could you give me some links about those experiences ?

I have the photocopies of the original papers, and some selected papers book. You will find the references in the chapter 3.1 of "Conscience et Mécanisme" (which is the chapter on "dreams, brains and reality").

You could also google on "laberge dement lucid", let us see:

http://www.lucidity.com/SleepAndCognition.html

This relates some of the experiences I was mentioning.

Best,

Bruno

http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/

--
All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain.

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[Stathis Papaioannou-2]

2009/4/1 Bruno Marchal <marchal@...>:

>> A
>> historian could come along and argue for one reason and another that
>> the Middle Ages should not be considered to have ended until the year
>> 1800, and although we might disagree with him we can't say that he is
>> wrong in the same way he would be wrong if he claimed that the British
>> landed in Australia in 1066. Similarly with personhood, we could come
>> up with a definition, eg. that a person consists of the series or
>> person-stages such that each person-stage shares some memories with
>> the preceding and succeeding person-stage, but you wouldn't be wrong
>> if you rejected the definition, in the way you could be wrong about a
>> matter of fact concerning a particular person-stage.
>
> I don't understand the analogy, because something like "Middle Ages"
> is not supposed to have an inner subjectivity. And we have to put the
> probabilities on the possible inner expectations, when trying to
> extract physics from computer science.

The subjective experience of an observer moment is not problematic.
What is problematic is the *relationship* between separate observer
moments: are they different stages in the life of a particular person
or not? The answer to this question seems to me to be ultimately
arbitrary, in the same way that it is ultimately arbitrary to say
whether 1400 AD was in the Middle Ages or not.

> I am not sure. Unless you identify death and amnesia. But that is what
> makes the trouble for extracting physics from numbers.
> What is your opinion for the "Alzheimer" problem I just asked to
> Quentin.

I would say that if you are at a fork where one version of you loses
all memories and another does not, then you will find yourself going
down the no memory loss path. It is more complicated if the memory
loss is gradual or partial: you might find yourself fading away and QI
won't save you.

> We are in deep waters here, and I apology if I am pushing too much.
> With AUDA, the math shows that the notion of person is unavoidable,
> for any sufficiently rich (Lobian) machine. I believe more in persons
> than atoms, but I have to explain the atoms from a notion of
> continuity of persons, and I think the continuity is not in the
> memories, but in the self-referential loop itself.


--
Stathis Papaioannou

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[Bruno Marchal]

On 01 Apr 2009, at 11:30, Quentin Anciaux wrote:

2009/3/31 Bruno Marchal <marchal@...>

Hello Quentin,

Le 30-mars-09, à 20:03, Quentin Anciaux a écrit :

2009/3/30 Bruno Marchal <marchal@...>

On 30 Mar 2009, at 17:03, Quentin Anciaux wrote:

Hi,

2009/3/30 Bruno Marchal <marchal@...>

Hi Kelly, and others,

Well, thanks for your report. Did you smoke the extract? It usually

last for 4 minutes. It is amazing it did last so long with you, I know

only one case of an experience lasting 20 minutes. I am happy you found

your experience interesting. You can consult and discuss your

experience, and those of others here:

http://www.entheogen.com/forum/forumdisplay.php?f=135

Now the real question is, does that experience helped in providing, for

example, an answer to my last remark to Quentin?

I quote the question again. It is important concerning

comp-immortality, and eventually how to derive physics from computer

science.

I do think such a question is difficult, and show the weakness in

identifying the self with personal memories, and this justifies the

necessity of the AUDA move, I think.

Of course, if you enjoy dream-state-like, you can enjoy Salvia without

troubling yourself with hard metaphysical questions. Yet I would be

interesting if Quentin or Stathis, or anyone, could acknowledge a

conceptual difficulty here.

<<Hmmm...

I ask you, and others, this question. What is the probability "now",

that you will find yourself in Washington and Moscow the 24 december

2009, when you are annihilated in Brussels, now, (17 March 2009) and

reconstituted in both Moscow and Washington the 18 March 2009, say)?

The problem is that the reconstitution machine did dysfunction in

Washington, so that, from the 18 March 2009 up to the 20 Augustus 2009

you (the you in Washington) suffered a  "total amnesia".  And then,

"you" recovered slowly and progressively from that through adequate

medication up to a total recall, the 23 December (and none of yous did

move from W or M).

Well I think all of this depends on the fact that your memories "come back". If it doesn't then I will not be in washington, cqfd.

What if half of your memory come back?

Well, it would be a half me continuation... :-)

Hmm... ":-)" indeed.

And in the setup explained here... Plain me continuation would be the one in Moscow... and Half me would be in washington.

I am not sure this makes sense.

If me now could meet both of me plain and half ... I would certainly identify current me to be plain me.

You can care about him more, but you cannot identify yourself with, in the usual first person way. 

It is some another person, from your 1-point of view.

Well, I'm / will be every continuation that have as past event current me. So of course, in your setup I'll be the one that lost his memory... but I'll also be the one that didn't (while none of them will be the other, but current I (so me now) is a past I of both). And for what I care, it's the only thing that's needed.

OK (but then it seems to me that to that the attempts to predict the shape of mechanist first person (quantum or not) immortality can't avoid the continuation with partial amnesia, which indeed males the notion of person a bit fuzzy (but not necessarily vague, fuzziness makes only the border vague). 

Well the day I'm you I'm no more me so it is a question of definition of what I/you/we are, what is a person, what is an individual, what is identity.

What about waking up, and remembering having had both lifes. The disconnectedness of the two lives guaranties consistency, and can be seen, from the point of view of the one waking up, as a relative amnesia.

This can make sense. We already know that the "probabilities" can "retro-propagate". I remain a bit skeptical, because I feel like I am the owner of memories, not like I am those memories.
The easiest self-duplication experiences show that we are not our bodies. Thought experiment with amnesia, which I have banned form my theses and publications, shows that we neither our memories. I can understand that some would conclude we are nothing, but I think we keep remaining the "universal person", the one described by the third hypostases. That entity can be conscious, even if out of time and space, indeed AUDA shows that it is the builder of time and space. I thought enough time has to be created in order for consciousness to operate, and it is here that salivia divinorum seems to force me to revise that opinion. (I am amazed, and I am sure of nothing, here. I push to the limit). This would answer a question raised a long time ago on the list: how many person are they. Answer: possibly one.

Well no, there are more than one and it must be so on my definition of what constitute a person (and it includes self memories/experiences). If you dismiss that as fundamental in a person then yes... but it doesn't shed any light on what we are.

For being a person, what is fundamental is more akin to free will, and the ability to build memories, imo. Einstein at the age of seven is Einstein, and it is still Einstein at the age of 50, and the other way too. With time the memories "grows", inversing time is the amnesia path, the simpler way for backtracking. And it makes sense we can remember that we backtrack once we identify ourselves with something more stable than memories, something "observing" a more static pattern of relatively consistent memories. 

I can adopt you definition of person, when consciousness (unique) get trapped in flux it differentiated into different persons, but reverse the diagram and you get the fusion "process", with some training you can identify yourself with an amoeba, and it looks SD can help to put yourself in the place of another, very different *in appearance*.

The Salvia Divinorum experience  seems to be a two way amnesic road: back here you can't remember who you are there, and there, you can't remember who you are here. The very experience comes from the fact that the amnesias are not perfect. Some who smokes Salvia can live it as "coming back on earth". Oh no! Not again ...Typical example of someone who got a strong amnesy from here to there, and privation of amnesy from there to here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=30mzNPT7aAU&feature=channel

I think comp allows the two immortalities, you can stay in the Samsara as long as you wish, but you can go in the Nirvana with a bit of practice. "Going to Nirvana correspond to Plotinus' conversion I think.

'Who am I?" It is the favorite koan of Ramana Maharsi. Give me the answer, and I will give you the shape of your "immortality". Ultimately it is a private question.

 

not the one where I become you. The contrary is like the believer in reincarnation, if you don't remember your past live then it is the same as you didn't have any pas live and on a personal and selfish view, totally useless to the current live. What's the point to survive/reincarnate if there is nothing left of you..

Loosing memories does not mean that nothing is left of you. Especially if you keep consciousness.

The you that keep consciousness is no more me, so for all practical purpose it is really the same thing as saying I'm dead and a new person is there.

 

You can forget your past identity, and still keep anything for having a personal identity. In particular the self-referential motor.  In the salvia experience, I belong to those who does not want really to come back. Sometimes memories ... well, I don't need them all. It is useful locally, when you are young, but it can be heavy too, especially when you are older. It is important for history learning, and for not repeating errors, but it is like a ladder, at some point it can be better to forget, and jump to something else.
Also, we forget all the time, many things. Do I die because I forget some dreams this night?

Well it depends the amount of what you forget and what you forget... obviously forgetting what you had for dinner yesterday, dream you had last night does not constitute a death condition... but forgetting your life, your name, your friends, your previous feelings, your knowing is like death.

There must be some point in forgetting after which you 'now' is re

?

 

I don't call that surviving... I don't care if my body doesn't biologically survive... I care that *I* (my mind/memories/experiences) survive.

The problem is not what about we care, but how to compute the first person indeterminacy in extreme situation. According to you, the comp immortality or the quantum immortality makes sense only for those continuations which keep all or most the memories. I think, currently and without any certainty, that the notion of relative "normal worlds" or relative "normal continuations will be prevalent, possibly against our wishes. 

To take a not so funny example, suppose someone get Alzheimer, and that at some time t, he forget most of his life events. Would you say that from his own point of view, he does not feel sick and keep its memory thanks to the continuations where rare (in Everett sense) lucky quantum events prevent his disease to develop?

No, but I would say that there exists (if QI is true) some place where a "normal" continuation of him exists (at each point in the disease till total oblivion), and that's enough.

And if you want to know my next expectation in the following case:

1- next moment with full memories
2- next moment with half memories
3- next moment with no memories
4- dead

I would expect from 1st pov to only end up in 1 or 2.

Your choice, but it has an impact on the physics possible.

3 and 4 are impossible from 1st pov. (this is an example, the next possible moments should form a continuum).

4  is impossible, but I think 3 is possible (and even rich and interesting state of consciousness).  It could be the consciousness state of the arithmetical third hypostase, the universal soul, the universal (and self-unnameable) arithmetical first person, obtained by linking justification of arithmetical sentences with the truth of those arithmetical sentences: incompleteness provides a shift of logics.

Bruno

http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/

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[Bruno Marchal]

On 31 Mar 2009, at 19:06, Brent Meeker wrote:




> Yet they assume we are our bodies; otherwise duplicating the body
> wouldn't duplicate the self.

We just bet on a level such that the self is incarnate in a digital  
way by the body.



> Suppose the duplication were performed
> this way.  You get into a sensory deprivation tank and after and  
> hour or
> so you are duplicated, along with the tank.  Because you are still in
> the tank you are not having any external perceptions.  Would there be
> two of you?  Or would there only be two when one or both of you exited
> the tank?

before exiting the tank: there is one first person. two third person.
After: two first person too.

>
> I think we need to distinguish different stages of memory.   You can
> certainly be yourself without long-term memories: memories of you
> childhood or even of yesterday.  Not forming any short term, ~minutes,
> memories produces confusion and difficulty in functioning but one can
> still recognize the personality.  My father had Alzheimer's and that's
> how he was; although in the early stages of Alzheimer's the person  
> tends
> to remember with clarity events of their youth.  But there is also  
> very
> short term, ~second, memory which allows us to perceive the continuity
> of music and our surroundings.  Without that, I think it would be hard
> to even be conscious.

This is what I am doubting now.


Bruno



http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/




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[Bruno Marchal]

On 01 Apr 2009, at 12:39, Stathis Papaioannou wrote:

>
> 2009/4/1 Bruno Marchal <marchal@...>:
>
>>> A
>>> historian could come along and argue for one reason and another that
>>> the Middle Ages should not be considered to have ended until the  
>>> year
>>> 1800, and although we might disagree with him we can't say that he  
>>> is
>>> wrong in the same way he would be wrong if he claimed that the  
>>> British
>>> landed in Australia in 1066. Similarly with personhood, we could  
>>> come
>>> up with a definition, eg. that a person consists of the series or
>>> person-stages such that each person-stage shares some memories with
>>> the preceding and succeeding person-stage, but you wouldn't be wrong
>>> if you rejected the definition, in the way you could be wrong  
>>> about a
>>> matter of fact concerning a particular person-stage.
>>
>> I don't understand the analogy, because something like "Middle Ages"
>> is not supposed to have an inner subjectivity. And we have to put the
>> probabilities on the possible inner expectations, when trying to
>> extract physics from computer science.
>
> The subjective experience of an observer moment is not problematic.
> What is problematic is the *relationship* between separate observer
> moments: are they different stages in the life of a particular person
> or not? The answer to this question seems to me to be ultimately
> arbitrary, in the same way that it is ultimately arbitrary to say
> whether 1400 AD was in the Middle Ages or not.

There is a part of arbitrariness, but the whole difference and  
relative difference are not arbitrary. Bu UDA the laws of physics  
would be aritrary.

>
>
>> I am not sure. Unless you identify death and amnesia. But that is  
>> what
>> makes the trouble for extracting physics from numbers.
>> What is your opinion for the "Alzheimer" problem I just asked to
>> Quentin.
>
> I would say that if you are at a fork where one version of you loses
> all memories and another does not, then you will find yourself going
> down the no memory loss path.

At which point? Also, why is it that we din't survive them to the  
continuation where we don't ever mage very weird (amnesic) dreams.
We would not survive salvia at all.





> It is more complicated if the memory
> loss is gradual or partial: you might find yourself fading away and QI
> won't save you.

If you survive, in Quentin ways, with your perfect memories, you will  
have to develop an infinitely growing brains. I think comp allows much  
more variate forms of immortality, related to the arbitrary part  
mentioned above. But it is not really arbitrary, it generates  
different sort of comp practice, especially the digital medicinal and  
funeral practices. Nothing is simple here, imo.

Bruno

http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/




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[Stathis Papaioannou-2]

2009/4/2 Bruno Marchal <marchal@...>:

>> I would say that if you are at a fork where one version of you loses
>> all memories and another does not, then you will find yourself going
>> down the no memory loss path.
>
> At which point? Also, why is it that we din't survive them to the
> continuation where we don't ever mage very weird (amnesic) dreams.
> We would not survive salvia at all.

This sounds a bit like the argument which says that if QI is true, we
could never fall asleep, since we don't experience unconsciousness and
therefore we would only experience the worlds where we stay awake
indefinitely. That argument is invalid, unless we are falling asleep
permanently, i.e. dying. If we fall asleep and wake up again, or
experience amnesia and recover, then the worlds where that happens are
*not* excluded by QI. They are simply worlds where you have a gap in
consciousness, as valid when you are calculating subjective
probabilities as the (in general far less common) worlds where there
is no such gap.



--
Stathis Papaioannou

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[Brent Meeker-2]

Stathis Papaioannou wrote:

> 2009/4/2 Bruno Marchal <marchal@...>:
>
>  
>>> I would say that if you are at a fork where one version of you loses
>>> all memories and another does not, then you will find yourself going
>>> down the no memory loss path.
>>>      
>> At which point? Also, why is it that we din't survive them to the
>> continuation where we don't ever mage very weird (amnesic) dreams.
>> We would not survive salvia at all.
>>    
>
> This sounds a bit like the argument which says that if QI is true, we
> could never fall asleep, since we don't experience unconsciousness and
> therefore we would only experience the worlds where we stay awake
> indefinitely. That argument is invalid, unless we are falling asleep
> permanently, i.e. dying. If we fall asleep and wake up again, or
> experience amnesia and recover, then the worlds where that happens are
> *not* excluded by QI. They are simply worlds where you have a gap in
> consciousness, as valid when you are calculating subjective
> probabilities as the (in general far less common) worlds where there
> is no such gap.
>
>
>  

But if you're going to derive physics from consciousness you need to
explain what connects across the gap - why is it still "you".  I
appreciate that part of the answer is memories, although Bruno seems to
think they are inessential.  But even if they are part of the answer
there still seems to me to be a problem in that almost all memories are
*not* in consciousness at any one time.  So must we invoke "unconscious
memories" (which are where?) or some other factor that provides the
continuity of self or do we simply assert that you are no one in
particular when you are not remembering anything.  My speculation is
that there there is subconscious "memory" on the very short term,
~second, which provides continuity .  This operates even when you are
asleep so that there is continuity of events in you dreams.  If you
suffer a concussion the continuity is broken and you have gap in  memory
and in consciousness.  This immediate memory provides continuity between
times when you recall long-term memories, which are the ones Quentin is
concerned with.

Brent

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[Stathis Papaioannou-2]

2009/4/3 Brent Meeker <meekerdb@...>:

> But if you're going to derive physics from consciousness you need to
> explain what connects across the gap - why is it still "you".  I
> appreciate that part of the answer is memories, although Bruno seems to
> think they are inessential.  But even if they are part of the answer
> there still seems to me to be a problem in that almost all memories are
> *not* in consciousness at any one time.  So must we invoke "unconscious
> memories" (which are where?) or some other factor that provides the
> continuity of self or do we simply assert that you are no one in
> particular when you are not remembering anything.  My speculation is
> that there there is subconscious "memory" on the very short term,
> ~second, which provides continuity .  This operates even when you are
> asleep so that there is continuity of events in you dreams.  If you
> suffer a concussion the continuity is broken and you have gap in  memory
> and in consciousness.  This immediate memory provides continuity between
> times when you recall long-term memories, which are the ones Quentin is
> concerned with.

I have been using the term "memories" to include more than just long
term memories. For example, I have a feeling of "being me" which
persists from moment to moment. Even though I can't put this feeling
into words, I would know immediately if something happens to change
it, since then I would no longer "feel myself". While specific to each
person, nevertheless this basal feeling would be more generic than the
feeling + superimposed complex cognition, since the latter would have
higher information content.


--
Stathis Papaioannou

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[Brent Meeker-2]

Stathis Papaioannou wrote:

> 2009/4/3 Brent Meeker <meekerdb@...>:
>
>  
>> But if you're going to derive physics from consciousness you need to
>> explain what connects across the gap - why is it still "you".  I
>> appreciate that part of the answer is memories, although Bruno seems to
>> think they are inessential.  But even if they are part of the answer
>> there still seems to me to be a problem in that almost all memories are
>> *not* in consciousness at any one time.  So must we invoke "unconscious
>> memories" (which are where?) or some other factor that provides the
>> continuity of self or do we simply assert that you are no one in
>> particular when you are not remembering anything.  My speculation is
>> that there there is subconscious "memory" on the very short term,
>> ~second, which provides continuity .  This operates even when you are
>> asleep so that there is continuity of events in you dreams.  If you
>> suffer a concussion the continuity is broken and you have gap in  memory
>> and in consciousness.  This immediate memory provides continuity between
>> times when you recall long-term memories, which are the ones Quentin is
>> concerned with.
>>    
>
> I have been using the term "memories" to include more than just long
> term memories. For example, I have a feeling of "being me" which
> persists from moment to moment. Even though I can't put this feeling
> into words, I would know immediately if something happens to change
> it, since then I would no longer "feel myself". While specific to each
> person, nevertheless this basal feeling would be more generic than the
> feeling + superimposed complex cognition, since the latter would have
> higher information content.
>
>
>  

And doesn't this feeling of "being me" requires very short terms
(~second) memory?  I've called it "immediate memory" to distinguish it
from the short term memory which seems to be on the order of a few minutes.

Brent

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