On 2/19/2013 3:36 PM, Jason Resch wrote:
On Tue, Feb 19, 2013 at 5:21 PM, meekerdb <meeke...@verizon.net
<mailto:meeke...@verizon.net>> wrote:
On 2/19/2013 1:45 PM, Jason Resch wrote:
On Tue, Feb 19, 2013 at 3:33 PM, meekerdb <meeke...@verizon.net
<mailto:meeke...@verizon.net>> wrote:
On 2/18/2013 10:49 PM, Jason Resch wrote:
3. We need not our memories to be ourselves. Imagine concentrating
heavily
on some task, such as taking an exam, or driving in perilous
conditions.
You become so focused on your task that you use almost none of your
personal long term memories. In principal, large portions of your
brain
could be disconnected without impacting your performance or
experience.
I think that is very doubtful. You seem to equate memory entirely with
conscious narrative memory, but what we think consciously is only a
small part
of our thinking. In fact it might be a quite small part that could be
disconnected. When I think of the solution to a problem it often just
'pops
into my head'. It obviously depended on my memory, because, for
example, I
didn't just unconsciously invent calculus to solve it.
Think of how many neurons are dedicated to other things completely
unrelated to
taking the test: appreciating music, catching a baseball, tasting food,
swimming,
and so on.
How do you know that catching a baseball is *completely* unrelated? I very
much
doubt that there is a one-to-one mapping between functions and neurons.
What is the information content of your current experience compared to the information
content of your entire brain? Do you think they are approximately 1:1, 1:10, 1:100?
I would guess it is somewhere less than 1:10, and thus the majority of the "me" in my
brain is of no consequence to my current observer moment,
How long is an observer moment? How about 1/100th of an observer moment? Taking a test
usually takes an hour. How are moments strung together to make "you"?
though there is little existing data regarding the information content of our conscious
experience, if you look at the bandwidth of the optic nerve, or auditory nerves, they
are very low compared to the total estimated storage capacity of the brain. What makes
this calculation more complex is that memories are integral to experience; about half
the traffic that goes into the visual cortex is from memory, and the other half from the
eyes.
Certianly, our experiences shape us in ways we aren't always aware, and
unconscious
thought plays a big part of solutions we come up with, but when you are for
instance, meditating and thinking of almost nothing, but how much of what
you
consider uniquely defines you as an individual, really goes into that
experience?
(of meditating, concentrating on an SAT question)?
What uniquely defines me as an individual (if I am unique) is my
moment-to-moment
position and viewpoint as well as my stream of consciousness over time
intervals. I
may have the same thought as you momentarily, but I'm seeing a different
room and
typing on a different keyboard and my next thought is different than yours.
If two people are in the same virtual reality so they see the same room and type on the
same keyboard, and they happen to have the same thought,
Then they are the same person in the virtual reality.
what principal do you use to say one thought is Brent's and another thought is that
person's?
If this is a virtual reality and there's another instance of exactly the same virtual
reality - then I'm Brent in both of them. Otherwise, I'm the one on the left.
Brent
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