Talk-Polywell.org

... it could also be that Bussard jumped the gun and let his enthusiasm get the better of him, and it's time to look at other things. All I can tell you is that my usual sources have dried up. Totally. Not even idle chat. The total information blackout suggests that the news is good, perhaps really...

How can I and/or anyone else know this thing called I this thing called Physical and this thing called You exist? So what does exist anyway? How can I or anyone else confirm it? CKR The only thing "I" know absolutely for certain is this: I am aware. That's the only thing I can confirm. Everything e...

JohnSmith wrote:My problem is simply that after you're dead, the pause in your mind never resumes.

Agreed.

Of course, because I don't care about this illusion of continuity you seem so concerned about. True enough, I do feel attached to my continuity, even if it's an illusion. You claim to have let go of the self, which is honestly admirable. But you do still seem to be attached to the "pattern" of you....

No. What the Buddhists mean is that we are a collection of programs triggered by events. i.e. there is no gentle flow. There are big jumps. Sometimes very big jumps. I didn't mean to imply only gentle flow, just the sense of a point of view moving forward in time, gentle or otherwise. An extreme (i...

It doesn't matter if they're conscious 99.99% of the time. As long as we agree there are circumstances in which you are not conscious (even just periods of being knocked unconscious through physical trauma), then we agree your identity has temporal gaps. Every instant we are a slightly different pe...

I think what really bothers most people is the dilemma of the man in the water trap in The Prestige -- what if "I" am the copy that dies? Looking at your double watching you die, the instantaneous nature of identity becomes apparent. The instant you're created and face different reality as another ...