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I go through this chain of logic every so often: What are the chances that anything only exists right now, and that this experience I'm having is 'special' in
by rytill 9y ago
I go through this chain of logic every so often:
What are the chances that anything only exists right now, and that this experience I'm having is 'special' in some way (e.g. significantly more likely to be occurring)? At first, it's fairly high.
Then, by thinking about all the other things in my memory, the probability of the experience being 'special' or 'more likely to be occurring' in some way significantly decreases. Why would my memory be complicated enough in a 'special' world to remember details about totally mundane things that seem to have happened a long time ago?
Both before and after the chain, I'm in the real-world state of mind. But during it, very fundamental probabilities shift. Am I being irrational here?
Tangential, but something that gives me a lot of respect for philosophers and psychonauts is that any significant discovery you make affects your world view irreversibly (unless you are good at selective denial). If you're happy with your current world view, and there's a chance that you would make a discovery that makes you unhappy, isn't it a mistake to keep going? But as a human, maybe part of what keeps you happy is that uninhibited, unworried revealing of new experiences.
- jblow 9y ago> Am I being irrational here? Not so much irrational as not particular enough; this line of reasoning doesn't really work. The thing is ... at any one instant, the amount of memory you are able to recall / visualize / etc is very small, and if your mind is occupied by that thought, you won't have any thoughts about the present simultaneously. It is only the apparent continuity of time that seems to link these things. So when you say "thinking about all the other things in my memory", well, you can't experience all the things that are supposedly in your memory. You can only experience one small part of that at any time. If there is only one time, then the other stuff does not exist, you just have confidence that it exists for some reason.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]