mitchell:
As the Buddhists pointed out a long time ago, the flow of time is actually an illusion. All that you actually experience at any given moment is your present sensory input, plus the memories of the past. But there are any number of experiences involving loss of consciousness that will show that the flow of time as we perceive it is completely subjective (not to say that there is no time “out there,” just that we don’t directly perceive it).
So while I agree that “something is happening,” it does not necessarily consist of one thing after another. Really it’s just another formulation of cogito ergo sum.
This is also relevant in response to Caledonian—the brain does not have to live for any sustained period of time. A Boltzmann brain can pop into existence fully oxygenated with the memories that it is me, typing this response, think about it for a few seconds, and then die of whatever brains die of in interstellar space. From inside the brain, there would be no way to know the difference.
Eliezer: Isn’t it sufficient to say that your brain has an expectation of order because that is how it’s evolved? And what would a brain with no expectation of order even look like? Is it meaningful to talk about a control system that has no model of the outside world?
mitchell: As the Buddhists pointed out a long time ago, the flow of time is actually an illusion. All that you actually experience at any given moment is your present sensory input, plus the memories of the past. But there are any number of experiences involving loss of consciousness that will show that the flow of time as we perceive it is completely subjective (not to say that there is no time “out there,” just that we don’t directly perceive it).
So while I agree that “something is happening,” it does not necessarily consist of one thing after another. Really it’s just another formulation of cogito ergo sum.
This is also relevant in response to Caledonian—the brain does not have to live for any sustained period of time. A Boltzmann brain can pop into existence fully oxygenated with the memories that it is me, typing this response, think about it for a few seconds, and then die of whatever brains die of in interstellar space. From inside the brain, there would be no way to know the difference.
Eliezer: Isn’t it sufficient to say that your brain has an expectation of order because that is how it’s evolved? And what would a brain with no expectation of order even look like? Is it meaningful to talk about a control system that has no model of the outside world?