A furry living in Berlin
Ben (Berlin)
Karma: 107
Cross-posted from my blog on github: https://benwheatley.github.io/blog/2025/06/22-13.21.36.html
“It isn’t magic”
Related anecdote:
In my 20s, but not before or since, I noticed sometimes experiencing an altered state if I was awake too long — not reliably when awake too long, but only when.
It wasn’t tiredness, at least not as I otherwise experience it, but rather it was as if everything ceased to be real and me part of that reality, that there was no longer a “me” watching the Cartesian theatre of the mind, that the Cartesian theatre was playing to an empty house. I was able to notice this and comment on it to others while in this state, and obviously form memories.
And then I was back to normal in the morning.
(…Assuming free markets, and rule of law, and AGI not taking over and wiping out humanity, and so on. I think those are highly dubious assumptions, but let’s not get into that here!)
Assuming all is correct, isn’t the answer therefore: “at least one of these assumptions must be false”?
(Personally I have long suspected that free markets are a gross oversimplification, but I’m not an economist; and even if I was, with those three options I’ve got reason to wish for that specific option)
I wish I’d thought of that with my mother’s dementia; I noticed a similar effect on the scale of minutes (hers was already quite severe by the time of the diagnosis), but I didn’t plan anything and I didn’t take enough notes at the time, so all I have for this is the anecdote.
Aye.
The one I notice the most is people saying “cows will still have to be milked”, without having realised automatic milking machines arrived in the early 90s.