I like the way that getting a vote on a random years-old LW post causes me to reread discussions that I’d completely forgotten about. Many communities have a cultural taboo on necro-ing threads; I appreciate the apparent absence of that here.
Storytelling and rhetoric suggest that a connecting thought or sentence should go here, although I do not recall experiencing one.
I notice that being told how to expect my brain to work seems to influence how I perceive my brain as working.
We have a pretty good grasp on the idea that each present moment could lead to many possible futures. We have a much worse grasp on the concept of how each present moment could have come from many possible pasts. Right now, someone somewhere in the world just flipped a coin or rolled a die. I don’t know nor care that it happened; it doesn’t have any traceable impact on me. Thus, my present after that action has as many possible pasts leading to it as there were possible outcomes of that stranger’s act of chance.
Did I think a connecting sentence earlier and then forget it? Or did I just leap from the first thought to the third, and only notice the apparent lack of a connector when I tried to put the thoughts into writing? Both those pasts lead to the same-looking present, so right now there’s no way to differentiate between them.
Later, there might be a way to differentiate. Later, I might end up in a present where only one of those explanations is in a plausible past for it. But not right now.
I like the way that getting a vote on a random years-old LW post causes me to reread discussions that I’d completely forgotten about. Many communities have a cultural taboo on necro-ing threads; I appreciate the apparent absence of that here.
https://scp-wiki.wikidot.com/scp-055 was mentioned in one such thread.
It primed me to notice myself forgetting details.
Storytelling and rhetoric suggest that a connecting thought or sentence should go here, although I do not recall experiencing one.
I notice that being told how to expect my brain to work seems to influence how I perceive my brain as working.
We have a pretty good grasp on the idea that each present moment could lead to many possible futures. We have a much worse grasp on the concept of how each present moment could have come from many possible pasts. Right now, someone somewhere in the world just flipped a coin or rolled a die. I don’t know nor care that it happened; it doesn’t have any traceable impact on me. Thus, my present after that action has as many possible pasts leading to it as there were possible outcomes of that stranger’s act of chance.
Did I think a connecting sentence earlier and then forget it? Or did I just leap from the first thought to the third, and only notice the apparent lack of a connector when I tried to put the thoughts into writing? Both those pasts lead to the same-looking present, so right now there’s no way to differentiate between them.
Later, there might be a way to differentiate. Later, I might end up in a present where only one of those explanations is in a plausible past for it. But not right now.