From experiences back when I was young and religious, I’ve learned to recognize moments of satori as not much more than a high (have probably had 2-3 prior). I enjoy the experience, but I’ve learned skepticism and try not to place too much weight on them. I was more describing the causes for my emotional states rather than proclaiming new beliefs. But to be completely honest, for several minutes I was convinced that I had found the tree of life, so I won’t completely downplay what I wrote.
How much does the thrill of finally knowing the truth provide an incentive to believe that the ideas currently before you are indeed the truth, rather than just an interesting possibility?
I suspect it has evopsych roots relating to confidence, the measured benefits of a life with purpose, and good-enough knowledge.
Reading ‘t Hooft’s paper I could understand what he was saying, but I’m realizing that the physics is out of my current depth. And I understand the argument you explained about the flaws in spatial (as opposed to configuration) locality. I’ll update my statement that ‘Many-Worlds is intuitively correct’ to ‘Copenhagen is intuitively wrong,’ which I suppose is where my original logic should have taken me—I just didn’t consider strong MWI alternatives. Determinism kills quantum suicide, so I’ll have to move down the priority of cyronics (though the ‘if MWI then quantum suicide then cyronics’ logic still holds and I still think cyronics is a good idea. I do love me a good hedge bet). But like I said, I’m not at all qualified to start assigning likelyhoods here between different QM origins. This requires more study.
I don’t see the issue with consciousness as being represented by the pattern of our brains rather than the physicality of it. You are right that we may eventually find that we can never look at a brain with high enough resolution to emulate it. But based on cases of people entering a several-hour freeze before being revived, the consciousness mechanism is obviously robust and I say this points towards it being an engineering problem of getting everything correct enough. The viability of putting it on a computer once you have a high enough resolution scan is not an issue—worst case scenario you start from something like QM and work up. Again this assumes a level of the brain’s robustness (rounding errors shouldn’t crash the mind), but I would call that experimentally proven in today’s humans.
From experiences back when I was young and religious, I’ve learned to recognize moments of satori as not much more than a high (have probably had 2-3 prior). I enjoy the experience, but I’ve learned skepticism and try not to place too much weight on them. I was more describing the causes for my emotional states rather than proclaiming new beliefs. But to be completely honest, for several minutes I was convinced that I had found the tree of life, so I won’t completely downplay what I wrote.
I suspect it has evopsych roots relating to confidence, the measured benefits of a life with purpose, and good-enough knowledge.
Reading ‘t Hooft’s paper I could understand what he was saying, but I’m realizing that the physics is out of my current depth. And I understand the argument you explained about the flaws in spatial (as opposed to configuration) locality. I’ll update my statement that ‘Many-Worlds is intuitively correct’ to ‘Copenhagen is intuitively wrong,’ which I suppose is where my original logic should have taken me—I just didn’t consider strong MWI alternatives. Determinism kills quantum suicide, so I’ll have to move down the priority of cyronics (though the ‘if MWI then quantum suicide then cyronics’ logic still holds and I still think cyronics is a good idea. I do love me a good hedge bet). But like I said, I’m not at all qualified to start assigning likelyhoods here between different QM origins. This requires more study.
I don’t see the issue with consciousness as being represented by the pattern of our brains rather than the physicality of it. You are right that we may eventually find that we can never look at a brain with high enough resolution to emulate it. But based on cases of people entering a several-hour freeze before being revived, the consciousness mechanism is obviously robust and I say this points towards it being an engineering problem of getting everything correct enough. The viability of putting it on a computer once you have a high enough resolution scan is not an issue—worst case scenario you start from something like QM and work up. Again this assumes a level of the brain’s robustness (rounding errors shouldn’t crash the mind), but I would call that experimentally proven in today’s humans.