Thread: We can prove dream sharing is real

Fuck me. Oh my god. I just lost everything I typed. Oh my god. Time to start over.

Shadowofwind: I'm glad we got a better look at what your experience actually is, your ideology, and what has lead you to think that way.

I know that it is only an analogy, but I would like to talk about your concept of history.

Originally Posted by shadowofwind

... there's nothing in known natural law that keeps the present state of reality from drifting in almost arbitrary directions, so long as the record of what came before, which is a part of the present state, moves with it. In other words, history can change as long as your memory changes with it, in which case there's no physical evidence that it changed.

History as a chain is as much a common concept as is the experience of self as a separate, mutually exclusive entity. You are wary of other common convictions, and advocate casting a new eye on them and banishing assumed preconceptions from your mind, yes? The visualization of history as a physical chain or rope is an assumed preconception, itself.

History is a causal chain, or braid thereof, as best we can discern. However, your notion of arbitrary "drifting" of a causal chain treats it as an actual physical chain. You've transformed a mental concept into a tangible thing, and assumed that it will behave in the same way. If you instead choose to visualize causal chains as a set of dominoes falling and striking each other, than the concept of drifting becomes much more difficult to imagine. Your pet hypothesis of causal chain drifting applies only to your special analogy of a physical chain, and I believe can be considered void since it only works relative to one man-fabricated visualization, and not for all valid ways of expressing causal chains. Moreover, you said that as far as you can tell, there's nothing in known natural law to stop it from drifting arbitrarily. In the case of physical chains, an object at rest stays at rest unless acted upon by a force. It won't just move willy-nilly. From where does the force come?

Similarly, fractals as an expression of self. At the very least, it is a fascinating concept. However, I could choose to view self as fractals, the Fibonacci sequence, a tesseract, etc. Fractals, fascinating as they are, seem an arbitrary assignment when pulled out of the infinite pool of concepts you could use. What argument do you have for fractals? I like fractals as a metaphor for self, it's a tidy explanation for a difficult concept. It's interesting and gives you something to think about and it helps you to understand some things-- but that does not mean reality mimics it. However, I'm treating self as though it is something that must be the same for everybody, a consistent experience. I could be and probably am wrong about that. Thinking about it now, it's far more likely to me that everyone experiences self in a way that they are free to choose. Regardless of that, though, the ability of your physical brain to share identity with another does not have to be true simply because you have chosen that expression of self.

Everything I have said has ignored your actual experience of premonitions and extended self, partially because I don't know how to deal with it and partially because I don't want to deal with it. It's hard to find a balance between theory and experience. I've made a lot of judgement of you but, as I have said, I do not have the experiences of you. It is as if my brain is "running a different operating system", you can tell me all you like and I appreciate it, but the best I can do is listen and mull it over a little-- I can't completely process the information because it I'm not compatible with it in my current form. These are difficult waters, because, in effect, you are describing sight to the blind man. Us blind men asked you to, though. We're curious.

I'm in the middle of two Dawkins books and one Greene. I need to stop procrastinating and finish them. Though Dawkins's worldview is somewhat arrogant and he has strong convictions on what can and cannot happen, he still leaves room for a sense of wonder and adventure in the world, I think. I'm referring more specifically to his Unweaving the Rainbow.

Originally Posted by OutlawPig

Fuck me. Oh my god. I just lost everything I typed. Oh my god. Time to start over.

It seems like you've lost your post more than once. Try doing CTRL - A then CTRL - X then CTRL -V before you try posting. That way, if you lose your post, you can just repaste your post by pressing CTRL - V again.