From: Robert J. Bradbury (bradbury@aeiveos.com)
Date: Tue Jun 12 2001 - 18:44:25 MDT
On Mon Jun 11, John Clark wrote:
> I find out that for the first time since the Big Bang the worlds will
> diverge, in 10 seconds you will put a bullet in my head but my double will
> be spared, am I concerned?
You are only concerned if you do not realize that the entire
response you are experiencing is nothing more than a survival
instinct that has been programmed into your being by evolution.
The divergence occured the 60th of a second that you realized
the worlds would diverge.
The thought experiment is poor because it proposes a particularly
painful death potentially activating to activate the survival
instincts (i.e. its an automatic reaction having no conscious
thought associated with it). If I knew there were two duplicate
worlds (or a multiverse generated out of critical branch points)
I'd probably take more risks as I'd want to increase the number
of universes in which I'm generating futures.
> The bottom line is we don't have thoughts and emotions, we are thoughts and
> emotions, and the idea that the particular hardware that is rendering them
> changes their meaning is as crazy as my computer making the meaning of your
> post different from what it was on yours.
While I agree completely that identical hardware rendering identical
experiences in two locations makes those experiences the same (i.e.
there are no differences in meaning), I must strongly object to
the phrase "we don't have thoughts and emotions, we are thoughts
and emotions".
That is the *crucial* difference between an enlightened mind and
a non-enlightened mind. It is the critical distinction that
an enlightened mind "has" thoughts and emotions that allows
such a mind to consciously choose a best path -- rather than
"be" a bunch of thoughts and emtions that reacts entirely out
of a survival instinct choosing a path (presumably involving
self-survival) that it may later come to regret.
The critical distinction is that you are either driving evolution or
you are merely executing the program that evolution has handed you!
Be a selector or the selected!
Robert
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