From: Hal Finney (hal@rain.org)
Date: Wed Feb 12 1997 - 23:31:48 MST
From: John K Clark <johnkc@well.com>
> Someday we will have one excellent theory of intelligence, but as for
> consciousness, well..., we'll have lots of them. I don't see how it would
> ever be possible to prove that one of those many theories was right and the
> others were wrong, because the only consciousness you could experiment on
> is the only one you know for sure to exist, your own, and that's not enough.
An idea which is very common in science fiction is being able to directly
experience another person's consciousness. This may be done through
telepathy, through mechanically assisted mind reading, through some kind
of upload/download process; a hundred different methods have probably
been described.
Do you think it would ever be possible to do this, or does this seem like
something which is fundamentally impossible? If it could be done, then
this could provide some insight into the nature of other beings'
consciousness.
Hal
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