From: Eliezer S. Yudkowsky (sentience@pobox.com)
Date: Tue Jul 13 1999 - 20:11:46 MDT
Lee Daniel Crocker wrote:
>
> Of course the mind can do it--every
> experience you have is processed by that wonderfully
> complex machine of your brain; why should it be any more
> immune to an occasional malfunction than any other machine?
> Isn't that a far simpler explanation of these experiences
> than accepting them at face value? Isn't that a more
> profitable line of research than any effort based on
> taking these claims at face value?
Or in other words, given the known fact that at least one set of saucer
experiences is the result of hallucinations, it's easier to hypothesize
that your own personal experiences - never mind other people's - are
false, than to hypothesize that aliens would behave in such weird,
pseudo-anthropomorphic ways...
But the really weird, and really frightening part, is that when the
brain malfunctions in that way, it usually becomes impossible for the
person to accept that vis experiences are hallucinations. No matter how
ridiculous, no matter how perfectly conforming to the standard report of
schizophrenia, the victim simply becomes unable to wield Occam's Razor.
Someday, when drugs are developed that can temporarily induce
schizophrenia or similar disorders, with an absolute guarantee of no
long-term side effects, I'd like to try it out - very briefly -
myself(*). I'd like to see if my mind is sufficiently
software-reengineered to remain sane despite massive perturbations;
failing that, it could be useful to know the first symptoms of
malfunction, in case something ever goes Really Wrong.
But what it truly is, I suppose, is sheer curiosity; the desire to face
a challenge; the need to know one's own mind; the same reason people are
so intrigued by split-brain experiments. Who's the actual master of my
mind? Is it really me, or am I just a surface veneer of rationality
laid over deeper forces that just happen to be cooperating? Do all my
hard-held mental disciplines work just because nothing else is opposing
them at the time? Organic insanity is the ultimate opponent, and
without facing it, there's no way I can ever really know.
--
sentience@pobox.com Eliezer S. Yudkowsky
http://pobox.com/~sentience/tmol-faq/meaningoflife.html
Running on BeOS Typing in Dvorak Programming with Patterns
Voting for Libertarians Heading for Singularity There Is A Better Way
(*) No, I'm *not* looking for a rematch.
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