From: Phil Osborn (philosborn@altavista.com)
Date: Sat Dec 22 2001 - 17:20:30 MST
One of the real problems with the current HOS (human operating system) is that except in dream states or halucinations we cannot fully re-experience a past event. In part, this will predictably always be a problem, as there will always be a finite data handling capacity, and to consciously retrieve an experience from memory involves modeling ones self within ones current self, while in a dream state, one's current self - albeit a version of greatly diminished capacity - is modeled within the dream.
Making the dream itself - a modeling of reality, including other apparently conscious characters - is not so exceptional a feat, as in fact we essentially do that all the time from the very limited flow of sensory data. All that changes in essense is that that paltry flow is initiated from within the system. Those of us who have played with immersive VR also know how easilly and utterly completely the mind can be fooled into responding to a rather low-res reality as though it were absolutely real and serious.
In the '60's, I recall using a varient of dexadrine to study - or simply stay awake - during a couple years of night watchman jobs while getting my Physics BS. One of these compounds, which was cooked up by a chemistry grad student friend, really did little to keep me awake, but caused me to fall into these amazing lucid dreams. So, by temporarilly jacking up the system capacities, I was able to almost fully experience an internally generated reality, while retaining full will and lucidity.
Perhaps as we become SI's, we will gain the ability to do something of the same sort. Certainly our ability to completely store our experiences will be vastly better. With the ability to play back an experience and almost completely re-enter it years or centuries later, perhaps the continuity issue will become less important. Of course, there is a hidden assumption here, I suppose, that we will not go on expanding our capacity indefinitely, thru designer fractal universes with virtually infinite quantum data storage or whatever, but that we will reach a plateau, where any improvements or growth will be slight increments or changes at the expense of alternate capacities.
One at that plateau, there arises the question of "why bother?" If one instance of experience is pretty much like any other, if we can exhaust life's possibilities totally and completely in some real sense, then why would we want to go on? Would we then choose to keep forgetting who we were, so that we could have fresh experiences?
Having become as Gods, will we then become dreams in our own minds, just to keep life interesting?
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