crocodile deathroll

Imagine two immortal prisoners and an immortal guard.

Prisoner 1 is locked in his cell every night which has a combination lock with 10 numbers between 0 to 99 (1, 12, 31, 75, 92, 44, 46, 7, 13, 31)
Prisoner 2 is locked in a similar cell with different combination of numbers.
When each prisoner is locked in his cell he it put under suspended animation and the night and is totally oblivious to that night he was confined to his cell, and reanimated every morning.

One morning the guard completely forgets and loses the combination of the cell for prisoner 1, so his just picks any combination like choosing numbers of a lottery and every so often after billions of failed guesses at the combination he strikes the right combination just by chance.
So prisoner 1 wakes every time as though nothing has happened and in his mind's eye, he will always meet prisoner 2 in the exercise yard, as before .

But prisoner 2 not prisoner 1 would be very much aware of the guards error in losing prisoner 1's combination as he would be aware of long periods of loneliness where prisoner 1 failed to materialize.

croc

Zadok001

Erm... Well... Yes...

So? I mean, one presumes prisoner 2 would say something along the lines of "Where the HELL have you been?!?"

crocodile deathroll

And prisoner 1 will reply "What do you mean, we only just met yesterday!!!"

Zadok001

Well, yes, you're still entirely correct. But that wasn't really my point. So what? Where are you going with this? You've got an example, but you haven't gone through with the full complexities of the issue.

Are you giving us a Schrodinger's Cat scenario, wherein after the Pris 1 is released, both of the Prisoner's perceptions of reality exist as side-by-side probabilities? (Until, presumably, one is confirmed.) Are you referring to the way reality orients around perception - Or really, how perception precedes reality?

Basically, this is all well and good, but SO WHAT?

tronvillain

Yes, exactly what is your point? That perception of time passing is dependent on being conscious while it passes? Seems fairly trivial.

crocodile deathroll

Yes I am referring the way "reality orients around perception of it". But like in that Schrodinger's Cat scenario I am of the view it exists as every conceivable possibility, which is why it is possible for us to exist in the first place in spite of the seemingly exponential odds against us.

It it just not possible to observe one's non-existence.

[ November 28, 2002: Message edited by: crocodile deathroll ]</p>

Zadok001

Ah, gotcha. You should have said that right off. Examples are well and good, but they don't say what you mean - They only illustrate it.

As far as your comment goes... (I can't really call it an argument, since you start with no premises and reach no conclusion.) Well, it's interesting, but it's not really accurate. Of course we don't directly PERCIEVE our world without us. We can't see through walls into rooms that don't contain us, etc...

But we can look into worlds that have nothing to do with us: Videos, paintings, photographs, etc... In your example, the testimony of the second prisoner would give us insight into a world that doesn't include us. We don't affect a video by observing it, we merely percieve it. So, despite the fact that (obviously) we cannot be where we are not, we can still percieve sections of space-time separate from our own location.

Keith Russell

Greetings:

I think you would get a good idea of how this scenario might play out (variations on the theme) by watching two films:

Memento and [/i]Groundhog Day[/i].

Keith.

crocodile deathroll

We can only then imagine what the landscape of Pluto would look like, but to gain any insight of what it is truly like, then we have to be there.