From: Stuart Armstrong (dragondreaming@googlemail.com)
Date: Wed Mar 04 2009 - 04:24:54 MST
> I my brain stops it cannot form new memories, so when it starts up again
> the universe will appear to me to have suddenly jumped. There is no way
> I can tell if my mind continued smoothly and the universe jumped or if
> the universe proceeded smoothly and my mind stopped for a while.
Of course there is! Use the standards you normally use. If before your
mind jumped, you were walking across the road, and after, you woke up
in a white bed, surrounded by your doctors and cheerfull loved ones,
and someone hugs you saying "it's a miracle you woke up! you've been
in a coma for months!", while are the newspapers are talking about the
same things but with a date a few months in the future - then the
balance of evidence is that your mind stopped, and the universe
continued.
But if you are perfectly awake the whole time and suddenly the
universe goes strange in completely off-the-wall ways - well, that's
evidence the universe has jumped in some way.
>From the pure philosophical point of view, you are correct, but in
practice, there should be clues to enable you to distinguish the two
situations.
Stuart
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