From: Dr Sebby (drsebby@hotmail.com)
Date: Sun Feb 08 2004 - 03:20:37 MST
...thinking about an old post i was reading (something about the poor
getting poorer as the modern political machine helps the rich get richer), i
thought.."well, that really does seem to be the case...and the only way it
is ever dealt with is if the poor and dumb get SOOO upset that they are
finally driven to massive revolt since the threat of death is nearly
equitable to the life they are living."
...so i thought about the true economics of power. it occurs to me that
money is time, and time is essentially life to us. so how much money does
the average human cost in terms of power brokering? example: if i wanted to
overthrow the current federal government and overturn the wealthiest
families that have a stranglehold on this country's economy and society, how
many followers would i need that were not afraid of seriously tempting death
or imprisonment? how many peoples' ultimate sacrifice would be required to
win a power battle against the hundreds of billions of dollars available to
my opposition's forces(whatever they may be)? it's a much easier equation
to play with if dealing with a smaller...relatively solitary country. but
still, i would think that some approximate value could be generated for a
human life in terms of power wielded.
any ideas?
DrSebby.
"Courage...and shuffle the cards".
----Original Message Follows----
From: "rhinoceros" <rhinoceros@freemail.gr>
Reply-To: virus@lucifer.com
To: virus@lucifer.com
Subject: virus: Re: What does it mean to be me?
Date: Fri, 31 Oct 2003 19:53:11 -0700
Coffee-house philosophy time...
The biggest mystery for me about the "illusion of the self" is not about
just any self but about mine.
I mean, I can easily talk about selves in general, and I seem to understand
how selves depend on memories and how a core self can be instantly created
upon interaction with things even in the absence of memories, and what has
been said about the role of self-reference, complexity, competing modules
in the brain and everything. However...
The question of identity is weird. We do know that millions, trillions, and
gazillions of sperm cells never get to become selves. So, our selves seem to
be very lucky to be the ones they are, on this planet and in this particular
century. It is luck beyond probability theory, because we haven't drawn a
lottery ticket out of any repository of souls -- we have drawn it out of the
infinite posibilities of forging a self.
On second thought, however, the fact that our selves were forged rather than
picked out by luck seems to be a way out of the metaphysical curiosities: We
just came to be. But this is not so clear any more when we get back to the
question of identity -- when I think that I am talking about *my own* self.
Think of it: You are sitting over there reading this, with *your own* self
forged in a complex process. The probabilities that the person who
experiences this "illusion of the self" would be someone else and not "you"
are overwhelming. Still, it is "you" sitting there and experiencing "the
illusion of the self", on planet Earth, in the 21st century of all
centuries. The lottery is back, along with Descartes' "I think therefore I
am".
I think we have a long way to go and many more models to try before "the
illusion of the self" is really understood well enough to be reconciled with
our perception.
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