[extropy-chat] Timeshifting

[Bryan Moss]

Robert J. Bradbury wrote:

> But does raise the question of how much information about what a person
> viewed, liked, did, genes (as Spike pointed out) does one need before one
> gets something close enough to the original that the differences don't
> matter?  For example -- how much of my mind is based on movies I have
> seen, on talk shows I have listened to, on books I have read, etc.?

I think if you assume a functionalist, nativist account of the mind, then
you can fairly happily say that there's a space of all possible mind states
that is finite (albeit large) and pre-statable (in principle).  Moreover,
each mind state could probably be assigned a probability that's contingent
on the previous mind state, so I could look for all mind states that would
produce your above quote and cross reference those against other sentences
you've produced, and gradually narrow down the number of "mental histories"
through the entire space that could possibly belong to you, given that
evidence.  I think we can also safely assume that some evidence will be more
Robert-ish than other evidence, so the quality of our evidence would be a
factor (it's interesting to speculate what "evidence" would likely pin you
down more; I tend to think it would be things you've produced - texts,
speech acts, etc - as opposed to things you've consumed).  But, at this
point, I think all we can safely say is that you wouldn't have to know
*everything* about a person by any means.

BM