[ExI] Repeated Experience (was Affecting Past Experience)

[Mike Dougherty]

On 7/25/07, Lee Corbin <lcorbin at rawbw.com> wrote:
>
>
>     You know (because the computer OS has told you so) that
>     your life actually consists of one-and-a-half runs. That is, the
>     original execution of your life was stored, and is/was/will-be
>     being replayed up to the half way point.  The OS now gleefully
>     informs you that you are arriving at the one-half point in your
>     life.
>
>     Should you be at all concerned?  After all, clearly the OS told/
>     is-telling both you and the next run of you (or you and the past
>     run).  There is the nagging idea that *this* may be the 2nd run,
>     and you're about to terminate forever (e.g. this will be the last
>     runtime you ever get).
>

If I can never have access/knowledge of the iteration counter to detect that
the original experience is different than the second (or thousandth) then it
really doesn't matter, does it?  Where does the nagging idea come from?
That implies some psychic awareness of state.  Now if you tell me that life
is being presented in a similar way to graphic interlacing, such that
further iterations increase the observable resolution - then of course I
would want to observe emergent details past the first iteration.  There must
be some limiting returns on this too though.  Ex: Imagine touring an Art
museum at a detail level where you can see only rectangular blocks of color
on the wall.  On the next trip, the colors reveal shapes.  After several
more visits, you can appreciate that the details available now include
actual brush-strokes.  The computational cost of this detail would be
prohibitive, but your repeated investment of runtime has distributed that
cost over several visits, so the previously "cached" experiences can be
refined for a more linear expense per visit.

"terminate forever" doesn't make any sense to me either.  If you have a
complete transactional record of every moment of your life recorded on some
medium (you know, an ideal chunk of space-time) then random access into any
point in that recording for playback/continuation would be identical
experiential "existence" as any other runtime.  This assumes the playback
machine is constant.  Does a given space-time degrade if accessed too
frequently?  (could you make an "archival" space-time and only replay
clones?)  Is there something unique about the creation/initial render of
space-time recordings?  (like the difference between watching SNL "live" and
watching an episode recorded earlier)

I asked a lot of questions.  I lack Lee's formalism.  I used too many scare
quotes.  I sincerely hope readers see past that and comment on the ideas I
try to express even when I do not communicate them clearly.
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