Have you ever seen something coming, before it arrived?

[Loredoctor]

At what point do you stop attributing something to chance and accepting it as something real and noteworthy? I guess it depends on your context. You can always find a context where the event was merely chance. But my particular context is my own mind. When I have one of these dreams, I know beforehand that it's a prophetic dream. It feels different from my other dreams. I know while I'm dreaming it that it's a prophetic dream. And then later it comes true. Now if I were merely one of the people who accidentally dreamed about a bridge collapse and my car going into the water, why would I know in advance that it was a prophetic dream? Why don't I ever have one of these dreams and it not come true? Sure, maybe it's a self-fulfilling prophesy. Maybe I'm looking for proof of these dreams because they feel so real to me. But you know what? I sure didn't have to look far, and I sure didn't have to wait very long. The very next day, the exact scenario was plastered all over the international news outlets. I didn't even have to look for it in order to fulfill it.

That still does not prove a psychic ability. All it proves is that you've been lucky.

However, having one of these low probability dreams is one thing. Knowing that this low probability dream is one of those low probability dream while it's happening, even before you receive the confirmation of it, is entirely different. That would be like the person who turns out to win the lottery knowing that they'll win beforehand (not merely hoping, but knowing).

But how many people, to extend your analogy, know they will win and then not win? Many many many people, and psychics, claim one thing will come true and it doesn't. Now you can argue that they don't have precognition, but then you'll have to argue what is working - what is it, more than chance, that people have that makes them see the future?

Good post, by the way.

[Zarathustra]

Loremaster, you're entirely right. From the perspective of an external observer. I'd expect nothing less of a rational person. And in fact, I'd react exactly the same way towards someone who claimed a psychic ability for which I had no experience myself.

However, there's nothing else like first-hand experience. I don't know what to make of my dreams. And it bugs the shit out of me that my mother thinks God is trying to talk to me. I don't think that's happening at all. (But then there were those shroom trips 10 years ago that made me think God was actually talking to me . . . ). I just think that in a world where some people are willing to say that computers can be conscious without ever having access to their consciousness, why are these same people so skeptical about the contents of MY consciousness? Why is the feeling of specialness I experience in these dreams so easily discounted and dismissed--when I'm telling you about it myself; you don't have to deduce it from my external actions--but then the mere appearance of consciousness in a computer is considered legitimate when you don't have any access to the computer's consciousness?

It seems you're willing to make a leap of faith on the one hand, but not the other. Is this leap of faith perhaps less of a leap for you because you also experience consciousness yourself, and therefore you can more easily acknowledge this phenomenon within other beings, even if those beings are just machines? You see, personal experience with a mysterious phenomenon does tend to color our own acceptance criteria. Perhaps you've never experienced what I've experienced. But then, neither have I ever experienced computer consciousness. Thus we are both skeptical. Yet your skepticism is inconsistent, because you have not experienced computer consciousness, either--yet you grant computers the benefit of doubt. But you don't grant me that same benefit.

[Loredoctor]

It seems you're willing to make a leap of faith on the one hand, but not the other. Is this leap of faith perhaps less of a leap for you because you also experience consciousness yourself, and therefore you can more easily acknowledge this phenomenon within other beings, even if those beings are just machines? You see, personal experience with a mysterious phenomenon does tend to color our own acceptance criteria. Perhaps you've never experienced what I've experienced. But then, neither have I ever experienced computer consciousness. Thus we are both skeptical. Yet your skepticism is inconsistent, because you have not experienced computer consciousness, either--yet you grant computers the benefit of doubt. But you don't grant me that same benefit.

I disagree with this comparison. It's one thing to believe the claim that one has an ability to see the future, another to theorise that a machine might be able to think one day. I never said that machines will have a consciousness. No offense, but you seriously cannot expect me to believe you without any testable evidence, when I have not made the claim machines will absolutely have a mind. There is no equivalence, because logically I can argue, and test, that precognotion is likely to be a statistical effect (and logically, you could argue that it's an ability, as long as there is scientific evidence). With consciousness is machines, while it may be difficult to determine that a machine posseses one (no doubt harder than when applying consciousness to apes, whales and elephant), I have the benefit that the theory will eventually be proven wrong or right. Until then, all I can do is hope (which is not the same as belief or truth).

[danlo]

You have read all 4 "Neverness" books right Lore?

[Loredoctor]

You have read all 4 "Neverness" books right Lore?

I read the first book fifteen years ago. I have been looking for it ever since so I can read the rest of the series. I am not sure I am following you.