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Eliezer_Yudkowsky comments on Open Thread: February 2010, part 2 - Less Wrong
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So, I walked into my room, and within two seconds, I saw my laptop's desktop background change. I had the laptop set to change backgrounds every 30 minutes, so I did some calculation, and then thought, "Huh, I just consciously experienced a 1-in-1000 event."
Then the background changed again, and I realized I was looking at a screen saver that changed every five seconds.
Moral of the story: 1 in 1000 is rare enough that even if you see it, you shouldn't believe it without further investigation.
That is a truly beautiful story. I wonder how many places there are on Earth where people would appreciate this story.
No! Not for a second! I immediately began to think how this could have happened. And I realized that the clock was old and was always breaking. That the clock probably stopped some time before and the nurse coming in to the room to record the time of death would have looked at the clock and jotted down the time from that. I never made any supernatural connection, not even for a second. I just wanted to figure out how it happened.
-- Richard P Feynman, on being asked if he thought that the fact that his wife's favorite clock had stopped the moment she died was a supernatural occurrence, quoted from Al Sekel, "The Supernatural Clock"
This should be copied to the Rationality Quotes thread.