byrnema comments on The Fabric of Real Things - Less Wrong

16 Post author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 12 October 2012 02:11AM

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Comment author: Scottbert 12 October 2012 06:52:41PM 1 point [-]

I suppose I would say that reality would look as if things happened with no observable pattern related to the things that happen before them, but looking at things requires a long causal chain between photons being emitted and signals in my brain. Supposing I happened to somehow flash into existence for an instant in a noncausal world, or that causality suddenly failed, I would not expect to be able to experience anything past that point since my experiences depend on so many causal processes.

Comment author: byrnema 13 October 2012 01:07:57AM 2 points [-]

An acausal world would be a world where there is experience (some kind of 'reality') but without the possibility of contradiction. It is like a dream, where what you experience is a story and that story can be written over, and can shift, at any moment, without contradiction. So at one moment you see a cup, and then the next moment, you didn't see a cup. It's not that the cup changed or that you were mistaken, it's just that at first your experience was "seeing a cup" and then at the next moment your experience was, "I wasn't there to see that cup". The experiences both happened: You saw it. And you weren't there and didn't see it. It's a string of happenings connected by the word 'and' : I saw a cup and I didn't see a cup and I was there and I wasn't hungry and the grape hurt.

This isn't an original idea, I realize now. I've read of a place like this in at least a couple science fiction stories.