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Kindly comments on Causal Reference - Less Wrong
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And how, exactly, would we discover that?
If we discovered this meaningfully, then it means that at least one bit in the entire universe is different than it would be if there were no shadow particles. In this case, the existence of shadow particles is inevitably causally linked to that one bit. As such, they are no longer epiphenomenal, because they do have an effect on that one bit of data, which has its own effect on the rest of the universe.
If we discover this without any such things, then AFAICT it's a meaningless discovery, because we can make a discovery of absolutely anything if there is no information.
If you send data somewhere and it disappears once it affects the lower level, then that is an interaction from the lower level to the upper level, since the upper level would have been different if the lower level wasn't there (the data would not have disappeared). Then again, I'm not entirely sure about this. Maybe this is how you'd build a p-zombie detector: Find the ones that don't have random bits of data randomly blink out of existence.
It turns out that what you've thought of as consciousness or self-awareness is a process in the shadow-particle world. The reason you find yourself talking about your experiences is that the real world contains particles that duplicate the interactions of your shadow particles. They do not actually interact with your thoughts, but because of the parallel structure maintained in the real world and the shadow-particle world, you don't notice this. Think of the shadow particles as your soul, which corresponds exactly to the real-world particles in your brain, with the only difference being that the shadow particle interactions are the only once you actually experience.
You conduct a particularly clever physics experiment that somehow manages to affect the shadow-particle world but not the real-particle world. Suddenly the shadow particles that make up your soul diverge from the real-world particles that make up your brain! This is a novel experience, but you find yourself unable to report it. It is the brain that determines your body's actions, and for the first time in your life, this actually matters. The brain acts as though the experiment had done nothing.
Once your brain and soul diverge, the change never cancels out and you find yourself living a horrific existence. Because real-world particles do affect shadow particles, you still receive sensory input from your body. However, your brain is now thinking subtly different thoughts from your soul. To you, this feels as though something has hijacked your body, leaving you unable to cry out for help.
Of course, you never have, and never could have, found out about shadow particles. But you are a brilliant physicist, so your soul eventually figures out what happened. Your brain never does, of course; it lives in the real world, where your clever experiment had absolutely no effect, and was written off as a failure.
That actually happened to me last Tuesday!
Cannot upvote this enough.
After concluding that it had no harmfully results, your brain incorporates the effect into a consumer device in which it was mildly usefully and becomes near ubiquitous, and spreads all over the world.
this'd have the makings of a great SCP if not for the obvious problem.
I'd say it would make a better creepypasta than an SCP. Still, if you're fixed on the SCP genre, I'd try inverting it.
Say the Foundation discovers an SCP which appears to have mind-reading abilities. Nothing too outlandish so far; they deal with this sort of thing all the time. The only slightly odd part is that it's not totally accurate. Sometimes the thoughts it reads seem to come from an alternate universe, or perhaps the subject's deep subconscious. It's only after a considerable amount of testing that they determine the process by which the divergence is caused - and it's something almost totally innocuous, like going to sleep at an altitude of more than 40,000 feet.
That's an awesome response.
I figured it was impossible for anyone to make any "discoveries" like this in the sense of the concept and knowledge being spread out, but this was outside of my expectations.
See also Daniel Dennett's "Where Am I?"