Strange7 comments on Rationality Quotes November 2014 - Less Wrong

8 Post author: elharo 07 November 2014 07:07PM

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Comment author: faul_sname 25 November 2014 08:47:59PM 2 points [-]

Yes. And then I would go see a psychologist. Because I find it more likely that I'm losing my grip on my own sanity than that I've just witnessed time travel.

Comment author: Strange7 30 November 2014 12:11:57AM 4 points [-]

Alright, so you bring this alleged time traveler with you to visit two or three different psychologists, all of whom are appropriately surprised by the whole 'time travel' thing but agree that you seem to be perceiving and processing the facts of the situation accurately.

Furthermore you have a lot of expensive tests run on the health and functionality of your brain, and all of the results turn out within normal limits. Camera-phone videos of the initial arrival are posted to the internet and after millions of views nobody can credibly figure out how it could have been faked. To the extent that introspection provides any meaningful data, you feel fine. In short, by every available test, your sanity is either far beyond retrieval down an indistinguishably perfect fantasy hole, or completely unmarred apart from perhaps a circumstantially-normal level of existential anxiety.

Now what?

Comment author: faul_sname 30 November 2014 09:36:34PM 1 point [-]

Then I accept that there's a time traveler. The evidence in this second situation is quite a bit stronger than a personal observation, and would probably be enough to convince me.