Discussion
Reminds me of: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transformative_Experience
"Paul offers a hypothetical example of a decision to become a vampire. Because a person would be fundamentally transformed by becoming a vampire, they cannot possibly know in advance what being a vampire is like."
That is interesting, however I very much disagree with L.A. Paul on this. 😉
Really?
I think it's a great argument and I see it in my social circle. I have friends that don't have children because they think it will disrupt their lifestyle, but they can't possibly know how much they would value being parents because they're not parents.
I guess you can approximate by reading, and talking to people who are already transformed (vampires) but you still ultimately have different values until you undergo the transformation yourself.
Yes, I understand what you are saying, and certainly on a first pass, this is true. It would be hard for me to know in advance what it is like to be X, whether that is a vampire, parent or a paraplegic.
In the Wikipedia article they make a stronger statement though, that there are experiences that someone else has that "cannot be assessed in advanced."
My argument against that is on a fundamental physics / computer science level.
Alan Turing showed us that once a computer becomes what we now call "Turing Complete", it can run ANY program that can be run by ANY Turing complete computer in our universe. The computers may differ in their speed or memory, but they can all run the same programs.
Your brain, my brain, vampires brains (presumably Turing complete), space aliens brains and the AGIs when then come can all run the same programs, and thus can all have the same experiences. Therefore they can describe the experience they had to us, and we can understand/experience it.
Doesn't mean we can do all this know with our tech, but from what we know it can in principle be done.
Sorry to go so deep and theoretical ... I know probably not what you were expecting.
Good Morning!
For some reason I can't zap this reply 😞
Solid argument that I can't really refute. However, for many transformative experiences for most people today, I think the vampire problem frequently applies.
There's a pretty cool sci-fi concept there (in your reply) about trialling new realities before making a decision 💡
GM 🌞
Yep, I don't have a wallet set up on this account. Thanks for the thought though!