imagine-se uma conversa entre duas pessoas:
- então preciso saber isso...
- ok, pronto. deixa se me lembro.
- é importante...
- está bem, espera... ah!
- diz
- já me lembro! foi o
súbito!, uma vala imensa abre-se perante os seus pés, fazendo com que a pessoa com quem estamos a conversar desapareça num piscar de olhos.
hm...
uma vala? sim.
imensa? exacto.
mas isso é:
pouco provável? certo...
estúpido? um pouquinho.
pois. mas é exactamente a isso que me soa quando uma conversa electrónica fica a meio sempre que a internet cai.
2 comentários:
talvez por eu usar pouco o messenger, isso ainda não me aconteceu; mas imagino o quão desagradável deve ser; talvez o murphy, aquele da lei, ou algum parente dele esteja por trás desse tipo de sabotagem.
Lembrei-me novamente disto:
"I am a brain, my dear Watson, and the rest of me is a mere appendage." Sherlock Holmes
"[...] Consider the following thought experiment that used to be a favorite of philosophers (it was also the basis for the recent Hollywood blockbuster The Matrix): Let's advance to a point of time where we know everything there is to know about the intricate circuitry and functioning of the human brain. With this knowledge, it would be possible for a neuroscientist to isolate your brain in a vat of nutrients and keep it alive and healthy indefinitely.
Utilizing thousands of electrodes and appropriate patterns of electrical stimulation, the scientist makes your brain think and feel that it's experiencing actual life events. The simulation is perfect and includes a sense of time and planning for the future. The brain doesn't know that its experiences, its entire life, are not real.
Further assume that the scientist can make your brain "think" and experience being a combination of Einstein, Mark Spitz, Bill Gates, Hugh Heffner, and Gandhi, while at the same time preserving your own deeply personal memories and identity (there's nothing in contemporary brain science that forbids such a scenario). The mad neuroscientist then gives you a choice. You can either be this incredible, deliriously happy being floating forever in the vat or be your real self, more or less like you are now (for the sake of argument we will further assume that you are basically a happy and contended person, not a starving pheasant). Which of the two would you pick?
I have posed this question to dozens of scientists and lay people. A majority argue "I'd rather be the real me." This is an irrational choice because you already are a brain in a vat (the cranial cavity) nurtured by cerebrospinal fluid and blood and bombarded by photons. When asked to select between two vats most pick the crummy one even though it is no more real than the neuroscientist's experimental vat. How can you justify this choice unless you believe in something supernatural?
I have heard three counter-arguments on the premise of this experiment. First, the brain, as Antonio Damasio argues so eloquently, is a natural extension of the body, not an isolated computer sitting on your neck. True, but this "embodiment" plus visceral and proprioceptive inputs can also be simulated. Second, what if the vat isn't well maintained? What if it falls down and crashes? This could happen, but such an accident can also happen to the real you. Third, the simulation of Einstein and Gates (and everyone else) can never be exact. This might be true, but it's not relevant. So what if the simulation is only 98% correct? Your own brain fluctuations from year to year are probably as great, if not greater.
If you think this scenario is farfetched just look at what's going on around you in the world; Cell phones, iPods, Palm Pilots, the worldwide web, email, blogs, e-publishing, and virtual reality. We are all slowly and imperceptibly approaching the brain in the vat scenario where all functions will be literally at your fingertips as you become dissolved in cyberspace. [...]"
in http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/ramachandran06/ramachandran06_index.html
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