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Scott Douglas Jacobsen: My general question is around transforms or transformation in two circumstances regarding a definition. One is the idea of a transformation in time. What is that? Two, a transformation in a context in which, as you referenced in an earlier session, something outside of time. What is transformation in a system without time?
Rick Rosner: Okay, so first, let’s do a transformation within time. By change, I’m going to assume you mean with me, as it refers to the continuity of existence of consciousness. Is that a reasonable assumption?
Jacobsen: Sure.
Rosner: Okay, I’ve been writing about this in my novel. Where, as evolved beings, like evolution, as evolved beings we’re pretty much okay with how we are on a moment to moment, day to day basis. There are things about our existence that suck in the long term, but we’re not constantly freaking out about the state of ourselves. That wouldn’t make sense evolutionarily if the organisms are always looking at themselves and going, “Oh, fuck, this is fuck. I can’t believe how fucked the shit is.” Those organisms wouldn’t have excellent survival potential. So we’ve evolved to be more or less okay with how we are, right? To be complacent. So we can go about our business. And that complacency extends to the continuity of our consciousness. And our consciousness is often only sometimes continuous. I mean, think about we’re highly distractible, and we go to sleep, at least once a day for the most part, we’re shut down. We forget stuff. We misremember stuff, we misperceive. There’s much shit that goes on. We’re in many ways discontinuous, but we’re okay with it too. We’re used to it. That’s how we are. And we don’t notice it for the most part. And so, we consider ourselves the same being from moment to moment, day to day, year to year.
Even though, we’re shitty in many ways at being the same consciousness, over long periods… So, the character I’m writing about is part of an enterprise to replicate consciousness outside of the brain. They develop indices, measures, of how much fidelity the external version of the consciousness has. And, it’s early days. So it’s shitty. What our brains and minds are, according to whatever, according to some measures that we haven’t yet developed, aren’t excellent at maintaining continuity. But they’re good enough at maintaining continuity that we’re oky with it because we were evolved to be so. But continuity is, when it comes to consciousness, it’s easy to answer. It’s easier to answer what continuity is about a living being. About the not conscious part, which is, that you’ve got all the same body. You may replace cells. You may replace atoms, the atoms in your body may turn over. I don’t know how. I’ve seen statistics and analysis as to how much of the atoms in your body are the same atoms as ten years ago. That shit doesn’t matter as long as your overall structures remain roughly the same.
And it’s a little trickier about thought, memory, consciousness. But you can consider yourself the same person because your brain is in the same body. It’s the same brain. At a slightly more profound level, you’re able to retrieve a lot of the memories; you might want to retrieve your feelings about stuff. Your judgments have been enough. I mean, the idea that you’re the same person rests on consistency. There’s sufficient consistency that we, in our shitty thickness, are okay with it because, otherwise, it would make us too crazy to be good at surviving. Yeah, that’s a circular answer. But there is your deal.
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Authors[1]
American Television Writer
Scott Douglas Jacobsen
Founder, In-Sight Publishing
Scott.Douglas.Jacobsen@Gmail.Com
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Rick Rosner 