h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Derek Parfit died a few days ago. He wrote 'Reasons and Persons', a fascinating investigation of ethics. His method was to consider imaginary scenarios, or thought-experiments, with a science-fiction tinge. For instance, what if you got into your Star Trek transporter and were sent to two different locations at once?

He invented a character he called Timeless, to whom past and future are equivalent. Timeless doesn't fear future events, nor does he feel relief because past tribulations are over.

Here's a 2011 article about him, from The New Yorker http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2011/09/05/how-to-be-good

I take off my hat to Derek Parfit.

Not quite the same thing, but timelessness is a big concept in psychology. People often say "Be in the now" in order to overcome anxieties about what happened in the past and what might occur in the future. I came across this concept when I researched defensive driving skills many years ago - it was promoted by an American, Sy Cohn, who goes under the name 'The Driving Therapist'. Removing thought of time in that way can make us calmer and better drivers.

I'm also in a timeless job. If technology fails, I fix it. I don't care about what happened in the past, except that the experiences may make me better at fixing things now. Developing the future is someone else's job, and it won't help anyone when the technology fails now, as it does.

Derek Parfit used Timeless and his thought-experiments to show that personal identity doesn't amount to much. If you are sent to two destinations and one of your reconstituted versions dies, have you died or not? The more you think of it, the less it seems to matter.

It's always now...

There is no real "now"...


http://youtu.be/T3JzcCviNDk






*Part of a larger lecture http://youtu.be/ITTxTCz4Ums

Sorry, that second link isn't the source for the first after all. It's related, but I linked to it based solely on the title and assumed it was the full lecture the first clip was sourced from.

To clarify, in the lecture in the second link, there is a variation of the talk in the clip from the first link. If you'd like to skip directly to that section it begins here: http://youtu.be/ITTxTCz4Ums?t=17m50s

I'm not really awake yet, apparently.

"It's possible to simply drop your problem"

Nice stuff. Never listened to or read Sam Harris before.

Thank you though for showing me what I didn't know: how to link to a point in the middle of a clip.

Nice bonus: watching Breaking Bad, Series 5, Episode 9 lat night. Two characters discuss a possible Star Trek scenario and mention this effect of the transporter: each time you get in to it you are killed, and someone else is materialised somewhere else with all your features and memories.