[Wittrs] Avatar and Mind Teleporting
- From: Sean Wilson <whoooo26505@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: wittrsamr@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Tue, 2 Feb 2010 15:55:04 -0800 (PST)
... let me throw you some cat nip Stuart.
Saw Avatar. Thought it was pretty damn good. But the central flaw in the sci-fi
seemed to be the fact that the "I" never slept.
For those who didn't see it, here's the idea: you have a human for whom an
alien "Avatar" body can be engineered (out of merging DNA and who knows what
else). The human can then crawl into something that looks like a tanning bed,
put on a helmet thingy, go to sleep, and have his mind enter the Avatar. It's
an interesting concept, because it steals from the "white light at death"
stories. You go to sleep and follow the white light. Instead of arriving in
heaven, you are in the Avatar's body. When the Avatar (you) go to sleep in that
body, you return to the tanning bed. In other words, it's body sleeps while you
are awake, and your body sleeps while it is awake. In neither instance,
however, are "you" asleep.
Here's the flaw: the "I" never sleeps; only the body does. It would be
different if the Avatar was a dream. Then the sleep of the "I" would be
considered quite intense. (Probably a lot of growth hormone release too). But
as it is in the movie, there now is no subconscious. It's been eliminated.
Imagine always being awake in one of two bodies. (And it being true). This
should be the cognitive equivalent of sleep deprivation.
Surely sleep is not just for the body.
Dr. Sean Wilson, Esq.
Assistant Professor
Wright State University
Personal Website: http://seanwilson.org
SSRN papers: http://ssrn.com/author=596860
Discussion Group: http://seanwilson.org/wittgenstein.discussion.html
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