01-04-2018, 09:20 AM
And I'll end my DMSI mental bookmark with this one. Was tempted to include one more, but I didn't want to offend anyone's sensibilities with anything too controversial. I realize that these are more about perspective than sexiness, but I think that perspective plays a foundational role.
Excerpt #3:
Had a dream on Friday night (Dec 29th). Don't usually document dreams, but I'd found this one to be personally profound. Comes across a bit like a psychological thought experiment crossed with a causal loop paradox thought experiment, and it probably says something about me (or 5.5G or both) that my dreams multiplex philosophical experiments recreationally. Yikes.
In the dream, one of my oldest friends saves me from a situation that would've kept us apart from that point on, destroying our friendship. But her actions (which were impossibly tailor-made for the occasion and otherwise nonsensical, including the recruitment -- and critical participation -- of 3 sister-act stage magicians) prevent that result, not only avoiding that permanent separation but also bringing us closer together. Her actions, no matter how odd or indirect, each contribute to dodging the impending destruction of our friendship. Then, once those strange detours have provided a better outcome than the one that the original course would've reached, I suddenly find that I have the opportunity to send a message back in time to her, with the implication that this message is how she knew that the friendship needed rescuing.
Now, years of television time-travel TV would clearly suggest that I should send her the solution verbatim, recounting her actions (or, at least, the ones that I'd managed to spot) like a recipe that she has no incentive to act out, completely overlooking the origin paradox of no one having actually come up with the plan that both manages to trick me and outsources for additional Vaudevillian resources. And it's a dream, where grass could be pink if I'd wanted, so a tiny origin paradox is nothing. But, because I don't write for TV and prefer logic to loose ends, even in dreams, the message that I send describes the predicament instead and requests that, because she knows me well enough to do so, she comes up with a plan to derail it that I wouldn't see coming. Instead of trying to control the outcome with a plan that no one created (in fear of no plan at all), I trust her to come up with the plan, so that someone creates it. There's a whole other potential thought experiment involved if I were to imagine myself in her place, receiving a list of future pitfalls to avoid to avoid a friendship's dissolution, but that wasn't part of the dream.
This dream's dilemma (that of which message to send) underscored several things at once for me, most of which I already knew: I prefer trusting trustworthy people to be who they are and do what they already do well versus trying to micromanage them into following my instructions, I prefer logical solutions to overused fictional tropes, I trust my instincts more than popular reflex, I don't presume to see my own blindspots as well as others can, I value that particular friendship and feel that it's valued in return, and probably quite a few other things that don't immediately occur to me.
I know that it's a dream, where consequences aren't bound by reality, but, sci-fi opinions aside, I'm still consciously pleased by how my subconscious responds to a choice like that.
Excerpt #3:
Had a dream on Friday night (Dec 29th). Don't usually document dreams, but I'd found this one to be personally profound. Comes across a bit like a psychological thought experiment crossed with a causal loop paradox thought experiment, and it probably says something about me (or 5.5G or both) that my dreams multiplex philosophical experiments recreationally. Yikes.
In the dream, one of my oldest friends saves me from a situation that would've kept us apart from that point on, destroying our friendship. But her actions (which were impossibly tailor-made for the occasion and otherwise nonsensical, including the recruitment -- and critical participation -- of 3 sister-act stage magicians) prevent that result, not only avoiding that permanent separation but also bringing us closer together. Her actions, no matter how odd or indirect, each contribute to dodging the impending destruction of our friendship. Then, once those strange detours have provided a better outcome than the one that the original course would've reached, I suddenly find that I have the opportunity to send a message back in time to her, with the implication that this message is how she knew that the friendship needed rescuing.
Now, years of television time-travel TV would clearly suggest that I should send her the solution verbatim, recounting her actions (or, at least, the ones that I'd managed to spot) like a recipe that she has no incentive to act out, completely overlooking the origin paradox of no one having actually come up with the plan that both manages to trick me and outsources for additional Vaudevillian resources. And it's a dream, where grass could be pink if I'd wanted, so a tiny origin paradox is nothing. But, because I don't write for TV and prefer logic to loose ends, even in dreams, the message that I send describes the predicament instead and requests that, because she knows me well enough to do so, she comes up with a plan to derail it that I wouldn't see coming. Instead of trying to control the outcome with a plan that no one created (in fear of no plan at all), I trust her to come up with the plan, so that someone creates it. There's a whole other potential thought experiment involved if I were to imagine myself in her place, receiving a list of future pitfalls to avoid to avoid a friendship's dissolution, but that wasn't part of the dream.
This dream's dilemma (that of which message to send) underscored several things at once for me, most of which I already knew: I prefer trusting trustworthy people to be who they are and do what they already do well versus trying to micromanage them into following my instructions, I prefer logical solutions to overused fictional tropes, I trust my instincts more than popular reflex, I don't presume to see my own blindspots as well as others can, I value that particular friendship and feel that it's valued in return, and probably quite a few other things that don't immediately occur to me.
I know that it's a dream, where consequences aren't bound by reality, but, sci-fi opinions aside, I'm still consciously pleased by how my subconscious responds to a choice like that.
