I was driving to work this morning. I was thinking about the
discussion of modeling versus simulation, AI versus HPCT. I started
to imagine putting a TV camera on the car which was part of a model
designed to drive the car to work. I was wondering how the model
would respond to a car which suddenly came close from the side
direction. Then suddenly, just at that moment, reality intruded
itself. The car on my left suddenly swerved in front of me. I
quickly braked and avoided the collision. To the best of my
recollection, this is the first time I was thinking about this sort
of problem. It was kind of spooky. After the incident, the cars
around me seemed to be doing maneuvers which seemed somewhat
dangerous. This sense of danger continued for a few minutes until
I exited the highway I was on. It was OK after that. Was this just
a coincidence? Psychic phenomena? Was I in imagination mode and
this played a part in the incident? What are your speculations?
···
To: CSGnet people
From: David Goldstein
Subject: a strange incident today
Date: 06/04/92
I was driving to work this morning. I was thinking about the
discussion of modeling versus simulation, AI versus HPCT. I started
to imagine putting a TV camera on the car which was part of a model
designed to drive the car to work. I was wondering how the model
would respond to a car which suddenly came close from the side
direction. Then suddenly, just at that moment, reality intruded
itself. The car on my left suddenly swerved in front of me. I
quickly braked and avoided the collision. To the best of my
recollection, this is the first time I was thinking about this sort
of problem. It was kind of spooky. After the incident, the cars
around me seemed to be doing maneuvers which seemed somewhat
dangerous. This sense of danger continued for a few minutes until
I exited the highway I was on. It was OK after that. Was this just
a coincidence? Psychic phenomena? Was I in imagination mode and
this played a part in the incident? What are your speculations?
i think you may have noticed the car was swerving toward you and that
affected yr train of thought. you may have noticed some very subtle
things about the car's behavior that never got as far as yr
consciousness. i think a lot of what is considered psychic phenomena
is the ability to notice things that others don't.
also, remember that you are *remembering* this, and you are stuck w/
yr reconstruction of the events. that is, the car may have
perceptibly swerved toward you before you wondered about such a thing,
even if that's not the order you believe (now) that the events
happened in.
i was rearended a couple years ago. i remember the event as a long
stretch of complete silence and stillness followed by an enormous jolt
and noise. now, i don't think that during the few moments before
the crash i was actually experiencing that silent stillness, even
though my memory of it is very strong (i can easily evoke it now).
presumably, i remember the stillness by contrast w/ the crash it
preceded.
(btw, the car was totalled, but my passenger and i were essentially
unhurt, due to impressive engineering and our wearing seatbelts!)
Was this just a coincidence? Psychic phenomena? Was I in imagination
mode and this played a part in the incident? What are your
speculations?
The standard "occult" explanation (in PCT-ish terms) is that control of
one's perceptual universe has a creative relation to physical reality.
This is why for example the Indian people I know won't wear seatbelts,
since to do so out of worrying about accidents would contribute to
causing an accident. (My reply to them now would be that I do it
automatically, without the worry, and that I started doing it as an
example so my children would see it as an automatic part of riding in a
car, because I didn't want bouncing around the car if I cornered or
braked hard.)
Within that mode of explanation, there are constraints on our creative
physical effects, based in interpsychic agreements about the way our
shared physical world works.
This mode of explanation accounts for the experience of adherents of a
"scientific" (i.e. current engineering) explanation. Such adherants do
not experience exceptional "occult" or "psychic" events because their
use of the creative capacity of their control of their perceptions does
not countenance them.
Disproving this mode of explanation is not easy. We know expectation
can color or even engender perception. We only presume that
that-which-is-perceived has a stability that remains autonomous from our
perceptions of it. In other words, can we agree about Boss Reality?