Deep thought time... there exists a book which describes your entire
life, including the future.  You can find out how and when you die, 
what will happen to you next year, and what your friends (and supposed
enemies) really think of you.  Consider this question under both 
deterministic (the book is set in stone and its contents can't be
changed) and non-deterministic (the book is pliable and changes if
you want it to, but not necessarily the way you want it to) views:
What parts of the book, if any, do you read?

42 responses total.

There cannot, of course, be any such "book", but it is fun to 
enjoy the fantasies that the human mind can create, including ones
that are metaphors for human choices. What metaphor does your
answer represent?

I'm not sure.  Of course, this is a philosophical exercise and 
nothing more, although it was treated as much more in Sunday School
when I was a youth.  But we've been done that road before, and it's a thorny 
trail, so let's stay on this one.

I'd read the naughty bits first ... <lewd grin>

Depends.  Is there a part in the book about me reading the book?
Guess I'd read that part to see which parts I should read.

it  -is- possible to write in it. and it is possible for
others to do so to, although not very often. so ward it well.

Does this book contain every scene, and conversation and stuff like that?

What you do, is read passages, and then do something entirely different
for the period depicted. That will blow the sysop's chips.

My book is overdue at the libraray, I'm afraid...

My book has been rejected by several publishers as too mundane and boring.

I think I'll wait for the movie.

CD-ROM. Make that CD-RAM.

   I'm not so sure that such a book isn't possible, Rane.  If all
that we are is a set of molecules and when we die we're dispersed
with nothing else afterwards, then I could see that.   But what if we are
more than that?  What if there is "something beyond" this life,,
whatever it turns out to be?  Why then, couldn't there be the abilty
to store such things?
   I'm not arguing that there *is* such a thing, but that we can't
disprove it, either.

There is no objective evidence whatsoever for "something beyond".

count on this: I would/will read that "book" from back to front unitl
I match the book to the current situation.
  
I would hope that includes more than a single page, but if it
doesn't .... tough for me.

#12: It's not the skeptic's job to disprove anything.

I would not read any part of the book. 

 My mom raised me by the book.

 (Unfortunately, it was _The Shining_.)

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No, I wouldn't want to know what people think about me.  It
would just get me depressed :-(  I guess I'm also too much of
a trekkie:  the future is the Undiscovered Country, and I'd like
it to stay that way until I get there.

Interesting.  "The Undiscovered Country" is from Hamlet, making
Star Trek VI the 7th episode of old Trek to be named after a quote
from Shakespeare.  But the ironic thing is, while the phrase refers to
the future, in the Star Trek universe we had already seen the future,
so it wasn't undiscovered at all!

So much of life is based on perception and perspective.  After all, our
brains are trapped inside the nut shell we call a skull.  I'd be very
curious as to how the book handled displaying "the facts" relative to each
of our perception/perspective soup mix recipe of our lives.  I.E., on what
level would the book be presented, and why.  The molecular life story of
Mike would be interesting, but not what I would *expect* from a life
story.  Any version I could digest would be less than true.  

I stand corrected.  Shows how much I know about literature...

Really, if you had a book like that it would be impossible not to read it.
You would probably look at just one or two pages, then get drawn further
and further in. Of course, if the book were written in enough detail then
reading would correspond with experiencing or be even slower, so that you 
could not read the book - you couldnt catch up (could'nt figure out 
where to put the punctuation there.) On the other hand, if the book only
hit the high points, the only way to not be completely bored with your
life would be to focus on the smallest details that weren't included in 
the book - wet leaves in the driveway on the way to work, the texture 
of bread in a sandwich. 

This all assumes that the book, or life and it's script rather, were
deterministic. I'd rather write or alter the book, even if I didn't 
know how it would come out - but not at ramdom, did that when I was
younger and it hurts too much :>)

How about this, from Deena Metzger:
   It is 2:00 am. You can't sleep (sounds like grex.) But you are not tired.
Voices within you demand to be heard. If you do not speak, you believe
you will die. If you speak out, you believe you will die. What is it 
that you must say, and who or what is threatening you if you speak?
(This "book" is a little more internal than the other.)

re #12 and 22 (talking to myself)

If the book contaioned all of your experience mapped in detail (sight,
sound, taste, neurons firing) there would be NO difference between
reading the book and living. They would both be equally rich, equally 
real. This assumes that they both play out at the same speed. If 
the book "played" slower than life, you would not realize you were dead 
until some time after you died (when you finished the book; or the book would
just abruptly end and you would never experience the moment(s) leading up
to and of your own death.) 

If the book played out faster, you would experience your own death in detail,
then have absolutely no sensations between then and including when you actual
did die. So you really died when you finished the book (no sensations since.) 
Sounds like the book and life would have to play out the same and therefore
be indistinguishable (if the book were complete.) 

presuming that the book is complete in all detail before it is available
to my hands, I'd read it in toto - inlcuding the last paragraph even
if that paragraph were to be at some unspecified time inthe future.
  
I am not afraid of being a human being   -  in fact I would prefer
to be able to anticipate my death as I recognize the swarm of circumstances
accumulating in real-time. 
  
I am not motivated by fear, count on it.

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*You* could get stuck at that point, too...

My book was banned by the uptight majority and the author is currently in
hiding with Salmon Rushdie. :-)

Re #19: I thought "the undiscovered country" that Hamlet refered to was in
the future yes, but that it meant the great beyond, the happy hunting
grounds, the place you go when you shuffle off the mortal coil and all that.
Ie: Death.

Dunno, maybe you're right, Greg.  Anybody got the complete works of
Shakespeare on CD who could search for "undiscovered country" and give us
the context?

  From Hamlet, Act III, Scene I
 
 HAMLET:  To be, or not to be:  that is the question:
                     Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer
                     The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
                     Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,
                     And by opposing end them?  To die:  to sleep;           60
                     No more; and by a sleep to say we end
                     The heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks
                     That flesh is heir to, 'tis a consummation
                     Devoutly to be wish'd.  To die, to sleep;
                     To sleep:  perchance to dream:  ay, there's the rub;
                     For in that sleep of death what dreams may come
                     When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,
                     Must give us pause:  there's the respect
                     That makes calamity of so long life;
                     For who would bear the whips and scorns of time,        70
                     The oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely,
                     The pangs of despised love, the law's delay,
                     The insolence of office and the spurns
                     That patient merit of the unworthy takes,
                     When he himself might his quietus make
                     With a bare bodkin?  who would fardels bear,
                     To grunt and sweat under a weary life,
                     But that the dread of something after death,
                     The UNDISCOVER'D COUNTRY from whose bourn
                     No traveller returns, puzzles the will                  80
                     And makes us rather bear those ills we have
                     Than fly to others that we know not of?
                     Thus conscience does make cowards of us all;
                     And thus the native hue of resolution
                     Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought,
                     And enterprises of great pith and moment
                     With this regard their currents turn awry,
                     And lose the name of action.--Soft you now!
                     The fair Ophelia!  Nymph, in thy orisons
                     Be all my sins remember'd.

Thanks, zook.  I guess you're right, Greg.

I disagree that reading the book is the same as living, since you
can flip around in the book, but you can't flip around in your life
(a la Slaughterhouse Five).  Furthermore, the part of the book 
describing where you open the book and read it only results in an
infinite loop IF you actually choose to read that part.  At any
rate, that sort of paradox is endemic in this type of exercise, 
and is a more complex form of "The are two books, on of which lists
all the books that list themselves, the other ofwhich
lists all the books that don't list themselves.  Which book is the 
second book listed in?" and other such paradoxes.
The skeptic need not disprove anything indeed, since a lack of proof
for is sufficient proof against in the eyes of the skeptic.

It seems that the pages for the present would have to be stuck together,
or those among us inclined to silliness would waste this incredible
apparition playing out a sort of "Marx Brothers in The Mirror" routine. 
..."Then mwarner ...winked...then he scratched his nose, then he scratched
his nose real fast and...."

How about "He looked surprised when he realized he was reading about
reading about this book".  No recursion.

What would happen if you dropped the book in a bowl of soup

Beef barley or alphabet?

I think that I would read the pastr, but not the future.  No matter whatthe
future brings, it should come un-aided.  If we know what the future si
supposedto be, we will try and change it, and that could have some very bad
consequences.

but,, it could also have some very *good* consequences.

if you want to read the past, read someting you don't know, someone else's
whether contemporary or not.

We forget so much anyway. I would like to read the past with the knowledge
I have now. Incredible how you pictured your parents, that strange uncle 
that dropped in and out of your lives, your alcoholic aunt. Writing is like
that, trying to remember and be honest, but it is very hard work. Scary too.

Part of the point about reading being like life is also this: if you remember
something fully, ie: with *all* your senses, you are actually living it at
that time too. No difference, assuming you can recreate that fully. 

- Backtalk version 1.3.30 - Copyright 1996-2006, Jan Wolter and Steve Weiss