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From: gcj@qmc-ori.UUCP
Newsgroups: mod.ai
Subject: Inside Out.
Message-ID: <8605311438.AA09017@qmc-ori.UUCP>
Date: Sat, 31-May-86 10:38:33 EDT
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Posted: Sat May 31 10:38:33 1986
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This posting  is a tangential response to Pat Hayes' posting
in AIList Vol 4 # 125. It is obvious to every child that two 
things  cannot exist in the same place at once.  But a child
does not know what is the other side of the cradle.  A child 
(and therefore the adult) can never fully expand its spatial
reasoning beyond what the eye can see. Hence, we enter a new
realm; fantasy. For example:-
It is even possible to believe that if I walk into this room,
I will leave reality and enter into a fantasy, eg a film, OR
I wake up one morning and am afraid to open the door in case
I do not recognise the landscape outside.
We carry childhood stories and myths with us to the grave; we
remember the lessons we learnt not only in books and from our
schooling, but also the fairy stories, eg  "Alice Through the 
Looking Glass" and "The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe".
This is more about the distinction between fantasy and reality
than to do with spatial intuition.  In the Mind's I, there is
a discussion on whether or not a simulation inside a computer
of a hurricane is any different from the machine's perception
of the real event. To me there would be a world of difference!
In  "The Teachings of Don Juan:  A Yaqui Way of Knowledge" by
Carlos Castaneda,  the author describes, at some point in the 
book, his transformation into a bird. His forward begins with
the sentence - "This book is both ethnography and allegory." 
But my reading is that he wants you to *believe* his story. 

"Choose your own paradigm of reality." -- The Joka.

Gordon Joly

ARPA: gcj%maths.qmc.ac.uk%cs.qmc.ac.uk@cs.ucl.ac.uk
UUCP: ...!seismo!ukc!qmc-ori!gcj