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The inspiration behind this post comes from me being half awake/half asleep last night and caught in a drifting state of reverie to the rhythm and calm soothing dream-like sensation of raindrops tapping against my windows.
Here I present 2 hypothetical situations:
1) You are caught in a life-or-death situation. After experiencing extreme amounts of stress and mental and psychological trauma, your brain believes that all your nerves, muscles, and involuntary processes have subsequently shut down, but your brain is unable to turn itself off. The sensory input regions of your brain are unharmed but the neurons connecting your skin, tongue, ears, lips, and nose to your brain are severed. As a result, your whole body remains paralyzed with only your mind still functioning as it had previously. If nobody finds your body, how would this scenario be any different from being buried alive? (and how scientifically feasible is this possiblilty)
2) Suppose that when babies are born, they are born with already developed brains so they don't have to go through the stages of development and maturity like babies do today. Any newborn infant is born with the conglomerated brains of his/her mother AND father, as of when the father's sperm fertilized the mother's egg. In essence, the sperm and egg cells are biologically engineered to carry not only genetic information but also transfer all of the information that is present in both the father's and mother's brains and this information is encoded into the embryo's development process. Physically, a baby would be the same as now, still unable to walk but having the mental capacity to do so. Babies would be unable to eat certain foods due to not having teeth but would have an acquired taste for things their parents enjoyed. Babies would be able to read Shakespeare with the level of comprehension that their parents could, form coherent sentences and speech, but would need to gain some physical strength and dexterity before being able to hold a pencil to write legibly or use a keyboard to type. Therefore, babies would have the mental and psychological faculties to do or think about or imagine anything their parents could, but their physical characteristics would often restrict them from making full use of their intellectual abilites at least until they could physically master their environment.
In effect, this would enable babies with super intelligent parents to have an edge and, while many characteristics would simply be sum totals of the parents (i.e., 100 IQ dad and 80 IQ mom = 90 IQ baby), in terms of memories and life experiences, the baby would be able to remember everything both their mom and dad went through. Physically, babies would need time to master the elements but, with the combined knowledge of both mom and dad from birth, the baby would avoid dangerous situations and build up his body strength and endurance to levels that would let him survive on his own. The baby's brain would be the same as any baby born today, but due to having the knowledge of both mom and dad and therefore a much more solid foundation, the baby would be able to absorb things much quicker despite not having a qualitatively better brain. It's like a guy who you give a fish will eat for a day but a guy whom you teach to fish can eat for a lifetime.
My question is, how would this world be any different from today's world?
 
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I think #2 would be awful for babies. Having mental capacity but not being able to control your body would suck, and child "development" would become a mess and a lot of things in psychology (especially how we learn) would have to be re-examined. Also, you should read Dune Messiah and Children of Dune, there are cases where the idea of "babies with consciousness" is explored in the context of spice: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pre-born The only difference is that here they had consciousness in utero.
I don't think pre-conscious babies as the norm would be very good for everyone involved, unless children suddenly become much easier to raise and it becomes convenient for parents, but who knows what other issues would arise.
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I thought this was going to be about homeopathy...
Ahem. However, here's the problem. Generationally, it gets to be a mess. Sure, the first baby gets mom and dad. The baby's baby gets Grandmom, Granddad, Dad, and Mom. (Memories passed down continue to be passed down, because they are also encoded in the child's memories.) There are problems with that kind of storage, and fictionally you can see them in Jim Butcher's character "The Archive" in the Harry Dresden series of books and in Lazarus Long in Heinlein's various future history novels. Memory also is not as encoded in the grey matter as you think - a lot of memory is reconstructive in nature. The brain is lazy, and cheats a lot.
I imagine the world would be very different, mostly because of everyone already knowing what doesn't work, which stifles innovation. (If you know that you have to light a fire using two sticks, because it is how you remember umpteen generations of family having to light a fire with two sticks, what makes you think you'll try anything else?)
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1) Similar cases have happened, I think I saw some things about "mind trapped in body" condition, where the patient is tought to be in coma, but he is actually awake, he just can't move anything, only his brain is working.
If you get in this state and no1 is going to find you, you're doomed to die from dehydration (3ish days i think) but you won't suffer so it's just a cruel wait. Being burried alive is much worste imo, you can use your body, you have the illusion you can still escape, but you will die eventually either from lack of water or oxygene. You'll probably go insane after a few hours, breaking your nails and fingers trying to scratch the lid of your coffin...
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I still think you and stateofreverie are the same person
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On October 03 2012 06:34 PanN wrote:
I still think you and stateofreverie are the same person
Now why would you suggest such a preposterous claim?
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On October 03 2012 06:34 PanN wrote:
I still think you and stateofreverie are the same person
But this is coherent and rational.
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On October 03 2012 06:36 EffervescentAureola wrote:Show nested quote +On October 03 2012 06:34 PanN wrote:
I still think you and stateofreverie are the same person Now why would you suggest such a preposterous claim?
That phrasing is an eyesore, and it makes me wish for you to be relocated to an Archipelagos of a most squalid sort.
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EPT
