Investigating dreamworlds
Mar. 3rd, 2010 10:01 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sawylTodays Big Question is an old favourite, courtesy of a half-remembered scene from Stanislav Lem's Solaris: is it possible to convince yourself that you're not being dreaming the outside world using some form of predictable signal?
After his first encounter with the hallucinations on Solaris Station, Kelvin becomes worried that everything might simply be a dream and comes up with a way to test his hypothesis. He locates a satellite that produces a signal that he knows varies according to a mathematical function. The function is too complicated to solve with an intuitive calculation, but simple enough to be soluble with a few hours of hard work. Kelvin measures the signal and then calculates the expected value, taking care not to use the station's computers. The two values agree. Has he proven that he is not dreaming the station?
I think the answer is yes, but only in a very limited sense.
Kelvin's specific concern is that he has entered some sort of dream world; that the station has been created entirely from the things already in his own mind. If this was the case, then his mind would have created a random value for the signal and this would not match the calculated post hoc value. Thus, he has proved that he himself is not the source of the station. But he has not proved that he is not being deceived by the world in general, since it is quite possible that the Solaris ocean could have performed exactly the same calculation to generate the signal in the first place.
After his first encounter with the hallucinations on Solaris Station, Kelvin becomes worried that everything might simply be a dream and comes up with a way to test his hypothesis. He locates a satellite that produces a signal that he knows varies according to a mathematical function. The function is too complicated to solve with an intuitive calculation, but simple enough to be soluble with a few hours of hard work. Kelvin measures the signal and then calculates the expected value, taking care not to use the station's computers. The two values agree. Has he proven that he is not dreaming the station?
I think the answer is yes, but only in a very limited sense.
Kelvin's specific concern is that he has entered some sort of dream world; that the station has been created entirely from the things already in his own mind. If this was the case, then his mind would have created a random value for the signal and this would not match the calculated post hoc value. Thus, he has proved that he himself is not the source of the station. But he has not proved that he is not being deceived by the world in general, since it is quite possible that the Solaris ocean could have performed exactly the same calculation to generate the signal in the first place.
