In other news:
Inscrutable inscriptions illuminate idiots, but alliteration apparently annoys anyone.
On a separate note here's what I've been thinking about today:
Reality’s Resolution
This is a continuation of a previous train of thought, from years ago, when I considered the nature of reality in light of the concept of ‘bandwidth’. Then my emphasis was mainly on whether there was a limit on the amount of information/sensation which we could experience at any given moment. By the time I was done I basically decided it was likely a constant value, or at least within a constant range. You can read more about it in the original essay, ‘Bandwidth of Reality’.
This essay is looking at something different, yet similar, rather I’m writing to consider the ‘resolution’ of our experiences. I use resolution in the sense that a photographer or graphics designer does, meaning how fine or detailed the picture is… and simultaneously the quality of the photo. Much talk has been made about the degradation of the five senses as we age. It is a given that as we get older and our bodies deteriorate, so to does our sensory apparati, the skin, eyes, ears, tongue… and the nerves which convey their signals. Other facilities also degrade as a function of our aging brains such as our ability to solve new problems and react to novel situations. Our ability to recall memories worsens, to store new information and many other facilities also worsen.
Given those facts.. and incuding my own prior assumptions regarding the eternal nature of our existence as observers of the universe, what then happens to the quality of our daily, or rather our moment to moment experience (umwelt) as we age? With the introduction of poorer quality sensory information from aging bodies, and poorer cognitive ability associated with our aging brains… does the very nature of our personal reality degrade as well?
To make the question clearer I’ll create a verbal picture. Imagine a little old man walking down the street, his back is hunched and his eyes cloudy behind thick glasses. He moves slowly, has difficulty communicating quickly, sees poorly and may even be confused or ‘senile’. But besides all these defects… is the ‘resolution’ of his internal universe grainy? Jagged? Fuzzy? Has the decline in all of his facilities, sensory, cognitive and physical produced an internal umwelt of poorer quality (resolution) than that of his younger days?
Returning to ourselves… can you determine from your own memories if your past younger self experienced life with more clarity? Were things sharper, tastier etc…? At this point I have no way to prove or disprove the notion that experience can be ‘bettter’ or worse. However I think that it doesn’t change. I’ll give a quick summary of why I believe this.
The nature of our lives as eternal observers, if that assumption is correct then the essence of our experience must remain separate from our physical facilities, including cognition (performed by the physical brain). By this I mean that, although the picture may be blurry, the sounds garbled, the sensory inputs fuzzy, even though the sensory filter of the ‘brain’ may be functioning poorly, and despite the fact that we may lack the ability to retain or recall information due to faults of the brain, the essential nature of perception of the universe must be as flawless and immutable as our own existence as observers.
Perfection :)
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