I found this inspiring text, and was thinking about what to post about it, when I read it was supposed to have been written by Borges. I could not find anything in Spanish about the author, so I translated some words of the text into English…and this is what I found.

It seems the text is actually an expanded version of a poem called “Comes the Dawn” by Veronica Shorfstall, dated 1971. It is funny…

Anyway, I wanted to comment on “After a while you realize that each experience lived with every person is unrepeatable”.

Taking into account a considerable number of the people with which I interact nowadays, I would say this tends to be true. But I think that only a person who has found interesting people to live with is able to say this…I mean, there are also some people with whom the experiences I share could not be more repetitive and boring.

And yes, I know this is a short post with an abrupt ending.

Yesterday, at 10 pm I told all the people I was speaking to that I was going to have dinner. Of course, I stayed for an hour reading an essay by Seneca .

The first thing that surprised me is how strongly a person who lives in present times can relate to what he says and the experiences he describes, specially as opposed to what happens with more modern philosophers.

After that, I noticed it was the usual rant about how a lot of persons seem not to be conscious, another lot of persons spend a lot of time doing things they say they don’t like without necessity, and some others waste their lifes working on meaningless problems. Most people also seem to care just about pleasures in the short term, and spend weeks just waiting for something (e.g. a performance of something) to happen. And finally, after having spent most of their lifes hoping time will pass, they ask in vain for some more time…Of course, we also have politicians and leaders, who “will waste all their years, in order that they may have one year reckoned by their name”.

As I continued reading, I started to ask myself “So, who are the ones that are not wasting their time?”

And I was not surprised to see that they were (I suppose you couldn’t imagine it) THE PHILOSOPHERS. I am sure I am not being very original, but maybe the reason why Seneca sees things that way is because he wanted to be a philosopher, and chooses to focus on the people who decided otherwise and are now not happy with their elections.

La cosa es que sabía que este blog existía desde hace años, pero nunca me había fijado en lo bien que está, y en todo lo que me identifico…

For those who don’t know about it,  the following description describes it pretty well:

Newcomb’s Problem goes like this. There are two closed boxes on the table, Box A and Box B. Box A contains $1,000. Box B contains either $1 million or no money at all. You have a choice between two actions: 1) taking what is in both boxes; or 2) taking just what is in Box B.

Now here comes the interesting part. Imagine a Being that can predict your choices with high accuracy. You can think of this Being as a genie, or a superior intelligence from another planet, or a supercomputer that can scan your mind, or God. He has correctly predicted your choices in the past, and you have enormous confidence in his predictive powers. Yesterday, the Being made a prediction as to which choice you are about to make, and it is this prediction that determines the contents of Box B. If the Being predicted that you will take what is in both boxes, he put nothing in Box B. If he predicted that you will take only what is in Box B, he put $1 million in Box B. You know these facts, he knows you know them, etc. So, do you take both boxes, or only Box B?

As for my opinion…well, I think the paradox basically reduces to “if a being with supernatural powers existed and we could observe them, would it make sense to acknowledge it exists and act consequently?”. For me, the obvious answer is “Yes”.

Of course, the interesting part is explaining how the mysterious entity may work. Explanations tend to involve something like time travel (the being travels backwards in time after observing your decision) or brain simulation (the being is able to simulate you).

You can find in Wikipedia a good discussion of all of this.

I have experienced myself what is like  to be obsessed about these kind of problems(along with some others more worldly problems), and this documentary describes it perfectly. You can find all of the parts in Youtube.