🚀 go-pugleaf

>,>>> ranjit@cory.Berkeley.EDU (Ranjit Bhatnagar)
>> tan@ihlpg.UUCP (Bill Tanenbaum)

>>> We can imagine that the production of overpowering psychic distraction
>>> requires little more resources than does thought.  

>>You can imagine whatever you want.

> I could imagine that psychic powers are powered by tiny nuclear reactors
> in the pituitary gland.  However, I instead imagined that they are related
> to the process of _thought_, which is not an unreasonable assumption to
> make.  Now, (I can't resist this:) for MOST OF US, the process of thought 
> does not consume great amounts of resources.  For instance, I can believe
> six impossible things BEFORE breakfast.

Depends on what you mean by "great amounts".  Thought is *not* trivial.
During thought, the brain consumes significant amounds of sugars to
power the chemical motor commonly called "the brain".  Granted, the
major motor muscles and the heart consume more.  But the resources
devoted to thought are not trivial.

To draw this back to the original line of discussion, the original
notion of the generating of masking "psychic waves" to confuse predators
means that impulses of thought-stuff are "broadcast" without actually
thinking the thoughts they indicate.  The original rebutting point is
that this ought to be no different than, say, seeming to having a shape
that one does not "really" have, or a smell that one does not "really"
have, or in general any sensory seeming that one does not "really" have.
There is no particular reason to suppose that it is easier to think
thoughts that one does not really think than it is to fake any other
sensory trace an animal might leave.

It is therefore not so much a question of resource consumption, but
practicality of altering thinking structure to produce "fake thoughts"
while retaining the ability to think "real thoughts".  And again, there
is no reason to suppose that this is more practical than altering the
physical structure to have a "fake shape" while retaining the ability to
function in some more "real shape".

--
I've always had the greatest respect for other people's crackpot beliefs.
                                --- Sam the eagle
-- 
Wayne Throop      <the-known-world>!mcnc!rti-sel!dg_rtp!throopw