Here’s an interesting blog post by David Byrne asking whether the self is real or imagined and whether we are really unique.

http://journal.davidbyrne.com/2006/01/12506_selfless.html

I was watching Twilight Zone the other day and the guy was given one wish and the episode was his different fantasies and ideas for it.

Of course, if I had one wish, my first thought would be to ask for more wishes. I mean, if you can wish for anything, that seems like an obvious thing. But assuming you’re limited to just one wish, what would it be? There are the obvious things: money, power, fame, women, etc.

Being the extremely curious person that I am, if I had the wish, I would wish for knowledge. I would want to know everything. I would want to know our past, our future, who else is in the galaxy, why we’re here, how to build a time machine, how to travel to alternate universes, what happens inside a black hole, etc. But of course, just knowing everything automatically would probably kind of be depressing. Working to try to discover those things is one of the more enjoyable parts. Of course, that was the whole point of the episode, that the guy wouldn’t really want the money, power, fame, or women if it was just given to him.