From: Seth Lloyd Sent: Saturday, October 22, 2016 11:58:45 PM Subject: Re: To: "jeffrey E." leevacationegmailcom> Sure: let's talk tomorrow. Any time in the afternoon. (Or, we could talk yesterday!) Seth On Fri, Oct 21, 2016 at 5:33 PM, jeffrey E. leevaeation(agmail.com> wrote: tomorw? lets assume that like a weak signal you can go back but only for I second before the signal fades. ? an error correction. On Fri, Oct 21, 2016 at 5:31 PM, Seth Lloyd S wrote: Dear Jeffrey, My apologies for not responding sooner: I was off email for the last few days. Of course thoughts are constructed from neural signals that move much slower than light but let's just take the suggestion that they move faster than light seriously. A couple of things would happen. First of all, since going faster than light translates into the ability to send signals backwards in time, this has implications for game theory. If you know your opponents moves in advance -- and they know yours -- this restricts the set of strategies to non-cheating, non-deceptive strategies. I believe that in such games one should be able to show that Nash equilibria are all optimal: unlike in prisoner's dilemma, there is no incentive for cheating. This is sort of the opposite of what you are suggesting. There is a sense in which thought processes are taking place in an extended setting simultaneously throughout the brain, so that faster than/slower than light is not so meaningful. In this setting, as you and Martin suggest, there is probably some pretty strong evolutionary advantage for consciousness or sense of self reference. Indeed, just to ask the sort of question, If he does this, I'll do that, but if he does this other thing, I'll do something else, requires a sense of self reference: one is modeling what one oneself will do in the future. This does indeed allow for extended cycles of deception and intent, which I think we agree are very important at least for human behavi