this post was submitted on 08 May 2026
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Thanks for sharing your thoughts. No real arguments from me. It was a mistake on my part to equate what I had in my mind with the meme above. It is really is two different things.
I just spontaneously remembered the FTL drive from the novel "Variable Star" by Spider Robinson and Robert Heinlein. The operator of the drive must hold multiple mutually contradictory thoughts in their mind at once, for hours at a time, in shifts with the other operators. Usually two at a time for redundancy. A failure to have at least one operator holding the required mental state would stall the drive and restarting it was very difficult.
It was never really explained how it works, but it's taken totally seriously. It's not like flying in "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" where you fall and forget to hit the ground. I thought it was a clever idea. To make consciousness an explicit part of FTL travel by basically holding your mind in a superposition of thought.