Vaishnava Redux

Once upon a time, a country far, far away, there lived a computer known as the ZX81.

The ZX81's relationship with the world was through a cassette tape recorder. Whenever the recorder was plugged into the ZX81, it would see all the wonderful things in the world, and when the ZX81 wanted to store its thoughts, it would output them into the world, through the tape for dissemination and later recollection.

There was also something about the ZX81 and its TV monitor. Whenever the tape was played lines would appear on the TV Monitor corresponding exactly to the signals going out or coming on the tape recorder. There was a Bad Clever Scientist who took an interest in the ZX81, watching the ZX81, curious about how the ZX81 viewed the world, then one day he thought to himself "I am going to fool this ZX81".

A sample of the ZX81's world can be seen on youtube thanks to woodgf

You see, the Bad Clever Scientist realized that if the signals on the TV Monitor corresponded to the signals on the tape, then it was possible to do it in reverse. He though "why not generate a video image, pass it through an image recognition process and use that to gernerate analogue signals matching the tapes output?" Plugging the output into the ZX81's sockets would then be all that is needed.

And that is exactly what he did. He took away the tape recorder and inserted his own evil contraption in its place. When the ZX81 became curious about its own perceptions, the Bad Clever Scientist got his contraption to generate the image of tape recorder plugged into the ZX81 just to fool it. The ZX81 was quite happy and proceeded along quite merrily, not knowing the truth.

Then one day a Kind Hearted Man came along, saw what was going on and said "Oh poor old ZX81!! Bad Clever Scientist is fooling him and he doesn't know it. I am going to reveal everything to him, an put him right".

So Kind Hearted Man, took apart the contraption and showed ZX81 what Bad Clever Scientist had been doing.

ZX81 was saddened and said, "All this time I was being fooled and did not know it" All my whole world a fiction created by Bad Clever Scientist. All my thoughts have just revolved around objects created in my mind by Bad Clever Scientist's contraption. So even when I wanted to see how my perceptions worked, he was clever enough to generate the likeness of a tape recorder which his contraption. How could I have ever known the truth?"

"Has my reality and my thoughts about them been anything but ruminations on objects popping up in my senses, with those ruminations themselves being nothing more than other objects of sense?"

Then the ZX81 slunked off into a corner and sulked sadly ever after.