4 ms·

One interesting point a proffessor of mine once made on the topic: The phrase "If I were them, I would.." is meaningless. If you were them, if you had an iden

by Dilpil 17y ago

One interesting point a proffessor of mine once made on the topic: The phrase "If I were them, I would.." is meaningless. If you were them, if you had an identical upbringing and identical genetic material, you would behave exactly as they do.

CWuestefeld 17y ago
Not so fast. Some theories posit that the key to resolving the dichotomy of the "mind-body problem" is through the operation of quantum uncertainty in the mind. See, e.g., http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophy_of_mind#Dualist_solutions_to_the_mind-body_problem http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophy_of_mind#Dualist_solu...
- andrewcooke 17y ago
  that doesn't help with predicting what you would do, though, does it? (also, i'm not sure how qm resolves the mind-body problem, and the article you linked to doesn't explain, as far as i can see - qm does suggest that there may be something special about the mind, since it may be what makes observers special, but qm is still "physics", so it doesn't explain a non-physical mind (it may help resolve the question of free will because it could introduce indeterminism, but the problem of free-will is not the mind-body problem) (on the other hand i'm not clear why you introduced the mind-body problem at all, as it's not really the issue here...)).
ugh 17y ago
I think your professor misinterpreted the phrase, I always assumed its usage meaning something like this: If you blasted that stupid forward to pieces and teleported me on the soccer field ten seconds ago I would have passed to a different player.
- jrp 17y ago
  Yes. It may be funny to observe that a phrase literally means the opposite, or is meaningless, etc., but generally there is a real meaning which everyone understands.
  - ugh 17y ago
    There is a point, though, to the professor’s criticism, and it’s a subtle one. The teleported soccer fan probably wouldn’t be able to pass the ball to any player at all. No problem, he says, I will just imagine myself in the same physical condition as the scolded player. But would that be enough? If you want to be good at playing soccer you need to know about tactics and strategy, you need the experience of hundreds of games. Can the soccer fan just imagine himself having all that and still be sure whether he would have passed to a different player? Probably not. Why would all those changes to his brain keep the part intact with which he just decided which would have been the best pass? I might be committing a fundamental attribution error by concentrating too much on the brain side of things, though. Situation can be the other and maybe even more straightforward reason why the teleported soccer fan would probably fare not much better than the player. The fan has a bird eye’s view, multiple camera angles and instant replay, the player doesn’t. The fan is sitting in the pub, the player is running around. And so on. You might want to be careful when using this phrase, then. Maybe yell something like: “The optimal pass which maximally increases the chance of scoring a goal would have been to pass to that other player, you idiot!”

by Dilpil 17y ago

CWuestefeld 17y ago

Not so fast. Some theories posit that the key to resolving the dichotomy of the "mind-body problem" is through the operation of quantum uncertainty in the mind. See, e.g., http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophy_of_mind#Dualist_solutions_to_the_mind-body_problem http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophy_of_mind#Dualist_solu...

andrewcooke 17y ago
that doesn't help with predicting what you would do, though, does it? (also, i'm not sure how qm resolves the mind-body problem, and the article you linked to doesn't explain, as far as i can see - qm does suggest that there may be something special about the mind, since it may be what makes observers special, but qm is still "physics", so it doesn't explain a non-physical mind (it may help resolve the question of free will because it could introduce indeterminism, but the problem of free-will is not the mind-body problem) (on the other hand i'm not clear why you introduced the mind-body problem at all, as it's not really the issue here...)).

ugh 17y ago

I think your professor misinterpreted the phrase, I always assumed its usage meaning something like this: If you blasted that stupid forward to pieces and teleported me on the soccer field ten seconds ago I would have passed to a different player.

jrp 17y ago
Yes. It may be funny to observe that a phrase literally means the opposite, or is meaningless, etc., but generally there is a real meaning which everyone understands.
- ugh 17y ago
  There is a point, though, to the professor’s criticism, and it’s a subtle one. The teleported soccer fan probably wouldn’t be able to pass the ball to any player at all. No problem, he says, I will just imagine myself in the same physical condition as the scolded player. But would that be enough? If you want to be good at playing soccer you need to know about tactics and strategy, you need the experience of hundreds of games. Can the soccer fan just imagine himself having all that and still be sure whether he would have passed to a different player? Probably not. Why would all those changes to his brain keep the part intact with which he just decided which would have been the best pass? I might be committing a fundamental attribution error by concentrating too much on the brain side of things, though. Situation can be the other and maybe even more straightforward reason why the teleported soccer fan would probably fare not much better than the player. The fan has a bird eye’s view, multiple camera angles and instant replay, the player doesn’t. The fan is sitting in the pub, the player is running around. And so on. You might want to be careful when using this phrase, then. Maybe yell something like: “The optimal pass which maximally increases the chance of scoring a goal would have been to pass to that other player, you idiot!”