3 ms·
The I that is me doesn't survive a nights sleep. Every night my brain does a re-shuffle of my personality and memories creating a new incremental version. Same
by foxyv 7y ago
The I that is me doesn't survive a nights sleep. Every night my brain does a re-shuffle of my personality and memories creating a new incremental version. Same goes for head injuries and reading a book. I'm still the me from before, just more so, and not. I have a vague feeling of continuity but it's almost non-existent. I am so different from myself ten years ago as to be a distinct person.
I have an intuition that any direct brain interface with an outside neural network would require small incremental changes similar to what we experience when we sleep. Then again I also have the feeling that early adopters of this tech will be lucky to get away with their minds intact.
Maybe in later versions it will be like turning on a switch and it's just there. Like opening your eyes or waking up from a dream. But I doubt that will happen in the next century.
- musicale 7y agoThis sort of meditation fills me with existential dread, namely the idea that every moment you are annihilated and replaced by a new person with most of your old memories, and nobody even notices. And when "I" wake up I'm like, wait why do I have all of these bills to pay, and why is everything in such a mess? Clearly nobody asked me about any of that. Sorry, future "me" - if you had kept me around and not insisted on replacing me wholesale, I might have been able to help you out, but given that you're getting rid of me and taking all of my stuff I think I have no reason to help you in any way.
- foxyv 7y agoI come to terms with this by realizing that the alternative is true horror. Can you imagine eternal stagnancy as a disembodied human soul? Never experiencing anything new, endless bliss or pain would be indistinguishable or result in withdrawal and self-annihilation. At least if my body dies, it will still change over time and become something else. I think of a soul as the wave of my life passing through time. It will continue after I die, the ideas and things I create will propagate through time like the wind of a butterfly's wings touching the souls and lives of those around me. It could create a hurricane, or dissipate into meaningless tiny changes. Eventually though chaos mixes the souls of everyone into entropy.
- aeternum 7y agoI think this will happen within the next 10 years even without a brain interface. VR is already quite immersive even with low resolution and only vision + sound.