3 ms·
The policies may have changed, but the people are the same.
by fallingknife 5y ago
The policies may have changed, but the people are the same.
- WJW 5y agoMany people alive in the 60s will have died by now, and the rest will have had 50-60 extra years of life experience. They're hardly the same, except in a very strict "person with the same name as then" sense.
- webmaven 5y ago> They're hardly the same, except in a very strict "person with the same name as then" sense. In terms of identity that is correct, but don't forget that when we refer to a particular person we are really using a label to point at a specific continuity of experience and agency through time, and unless qualified somehow (twelve-year-old Bob, Alice last year, you committed after yesterday's meeting, etc.) the default time point is either at the moment of reference or a moment just prior (the rest of the 4D 'worm' is incorporated transitively), and (again, by default) the 'now' pointer is thereafter updated continuously (at least in casual conversation in natural languages such as English). It is pretty rare for continuity of experience (and agency) to be broken, and outside of science fiction physical continuity never is, so it isn't too surprising that English (and other natural languages I'm familiar with) largely elide the point-in-time qualifier by default. We - both individually and in groups - are all of us Ships of Theseus, passing in the night.
- KarlKemp 5y agoThe more specific criticism in Germany in the 60s was that may of the then-current elites had also been in positions of power two decades before, as (literal) Nazis.