4 ms·

How dare Amun-Ra come into my house and attack me like that! Sure, I'm using Wikipedia to debate stuff on the Internet, but my cell phone makes me a post human

How dare Amun-Ra come into my house and attack me like that! Sure, I'm using Wikipedia to debate stuff on the Internet, but my cell phone makes me a post human augmented, cybernetic being, not a half-educated layman with a fondness for sophistry. Right?

MereInterest 4y ago
It depends on where you draw the boundary between "you" and "not-you". If that boundary extends only as far as your skin, then your cell phone makes you forgetful and dependent. If that boundary extends to tools that you use, books in front of you, texts that you can summon up at a moment, then your cell phone gives you a phenomenal recall for facts, though also an increased risk of mind control. For me, I draw the boundary based on latency, unconscious guidance, and predictability. I can send a thought to move my hand, and it moves as I think of it. The hand is within the boundary of "me". Holding a pencil, I do not need to consciously consider how to form each curve of a letter. The pencil is within the boundary of "me". I can predict what emacs will do when given keystrokes, so emacs is within the boundary of "me". On the other hand, there is a large delay between deciding to open a door and it responding to my pull, so it clearly is not "me". I need to consciously consider what search terms to query, and cannot do so at an unconscious level. Even when I repeat the exact same query as I did a year ago, I may not find the results I was searching for, and so there is no predictability. These lead me to feel that a search engine is not within the boundary of "me".
- CobrastanJorji 4y ago
  Your system of distinguishing "me" from "not-me" via a quantitative metric is interesting to me because it's not a binary. Human reaction time for hands is a bit faster than feet. Are my hands more "me" than my feet? Well, that kind of intuitively checks out to me. But reflex reactions, like blinking, have less than half the latency of conscious reactions. Are my reflex reactions more me than my conscious decisions? Your door example raises further questions. When I pick up a remote control, the control moves just as easily as my hand. Does the remote become an equal part of me immediately?
  - medstrom 4y ago
    A remote-controlled door would become part of you, the instant you hold the remote.
    - _jal 4y ago
      Depends. If it is a poorly designed remote that forces you to think about how to operate it, the friction makes it much less you-like.
  - Joker_vD 4y ago
    It seems you suggest to base the boundary on how easy/trivial it is to make something go away from your posession, akin to "big man in a suit of armour — take that off, what are you?" line of reasoning. Well, the problem is that stripping tools from someone is not that much more difficult than stripping memory: some fair amount of violence would be necessary in both scenarios (blunt torso traumas vs. blunt head traumas).
  - MereInterest 4y ago
    > via a quantitative metric is interesting to me because it's not a binary. It also means that it depends on the situation. If I'm reading a book, then the movement of my hands feels instant as I reach to turn the page. But back when I played the piano, at times my hands could feel like they are falling behind, not listening to what I'm telling them to do, responding too slowly for what is being demanded of them. Whether or not my hands feel like "me" depends on what I'm trying to have them do. > Does the remote become an equal part of me immediately? I've never really thought of it in terms of time, in part because it is only something to quantify in retrospect. A pencil in my hand feels like a part of me, that responds as I move it. If I press it against a piece of paper, I interpret the sensory input as "felt" from the tip of the pencil, even though I know that I have no nerve endings there. But a pencil on the table isn't part of me. Whether there's a smooth transition between the two as I pick it up and gain control over it, or whether it's something that just "clicks", I'm not sure.
  - samplatt 4y ago
    >Are my hands more "me" than my feet? Meta's avatars (and many other ingame models representing a human) would have you believe so, since they don't have legs.
- starrygordon 4y ago
  The _me_ should be regarded as a field.
emptyfile 4y ago
Ouch.
RobRivera 4y ago
I remember when Amun-Ra personally attacked me the first time. What with the calendar and the clock, oye nothings ever enough for the schmuck. He'd have my legs for their ability to atrophy my arm strength if he'd have his way, making me look like a Glukkon
Guthur 4y ago
Amun-Ra has missed one important part of writing. It is not just for remembering one's own thoughts but also for transmitting them over great distances of time and space. If one is to read Wikipedia and repeat it verbatim without understanding then one is only a single component of a greater transportation medium. But if in contrast, if one was to internalise those words and draw lines of inference between ideas so elusively captured therein and a wider base of knowledge then maybe you are something more.
- eru 4y ago
  Amun-Ra's thoughts were only transmitted to us because of writing. But perhaps he does not care about the far future as much.

MereInterest 4y ago

It depends on where you draw the boundary between "you" and "not-you". If that boundary extends only as far as your skin, then your cell phone makes you forgetful and dependent. If that boundary extends to tools that you use, books in front of you, texts that you can summon up at a moment, then your cell phone gives you a phenomenal recall for facts, though also an increased risk of mind control. For me, I draw the boundary based on latency, unconscious guidance, and predictability. I can send a thought to move my hand, and it moves as I think of it. The hand is within the boundary of "me". Holding a pencil, I do not need to consciously consider how to form each curve of a letter. The pencil is within the boundary of "me". I can predict what emacs will do when given keystrokes, so emacs is within the boundary of "me". On the other hand, there is a large delay between deciding to open a door and it responding to my pull, so it clearly is not "me". I need to consciously consider what search terms to query, and cannot do so at an unconscious level. Even when I repeat the exact same query as I did a year ago, I may not find the results I was searching for, and so there is no predictability. These lead me to feel that a search engine is not within the boundary of "me".

CobrastanJorji 4y ago
Your system of distinguishing "me" from "not-me" via a quantitative metric is interesting to me because it's not a binary. Human reaction time for hands is a bit faster than feet. Are my hands more "me" than my feet? Well, that kind of intuitively checks out to me. But reflex reactions, like blinking, have less than half the latency of conscious reactions. Are my reflex reactions more me than my conscious decisions? Your door example raises further questions. When I pick up a remote control, the control moves just as easily as my hand. Does the remote become an equal part of me immediately?
- medstrom 4y ago
  A remote-controlled door would become part of you, the instant you hold the remote.
  - _jal 4y ago
    Depends. If it is a poorly designed remote that forces you to think about how to operate it, the friction makes it much less you-like.
- Joker_vD 4y ago
  It seems you suggest to base the boundary on how easy/trivial it is to make something go away from your posession, akin to "big man in a suit of armour — take that off, what are you?" line of reasoning. Well, the problem is that stripping tools from someone is not that much more difficult than stripping memory: some fair amount of violence would be necessary in both scenarios (blunt torso traumas vs. blunt head traumas).
- MereInterest 4y ago
  > via a quantitative metric is interesting to me because it's not a binary. It also means that it depends on the situation. If I'm reading a book, then the movement of my hands feels instant as I reach to turn the page. But back when I played the piano, at times my hands could feel like they are falling behind, not listening to what I'm telling them to do, responding too slowly for what is being demanded of them. Whether or not my hands feel like "me" depends on what I'm trying to have them do. > Does the remote become an equal part of me immediately? I've never really thought of it in terms of time, in part because it is only something to quantify in retrospect. A pencil in my hand feels like a part of me, that responds as I move it. If I press it against a piece of paper, I interpret the sensory input as "felt" from the tip of the pencil, even though I know that I have no nerve endings there. But a pencil on the table isn't part of me. Whether there's a smooth transition between the two as I pick it up and gain control over it, or whether it's something that just "clicks", I'm not sure.
- samplatt 4y ago
  >Are my hands more "me" than my feet? Meta's avatars (and many other ingame models representing a human) would have you believe so, since they don't have legs.
starrygordon 4y ago
The _me_ should be regarded as a field.

emptyfile 4y ago

Ouch.

RobRivera 4y ago

I remember when Amun-Ra personally attacked me the first time. What with the calendar and the clock, oye nothings ever enough for the schmuck. He'd have my legs for their ability to atrophy my arm strength if he'd have his way, making me look like a Glukkon

Guthur 4y ago

Amun-Ra has missed one important part of writing. It is not just for remembering one's own thoughts but also for transmitting them over great distances of time and space. If one is to read Wikipedia and repeat it verbatim without understanding then one is only a single component of a greater transportation medium. But if in contrast, if one was to internalise those words and draw lines of inference between ideas so elusively captured therein and a wider base of knowledge then maybe you are something more.

eru 4y ago
Amun-Ra's thoughts were only transmitted to us because of writing. But perhaps he does not care about the far future as much.