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> If I were to go blind, I suspect I would be the same person afterward (or at least no more different than I would be had I retained my sight). If I lost an ar

by nkrisc 4y ago

> If I were to go blind, I suspect I would be the same person afterward (or at least no more different than I would be had I retained my sight). If I lost an arm, I'd still be me, just a me controlling one less arm. At risk of getting philosophical, you would not be the same person afterwards. You'd be You Without Sight, but you were You With Sight before you went blind. I wouldn't expect a drastic change (your taste in music or political views may not change), but I think is fair to say you would be changed somehow. I believe that who we are, as a person, is an emergent property of our entire body as well as our environment.

djokkataja 4y ago
If a person's identity is a property, is it measurable?
- nkrisc 4y ago
  Perhaps as measurable as the quantum state of the universe itself. After all, “environment” includes the universe. So realistically, probably not. That’s why I felt it necessary to say “I believe.”
ravi-delia 4y ago
Look, I love getting philosophical. Really, I do. My friends are so used to it that when I enter a conversation with "Well you might say..." they immediately start throwing objects at my head. Let none say that Ravi has ever backed down from an opportunity to get jiggy with definitions. But. Are you 100% confident that the difference between me having a brilliant idea for a fun game with my laser pointer and the me 5 minutes later experiencing a clarity of hindsight my natural vision will never again supply me is remotely comparable to the difference between, say, me and you? Or even me two years in the future? There is obviously a working definition of "same person" here! Like listen, you can absolutely say that we aren't the same person in the morning that we were before going to bed the previous night. Or going through anesthesia. Or forming new memories, or existing at all as the persisting pattern of our bodies churns through the atoms momentarily instantiating it. No man steps in the same river twice, yada yada yada. But the article is not making a philosophical argument about what the self truly is. It is positing (or raising the question in an annoyingly leading way, whatever) that intelligence is embodied definitionally. Like literally impossible without specifically the meat grubbers evolution endowed you and I with. There is absolutely no way to go from "we are all one universe" to "no machine learning system will ever be truly intelligent until it's within my chosen specialty of robotics", which is what 14 roboticists said in unison when Times interviewed them. So even if we need to invent new words for the sense in which I am the xchnople as a blind me, so you can keep "same" for whatever you're using it for, there's really no way in which it can swing the question of whether a body is required for specific, empirical aspects of cognition.
- nkrisc 4y ago
  I’m about to go to bed so I won’t (just yet) give your comment the response it deserves, but as I read one question struck me: what are the empirical aspects of cognition? Is cognition not a function of life itself?
  - ravi-delia 4y ago
    I guess again that there are senses in which everything alive is doing cognition. Some of these are also senses in which a thermostat is doing cognition. But it remains somewhat orthogonal to the point being made in the article! You are arguing for a definition of intelligence far more expansive than I am- it would be even more surprising under your definition if it was restricted to agents that have what we would recognize as bodies.
- dingusdew 4y ago
  [dead]

by nkrisc 4y ago

djokkataja 4y ago

If a person's identity is a property, is it measurable?

nkrisc 4y ago
Perhaps as measurable as the quantum state of the universe itself. After all, “environment” includes the universe. So realistically, probably not. That’s why I felt it necessary to say “I believe.”

ravi-delia 4y ago

Look, I love getting philosophical. Really, I do. My friends are so used to it that when I enter a conversation with "Well you might say..." they immediately start throwing objects at my head. Let none say that Ravi has ever backed down from an opportunity to get jiggy with definitions. But. Are you 100% confident that the difference between me having a brilliant idea for a fun game with my laser pointer and the me 5 minutes later experiencing a clarity of hindsight my natural vision will never again supply me is remotely comparable to the difference between, say, me and you? Or even me two years in the future? There is obviously a working definition of "same person" here! Like listen, you can absolutely say that we aren't the same person in the morning that we were before going to bed the previous night. Or going through anesthesia. Or forming new memories, or existing at all as the persisting pattern of our bodies churns through the atoms momentarily instantiating it. No man steps in the same river twice, yada yada yada. But the article is not making a philosophical argument about what the self truly is. It is positing (or raising the question in an annoyingly leading way, whatever) that intelligence is embodied definitionally. Like literally impossible without specifically the meat grubbers evolution endowed you and I with. There is absolutely no way to go from "we are all one universe" to "no machine learning system will ever be truly intelligent until it's within my chosen specialty of robotics", which is what 14 roboticists said in unison when Times interviewed them. So even if we need to invent new words for the sense in which I am the xchnople as a blind me, so you can keep "same" for whatever you're using it for, there's really no way in which it can swing the question of whether a body is required for specific, empirical aspects of cognition.

nkrisc 4y ago
I’m about to go to bed so I won’t (just yet) give your comment the response it deserves, but as I read one question struck me: what are the empirical aspects of cognition? Is cognition not a function of life itself?
- ravi-delia 4y ago
  I guess again that there are senses in which everything alive is doing cognition. Some of these are also senses in which a thermostat is doing cognition. But it remains somewhat orthogonal to the point being made in the article! You are arguing for a definition of intelligence far more expansive than I am- it would be even more surprising under your definition if it was restricted to agents that have what we would recognize as bodies.
dingusdew 4y ago
[dead]