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I remember when first reading the story thinking, that I can resolve the question "Where am I" easily because of my experience with video games. When I play a

I remember when first reading the story thinking, that I can resolve the question "Where am I" easily because of my experience with video games. When I play a first-person video game, and someone behind me looks at my screen and asks me, "Where are you?", I don't say "In a chair playing a game". I say "I'm in such-and-such room on a space station" or whatever. This made me think that "Where am I" depends on the spatial coordinates your inputs (eyes, ears) are picking up. In an every day case it's wherever my eyeballs are, in a video game case it's the setting of the video game, and Daniel Dennet's case it's wherever his eyeballs are. This works for videogames but not TV. So the brain must be able to control the inputs. This also works for the "Tom and Dick switch brains" thought experiment in the story. After the switch, Tom is wherever the eyeballs that are communicating with his brains are, which is to say wherever Dick's body is.

malux85 2y ago
Yeah I was thinking the same thing - but more generalised to just “sensory input” The fact that our brains and sensory input have been tightly coupled since forever basically means we don’t have a framework for perceiving these in different spatial coordinates simultaneously. But then I was thinking what if our sensory input was split up? My eyes in one location, seeing stuff, my ears in another location hearing stuff, my mouth in another location tasting stuff, then my notion of self switches back to wherever the brain is, but where was that transition? It’s not clear to me :/ I was more interested in the dual minds at the end of the blog post though, musing on the Ship of Theseus type problem of at what point do the two minds become distinct after desynchronisation? That got me to thinking about how much biology alters the mind too - e.g. when he mentioned that his body was drinking alcohol would his mind get drunk (I think no, presumably because only nerve impulses are being transmitted) but then does he feel the other effects of alcohol? Rapid heartbeat, hot flushes? Can you have an adrenaline induced panic attack using such an interface? If the sensory duplication is severed can they re-merge at any point in future even if they diverge a lot? How does the interface resolve conflicting brain outputs? Just issue the dual signals? What of conflicting signals go to the heartbeat control nerve? Great article! Made me think a lot!
- lIl-IIIl 2y ago
  > My eyes in one location, seeing stuff, my ears in another location hearing stuff, my mouth in another location tasting stuff, then my notion of self switches back to wherever the brain is, but where was that transition? There's a text adventure game that has exactly that as a game mechanic. I don't remember what it is called, I want to say it's "A Mind Forever Voyaging" but reading about it on Wikipedia makes no mention of this.
  - malux85 2y ago
    That sounds cool!
persnickety 2y ago
What if you're playing a game and someone pulls the chair from under you? Do you remain in the game, unresponsive? Do you prove that you were indeed on the chair all the time? Or do you get forcefully pulled out from the game to the floor? What if you play a game at a LAN party while chatting with others in the same room? What if you put the loudspeaker on in the LAN room to order a pizza? What will you answer to the question of "where are you?"? I think the answer is closer to "you're in all of those places, to differing extents, depending on who asks". Yes, it feels useless, but attempting to figure out one ultimate answer feels even more useless to me.
- lIl-IIIl 2y ago
  >What if you're playing a game and someone pulls the chair from under you? Right, here is Daniel Dennet's answer, from the story: "For as the last radio signal between Tulsa and Houston died away, had I not changed location from Tulsa to Houston at the speed of light? And had I not accomplished this without any increase in mass? What moved from A to B at such speed was surely myself, or at any rate my soul or mind — the massless center of my being and home of my consciousness."
macrolime 2y ago
What you perceive is a kind of virtual reality similar to a video game. It's just constructed based on sensory input, but still has a coordinate system and a point of view, like the camera location in a game engine. Electrically stimulating certain regions of the brain can change the point of view, leading what is called an out-of-body experience. You may wonder how it is that you can move the camera location without moving the eyes. That's because the sensory input creates a kind of 3d model and just like you can imagine what if would be like to see the room from another angle, you can also "hallucinate" it.

malux85 2y ago

Yeah I was thinking the same thing - but more generalised to just “sensory input” The fact that our brains and sensory input have been tightly coupled since forever basically means we don’t have a framework for perceiving these in different spatial coordinates simultaneously. But then I was thinking what if our sensory input was split up? My eyes in one location, seeing stuff, my ears in another location hearing stuff, my mouth in another location tasting stuff, then my notion of self switches back to wherever the brain is, but where was that transition? It’s not clear to me :/ I was more interested in the dual minds at the end of the blog post though, musing on the Ship of Theseus type problem of at what point do the two minds become distinct after desynchronisation? That got me to thinking about how much biology alters the mind too - e.g. when he mentioned that his body was drinking alcohol would his mind get drunk (I think no, presumably because only nerve impulses are being transmitted) but then does he feel the other effects of alcohol? Rapid heartbeat, hot flushes? Can you have an adrenaline induced panic attack using such an interface? If the sensory duplication is severed can they re-merge at any point in future even if they diverge a lot? How does the interface resolve conflicting brain outputs? Just issue the dual signals? What of conflicting signals go to the heartbeat control nerve? Great article! Made me think a lot!

lIl-IIIl 2y ago
> My eyes in one location, seeing stuff, my ears in another location hearing stuff, my mouth in another location tasting stuff, then my notion of self switches back to wherever the brain is, but where was that transition? There's a text adventure game that has exactly that as a game mechanic. I don't remember what it is called, I want to say it's "A Mind Forever Voyaging" but reading about it on Wikipedia makes no mention of this.
- malux85 2y ago
  That sounds cool!

persnickety 2y ago

What if you're playing a game and someone pulls the chair from under you? Do you remain in the game, unresponsive? Do you prove that you were indeed on the chair all the time? Or do you get forcefully pulled out from the game to the floor? What if you play a game at a LAN party while chatting with others in the same room? What if you put the loudspeaker on in the LAN room to order a pizza? What will you answer to the question of "where are you?"? I think the answer is closer to "you're in all of those places, to differing extents, depending on who asks". Yes, it feels useless, but attempting to figure out one ultimate answer feels even more useless to me.

lIl-IIIl 2y ago
>What if you're playing a game and someone pulls the chair from under you? Right, here is Daniel Dennet's answer, from the story: "For as the last radio signal between Tulsa and Houston died away, had I not changed location from Tulsa to Houston at the speed of light? And had I not accomplished this without any increase in mass? What moved from A to B at such speed was surely myself, or at any rate my soul or mind — the massless center of my being and home of my consciousness."

macrolime 2y ago

What you perceive is a kind of virtual reality similar to a video game. It's just constructed based on sensory input, but still has a coordinate system and a point of view, like the camera location in a game engine. Electrically stimulating certain regions of the brain can change the point of view, leading what is called an out-of-body experience. You may wonder how it is that you can move the camera location without moving the eyes. That's because the sensory input creates a kind of 3d model and just like you can imagine what if would be like to see the room from another angle, you can also "hallucinate" it.