You are a 4-dimensional region of spacetime. What you normally call ‘you’ is a mutually-spacelike-separated cut of this 4-dimensional region, but the whole reason for calling this slice special is because of causal chains that have extent in time. For instance, your hand is considered yours because your brain can tell it what to do*. That causal chain takes time to roll out.
if each of us had a partner and could control the other’s hands, the terms would probably soon switch so that your hands are the pair on their body, not the pair on your own body.
Do you think there is a meaningful distinction to be drawn between the kinds of things I can talk about via mutually-spacelike cuts (like arrangements, shapes, trombones, maybe dogs) versus the kinds of things I cannot talk about via mutually-spacelike cuts, like the motion of a fast-ball, Beethoven’s Ode to Joy, or the life of a star? Processes that take time versus...I donno, things?
I ask because natural language and my everyday experience of the world (unreliable or irrelevant though they may be to the question of physical reality) makes a great deal of fuss over this distinction.
There is a distinction, and you just gave it—some things are defined by their processes, and some things are not. Imagine instantaneously reducing something to an arbitrarily low temperature and leaving it that way forever as a substitute for stopping time, and see if the thing still counts as the same thing (this rule of thumb is not guaranteed to apply in all cases).
A frozen human body is not a human. It’s the corpse of a now-defunct human (will stay this way forever, so no cryonic restoration). So, the life—a process—is part of the definition of ‘human’. BUT since it was done instantaneously you could say it’s a corpse with a particular terminal mental state.
A trombone or triangle that’s reduced to epsilon kelvins is just a cold trombone or triangle.
A computer remains a computer, but it ceases to have any role-based identities like ’www.lesswrong.com′ or 230.126.52.85 (to name a random IP address). But, like the corpse, you can say it has a memory state corresponding to such roles.
Very interesting answer, thank you. So, for those things not defined by processes, is it unproblematic to talk about their being more or less real in terms of reality fluid?
Well, we haven’t exactly nailed down the ultimate nature of this magical reality fluid, but I don’t think that whether you define an object by shape or process changes how the magical reality fluid concept applies.
You are a 4-dimensional region of spacetime. What you normally call ‘you’ is a mutually-spacelike-separated cut of this 4-dimensional region, but the whole reason for calling this slice special is because of causal chains that have extent in time. For instance, your hand is considered yours because your brain can tell it what to do*. That causal chain takes time to roll out.
if each of us had a partner and could control the other’s hands, the terms would probably soon switch so that your hands are the pair on their body, not the pair on your own body.
Do you think there is a meaningful distinction to be drawn between the kinds of things I can talk about via mutually-spacelike cuts (like arrangements, shapes, trombones, maybe dogs) versus the kinds of things I cannot talk about via mutually-spacelike cuts, like the motion of a fast-ball, Beethoven’s Ode to Joy, or the life of a star? Processes that take time versus...I donno, things?
I ask because natural language and my everyday experience of the world (unreliable or irrelevant though they may be to the question of physical reality) makes a great deal of fuss over this distinction.
There is a distinction, and you just gave it—some things are defined by their processes, and some things are not. Imagine instantaneously reducing something to an arbitrarily low temperature and leaving it that way forever as a substitute for stopping time, and see if the thing still counts as the same thing (this rule of thumb is not guaranteed to apply in all cases).
A frozen human body is not a human. It’s the corpse of a now-defunct human (will stay this way forever, so no cryonic restoration). So, the life—a process—is part of the definition of ‘human’. BUT since it was done instantaneously you could say it’s a corpse with a particular terminal mental state.
A trombone or triangle that’s reduced to epsilon kelvins is just a cold trombone or triangle.
A computer remains a computer, but it ceases to have any role-based identities like ’www.lesswrong.com′ or 230.126.52.85 (to name a random IP address). But, like the corpse, you can say it has a memory state corresponding to such roles.
Very interesting answer, thank you. So, for those things not defined by processes, is it unproblematic to talk about their being more or less real in terms of reality fluid?
Well, we haven’t exactly nailed down the ultimate nature of this magical reality fluid, but I don’t think that whether you define an object by shape or process changes how the magical reality fluid concept applies.
Alright, thanks for your time, and for correcting me on the MWI point. I found this very interesting and helpful.