Well, the person who started typing this reply was someone incredibly similar, but not identical, to the person who finished (neither of who are the present me). It was a person who shared genes, who had an almost identical memory of childhood and education, who shares virtually all my goals, interests and dreams and is more like me than any other person that has ever lived. However, that person was not the me who exists now.
Extrapolate that backwards, becoming less and less like current me over time and you get an idea of who started learning the skills I currently have.
It’s not my fault if people have a broken view of what/who they actually are.
Shouldn’t that answer then result in a “Invalid Question” to the original “Would you be a proper scientific skeptic if you were born in 500 CE?” question?
I mean, what you are saying here is that it isn’t possible for you to have been born in 500 C.E., that you are a product of your genetics and environment and cannot be separated from those conditions that resulted in you. So the answer isn’t “Yes” it is “That isn’t a valid question.”
I’m not saying I agree, especially since I think the initial question can be rephrased as “Given the population of humans born in 500 C.E. and the historical realities of the era, do you believe that any person born in this era could have been a proper scientific skeptic and given that, do you believe that you would have developed into one had your initial conditions been otherwise identical, or at least highly similar?” Making it personal (Would you be...) is just a way of conferring the weight of the statement, as it is assumed that the readers of LW all have brains capable of modelling hypothetical scenarios, even if those scenarios don’t (or can’t even in principle) match reality.
The question isn’t asking if it is ACTUALLY possible for you to have been born in 500 CE, it is asking you to model the reality of someone in the first person as born in 500 CE and, taking into account what you know of the era, ask if you really think that someone with otherwise equivalent initial starting conditions would have grown into a proper scientific skeptic.
It’s also shorter to just bring in the personal hypothetical, which helps.
Correct. I made the jump of me appearing as is in 530CE as opposed to ‘baby me’ since I do not in any logical sense think that baby me is me. So yes, the question is invalid (in my view) but I tried to make it valid by altering the question without explicitly saying I was doing so (i.e. “If you were to pop into existence in 530 CE would you be a scientific skeptic?”)
Nor, by your reasoning, could it possibly ever be your fault, since my current view of what I am has causes in the past, and you didn’t exist in the past. By the same reasoning, nothing else could possibly ever be your fault, except possibly for what you are doing in the instant that I blame you for it… not that it matters for practical purposes, since by the time I got around to implementing consequences of that, you would no longer exist.
That strikes me as even more broken a view than the one you wish for it to replace… it destroys one of the major functions we use the notion of “a person” to perform.
Well, the person who started typing this reply was someone incredibly similar, but not identical, to the person who finished (neither of who are the present me). It was a person who shared genes, who had an almost identical memory of childhood and education, who shares virtually all my goals, interests and dreams and is more like me than any other person that has ever lived. However, that person was not the me who exists now.
Extrapolate that backwards, becoming less and less like current me over time and you get an idea of who started learning the skills I currently have.
It’s not my fault if people have a broken view of what/who they actually are.
Shouldn’t that answer then result in a “Invalid Question” to the original “Would you be a proper scientific skeptic if you were born in 500 CE?” question?
I mean, what you are saying here is that it isn’t possible for you to have been born in 500 C.E., that you are a product of your genetics and environment and cannot be separated from those conditions that resulted in you. So the answer isn’t “Yes” it is “That isn’t a valid question.”
I’m not saying I agree, especially since I think the initial question can be rephrased as “Given the population of humans born in 500 C.E. and the historical realities of the era, do you believe that any person born in this era could have been a proper scientific skeptic and given that, do you believe that you would have developed into one had your initial conditions been otherwise identical, or at least highly similar?” Making it personal (Would you be...) is just a way of conferring the weight of the statement, as it is assumed that the readers of LW all have brains capable of modelling hypothetical scenarios, even if those scenarios don’t (or can’t even in principle) match reality.
The question isn’t asking if it is ACTUALLY possible for you to have been born in 500 CE, it is asking you to model the reality of someone in the first person as born in 500 CE and, taking into account what you know of the era, ask if you really think that someone with otherwise equivalent initial starting conditions would have grown into a proper scientific skeptic.
It’s also shorter to just bring in the personal hypothetical, which helps.
Correct. I made the jump of me appearing as is in 530CE as opposed to ‘baby me’ since I do not in any logical sense think that baby me is me. So yes, the question is invalid (in my view) but I tried to make it valid by altering the question without explicitly saying I was doing so (i.e. “If you were to pop into existence in 530 CE would you be a scientific skeptic?”)
Nor, by your reasoning, could it possibly ever be your fault, since my current view of what I am has causes in the past, and you didn’t exist in the past. By the same reasoning, nothing else could possibly ever be your fault, except possibly for what you are doing in the instant that I blame you for it… not that it matters for practical purposes, since by the time I got around to implementing consequences of that, you would no longer exist.
That strikes me as even more broken a view than the one you wish for it to replace… it destroys one of the major functions we use the notion of “a person” to perform.