Irrationality Game: I am something ontologically distinct from my body; I am much simpler and I am not located in the same spacetime. 50%
EDIT: Upon further reflection, my probability assignment would be better represented as the range between 30% and 50%, after factoring in general uncertainty due to confusion. I doubt this will make a difference to the voting though. ;)
The ”;” was meant to be simply a “and also” rather than a “therefore.”
I think that I’m much simpler than my body, and that is one of the reasons why I think I’m ontologically distinct. With 50% probability.
EDIT: Another answer I endorse: If I’m ontologically distinct from my body, then who knows how complicated I am—but apply Occam’s Razor, such that I’m only as complicated as I need to be, and the result will be that I’m much simpler than my body. Anyone who believes that uploading would preserve consciousness should agree with this, since uploading (can) change the medium of computation to a simpler one.
Why is this a 19? I thought this was a restatement of the “official LW position”. Or would people argue that an uploaded kokotajlod wouldn’t be the real kokotajlod?
I guess if you read it loosely. I think the official LW position would be (correct me if I am wrong) an em of kokotajlod that has high enough fidelity to replicate his decision making process is him; what he is is a particular set of hueristics, instincts, etc, that accompany his body but could theoretically exist outside it.
That does match his statement if one reads it as refering to something more like a platonic concept than a spiritual essence.
I think the “official LW position” is more reductionist than my Irrationality Game statement.
Even if people think that I am a computation, they probably don’t think I’m some sort of Platonic Form, but rather that I’m just a certain type of physical object that “implements” a computation.
That’s my understanding of typical LW thought, at any rate. Which is why I chose the statement that I did. :)
What does “spacetime” mean? Is the real “you” neither a causal descendent, nor a causal ancestor, of any of your body’s actions? I’d have to put that down somewhere around argmin probability.
Or do you just mean that you consider the real you to be something like a platonic computation, which your material body instantiates? That’s not too far off from some realms of LW semi-orthodoxy.
Basically, after thinking about consciousness for a while, and personal identity, I’ve come to assign high probability to some sort of dualism/idealism being true. It might still be a sort of reductionist dualism, i.e. platonic computations.
So yes, the “platonic computation” theory would count. Do you think my original post ought to be revised given this information? I hope I haven’t been misleading.
As for spacetime and causation: If I’m a platonic form, I’m not in spacetime, nor am I causally related to my body in any normal sense. It all depends on how we define causation, and I tend to be reductionist/eliminativist about causation.
I don’t think you’ve been any more misleading than a dualist is pretty much required to be. The basic ambiguities of dualism do, of course, remain:
How does the non-spacetime stuff produce subjective experience, when spacetime stuff can’t?
How does your subjective experience correlate with the environment and actions of your material body, just as if there were two-way causation going on? (even when you reduce causation to a Pearl-style net, or to the large-scale behavior of many individually time-reversible components, this question remains).
(1) It’s not about producing subjective experience, it is about being subjective experience. The idea here is that massive, vague mereological fusions of subatomic stuff just aren’t the sort of thing that can be subjective experiences. Just as no fundamental particle can be a chariot, since chariots have parts.
(2) I have no idea yet. I’m considering some sort of interactionist dualism, or some sort of idealism, or some sort of mathematical multiverse theory with self-contained mathematical structures that play the role of Platonic computations, with measure assigned by a simplicity weighting that generates the appearance of a physical world.
And of course I’m considering reductionist physicalism, reductionist mathematical multiverse theory, etc. as well. That’s where the other 50% comes in.
Taboo “I”. For all the ways of interpreting that claim that I can come up with, I’d give a probability either much, much higher or much, much lower than 50%.
Could you list the ways? I’m interested to hear which ways you think would give a probability much higher than 50%.
Also, telling me to taboo “I” is telling me to give a successful analysis of consciousness; if I could already do that, I wouldn’t assign 50% probability to it being one thing, and 50% probability to it being another.
I mean, sometimes by the word “I” I mean my System 2 (as in “I’m not sure what the effect of stricter gun control on the homicide rate would be”), sometimes I mean my System 1 (as in “I’m not scared of spiders”), sometimes I mean my body (as in “I’ve got a backache”), sometimes I mean my car (as in “I’m parked over there”), etc. Which one did you mean there?
...Oh. Now I can see a reasonable non-tautological, non-tautologically false interpretation of your entry.
Irrationality Game: I am something ontologically distinct from my body; I am much simpler and I am not located in the same spacetime. 50%
EDIT: Upon further reflection, my probability assignment would be better represented as the range between 30% and 50%, after factoring in general uncertainty due to confusion. I doubt this will make a difference to the voting though. ;)
Why would you be much simpler if you were ontologically distinct?
The ”;” was meant to be simply a “and also” rather than a “therefore.”
I think that I’m much simpler than my body, and that is one of the reasons why I think I’m ontologically distinct. With 50% probability.
EDIT: Another answer I endorse: If I’m ontologically distinct from my body, then who knows how complicated I am—but apply Occam’s Razor, such that I’m only as complicated as I need to be, and the result will be that I’m much simpler than my body. Anyone who believes that uploading would preserve consciousness should agree with this, since uploading (can) change the medium of computation to a simpler one.
Why is this a 19? I thought this was a restatement of the “official LW position”. Or would people argue that an uploaded kokotajlod wouldn’t be the real kokotajlod?
I guess if you read it loosely. I think the official LW position would be (correct me if I am wrong) an em of kokotajlod that has high enough fidelity to replicate his decision making process is him; what he is is a particular set of hueristics, instincts, etc, that accompany his body but could theoretically exist outside it. That does match his statement if one reads it as refering to something more like a platonic concept than a spiritual essence.
I think the “official LW position” is more reductionist than my Irrationality Game statement.
Even if people think that I am a computation, they probably don’t think I’m some sort of Platonic Form, but rather that I’m just a certain type of physical object that “implements” a computation.
That’s my understanding of typical LW thought, at any rate. Which is why I chose the statement that I did. :)
What does “spacetime” mean? Is the real “you” neither a causal descendent, nor a causal ancestor, of any of your body’s actions? I’d have to put that down somewhere around argmin probability.
Or do you just mean that you consider the real you to be something like a platonic computation, which your material body instantiates? That’s not too far off from some realms of LW semi-orthodoxy.
Good questions. I’ll explain my reasoning:
Basically, after thinking about consciousness for a while, and personal identity, I’ve come to assign high probability to some sort of dualism/idealism being true. It might still be a sort of reductionist dualism, i.e. platonic computations.
So yes, the “platonic computation” theory would count. Do you think my original post ought to be revised given this information? I hope I haven’t been misleading.
As for spacetime and causation: If I’m a platonic form, I’m not in spacetime, nor am I causally related to my body in any normal sense. It all depends on how we define causation, and I tend to be reductionist/eliminativist about causation.
I don’t think you’ve been any more misleading than a dualist is pretty much required to be. The basic ambiguities of dualism do, of course, remain:
How does the non-spacetime stuff produce subjective experience, when spacetime stuff can’t?
How does your subjective experience correlate with the environment and actions of your material body, just as if there were two-way causation going on? (even when you reduce causation to a Pearl-style net, or to the large-scale behavior of many individually time-reversible components, this question remains).
(1) It’s not about producing subjective experience, it is about being subjective experience. The idea here is that massive, vague mereological fusions of subatomic stuff just aren’t the sort of thing that can be subjective experiences. Just as no fundamental particle can be a chariot, since chariots have parts.
(2) I have no idea yet. I’m considering some sort of interactionist dualism, or some sort of idealism, or some sort of mathematical multiverse theory with self-contained mathematical structures that play the role of Platonic computations, with measure assigned by a simplicity weighting that generates the appearance of a physical world.
And of course I’m considering reductionist physicalism, reductionist mathematical multiverse theory, etc. as well. That’s where the other 50% comes in.
Taboo “I”. For all the ways of interpreting that claim that I can come up with, I’d give a probability either much, much higher or much, much lower than 50%.
Could you list the ways? I’m interested to hear which ways you think would give a probability much higher than 50%.
Also, telling me to taboo “I” is telling me to give a successful analysis of consciousness; if I could already do that, I wouldn’t assign 50% probability to it being one thing, and 50% probability to it being another.
I mean, sometimes by the word “I” I mean my System 2 (as in “I’m not sure what the effect of stricter gun control on the homicide rate would be”), sometimes I mean my System 1 (as in “I’m not scared of spiders”), sometimes I mean my body (as in “I’ve got a backache”), sometimes I mean my car (as in “I’m parked over there”), etc. Which one did you mean there?
...Oh. Now I can see a reasonable non-tautological, non-tautologically false interpretation of your entry.