A, I missed a “t”. “can” → “cant”. Sorry about that typo. I mostly agree with it being a matter of degree. But I want to respond to this part of your comment:
In principle, the agentic unity of the ego can be lost and instead scattered onto different agentic-type thought processes
I wouldn’t say that this is what happens with Shoulder Advisors or with the no-self experience of meditation. There are many failure modes of the brain making sense of agency and identity. I think the default mode of society is to encourage and reinforce an interpretation around ego, identity, and agency which is stable and beneficial (at least in the sense of societal productivity, I guess there are cultures with very differt patterns that are stable but probably less scalable e.g. the Piraha).
I wouldn’t say that this is what happens with Shoulder Advisors or with the no-self experience of meditation. There are many failure modes of the brain making sense of agency and identity.
This sounds right. Maybe the cases that I am concerned about additionally contain fear responses, and purely having a non-unified or unclear sense of self is more normal/safer than I thought.
A, I missed a “t”. “can” → “cant”. Sorry about that typo. I mostly agree with it being a matter of degree. But I want to respond to this part of your comment:
I wouldn’t say that this is what happens with Shoulder Advisors or with the no-self experience of meditation. There are many failure modes of the brain making sense of agency and identity. I think the default mode of society is to encourage and reinforce an interpretation around ego, identity, and agency which is stable and beneficial (at least in the sense of societal productivity, I guess there are cultures with very differt patterns that are stable but probably less scalable e.g. the Piraha).
Ah, this makes sense thanks!
This sounds right. Maybe the cases that I am concerned about additionally contain fear responses, and purely having a non-unified or unclear sense of self is more normal/safer than I thought.