I’m not trying to win any arguments. I’m trying to reason about artefacts of human culture that are parochial (accidents of history) or human-universal (practically inevitable products of human history). More to the point, I’m trying to equip other people with tools to reason in a similar fashion.
I’m also not trying to avoid sci-fi scenarios, but I am trying to avoid scenarios which have such a long history as a sci-fi trope that they will inevitably influence people’s intuitions.
I’m not writing a story (although I do want to frame the thought experiment as a fictional narrative). I’m not writing specific details about what’s on the other side of the wall / solar system / interdimensional gateway. The whole point of the thought experiment is that we don’t know what’s on the other side, apart from the fact that it contains a bunch of humans with as much chronological history as us. Based on that knowledge, what can we reason about them?
I’m not trying to win any arguments. I’m trying to reason about artefacts of human culture that are parochial (accidents of history) or human-universal (practically inevitable products of human history). More to the point, I’m trying to equip other people with tools to reason in a similar fashion.
I’m also not trying to avoid sci-fi scenarios, but I am trying to avoid scenarios which have such a long history as a sci-fi trope that they will inevitably influence people’s intuitions.
I’m not writing a story (although I do want to frame the thought experiment as a fictional narrative). I’m not writing specific details about what’s on the other side of the wall / solar system / interdimensional gateway. The whole point of the thought experiment is that we don’t know what’s on the other side, apart from the fact that it contains a bunch of humans with as much chronological history as us. Based on that knowledge, what can we reason about them?