From: Samantha Atkins (samantha@objectent.com)
Date: Mon Feb 10 2003 - 10:40:25 MST
Jef Allbright wrote:
> So much anthropomorphizing:
>
> It all depends on the context within which you are making your comparisons.
>
> The sense of self is an illusion. Science has begun to show that our own
> sense of self, which seems to us continuous and central, and -- important --
> is actually a result of multiple asynchronous fed-back processes.
The "sense of self" is certainly NOT an illusion. The actuality
may be a different story or not what we sense that it is.
> One
> emergent characteristic of these processes is what we think of as
> consciousness or self-awareness.
That is a theory. It is far from proven. We should not blithely
assume as being "scientific" what has not been fully validated
scientifically.
> What even most technophiles don't realize
> is that this sense of self is under constant revision, with memories lost,
> and sometimes replaced with various degrees of inaccuracy, emotions
> changing, and even "processing capability" changing all the time. The sense
> of self is an illusion.
>
Is a cloud an "illusion"? Is something that is constantly
shifting for that reason "illusion"? If so, then what does it
matter? Matter itself is consistently shifting at the
fundamental level.
> What I find strange is that many people would generally agree with the above
> paragraph, but then continue to think that preservation of this illusionary
> "self" is an all-important goal.
>
So it does not matter to you if you die in the next nano-second,
heh?
> Philosophically-thinking (as opposed to evolutionarily-based
> self-preservation thinking) perhaps we should value and promote the
> "extropy" of an individual. To value the knowledge and processes that lead
> to greater growth, greater knowledge, greater "intelligence", with little
> regard, indeed perhaps a sense of "good riddance", to the clinging notion of
> self.
>
And the difference is what? Since we don't know yet how to
promote the "extropy of an individual" without preserving the
current packaging or transferring to future packaging, I am not
at all sure that dropping the notion of "self" does anything.
Now I do agree that it is quite essential to greatly loosen the
notion of "self" if we are going to be able to changing
packaging and characteristics radically. To much baggage
defining the view of self is tied to the particulars of the
current implementation and its associated evolutionary programming.
- samantha
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