[extropy-chat] Detectives and red herrings (was Survivaltangent)

[Lee Corbin]

Robert writes

> On 11/10/06, Lee Corbin <lcorbin at rawbw.com> wrote:
>> Mike writes
>> > If you lose memories, do you lose your self?
>> Yes.
> 
> It might be interesting to know whether you can ask the same thing
> about beliefs?
> 
> If you lose beliefs, do you lose your self?

Of course, it's a matter of degree, but:  change your beliefs,
change your self.  Yes, some part of you has indeed changed,
a part that for most of us is linked to his or her identity.

But suppose a salesman firmly believes that his company's
product X is infinitely superior to another company's Y.
Then he's fired by his company and hired by the other one.
Somehow within a day or two he now believes that Y is
superior to X.  We can say in this case that his beliefs are
hardly any part of his identity at all.

> I can cite the point when I was perhaps 14 or 15 and had to choose
> between science and catholicism.  The person who ended up choosing
> science was *not* the same individual as the one who believed in
> catholicism.  But I still have vague memories of his existance and his
> beliefs.

But isn't it an exaggeration to say that who you were at 16 was not
the same person that you were at 13?  Identity consists of more than
just beliefs, even in your case, wouldn't you agree?

> As I've observed myself evolve over the last decade (yes, I'm am now
> more than a decade old in extropian terms) I see myself losing more
> and more of my attachment to the current physical embodiment and more
> and more comfort with memory states and computational vectors derived
> mostly or even partly from my "self".

That makes total sense.  Nobody ought to identify with his body :-)
That is, a poor man who's been recently injured in a traffic accident
who is now a paraplegic, would be right to say that he's still the same
person, but just needs a new body.

I totally agree: you mainly are your "memory states", as you write.

Lee