[ExI] Open Individualism

[Jason Resch]

On Thu, Jan 4, 2024 at 2:29 PM Ben Zaiboc via extropy-chat <
extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:

> On 04/01/2024 16:29, BillK wrote:
>
> open individualism posits that all individuals are
> fundamentally connected at the level of consciousness. From this
> perspective, you and I are not separate individuals with distinct
> identities but rather manifestations of the same underlying
> consciousness or awareness.
>
>
> Hm. If this is so, then why is there no experience of it?
>

The "you-now" is not, I presume, experiencing the same thing as the
"you-from-5-minutes-ago". Yet by convention we say both conscious states
are experienced by the same person.



> I certainly don't experience any consciousness but my own. Can anyone
> claim otherwise?
>

You don't remember experiencing any consciousness but your own. But memory
is no guarantor of what you have or haven't experienced. Someone had the
vivid experience of eating the breakfast you ate 947 days ago, but I doubt
you have any memory of that experience. To whom does that experience belong?


>
> I don't see how all individuals (or even just two) can possibly be
> 'connected at the level of consciousness' without being conscious of it.
>

Consider the diagrams I created here, which compare and contrast three
theories of personal identity:
https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1UvJ5X8ovzz6ZrJJWKDoiUvj2g6p6H6p-nUz1XdDt6aU/edit?usp=sharing

We have the habit of drawing arbitrary borders around some collections of
experiences, and say "this person experiences these experiences but not
those other experiences", but by what logic do we base this? What if we
drew the borders in a different way? What does that change? Is there any
physical fact that defines which experiences are to be exclusively
perceived?



> The conclusion is that we must be separate individuals with distinct
> identities, or we would all be aware that this was not the case. This seems
> to describe a 'hive mind', and we are definitely not that.
>

Open individualism has nothing to do with hive minds. I think that
excerpt from the AI's description is misleading. From any perspective, our
knowledge and memories are limited by the neurology that perspective
currently has access to. It will *seem* as though you are only ever one
person, because that is all your present memories will ever provide
evidence for. But this is like concluding there is one objective now (and
that no other points in time exist or are as valid/real as the present)
because those are times are times you happen to not be in. It is the
illusion that there is some special selection (now / here / me / this
branch of the multiverse), that makes *this* more real than the other times
/ other places / other perspectives / other branches. But this is only an
illusion created by the limitations of one's current vantage point. By
studying the issues, we can come to realize other points in time are real
too, other locations we're not in are just as real, other branches of the
multiverse are just as real, and so on. Until we can break the greatest
illusion of all: that your experiences are only those of one particular
organism.

Jason
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