[ExI] Open Individualism

[Jason Resch]

On Sat, Jan 6, 2024, 11:33 AM Ben Zaiboc via extropy-chat <
extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:

>
> This makes no sense to me at all. It seems equivalent to claiming that
> all rocks are connected (and just as useful).
>
> I can claim that all male humans have their own 'open individualism',
> separate from the same thing in females, or all living things have it,
> or only certain classes of beings, or objects or collections of
> organised information, etc., etc. What does it actually mean? Nothing,
> as far as I can see (apart from as mental categories that we use as part
> of our thought processes, but that's not what we're talking about here).
>
> More importantly, what use is this idea?


It explains why you were born as the person you are and why you are
experiencing the life you are now in, *without" having to make additional
unfounded, highly improbable, assumptions about necessary preconditions or
souls.

It is also a foundational assumption for anthropic reasoning to work at
all. (You can't say we're here because if we were over there we'd be dead,
*unless* you believe you will always be where there's life -- and this is
open individualism). It's perhaps no coincidence that two of the earliest
proponents of anthropic reasoning (Hoyle and Dyson) were open
individualists.



Clearly the claim that it can
> eliminate wars and cruelty etc. is false. We already have groups of
> people that treat each other differently to those not in the group.
> Claiming that we are all in the same group doesn't work, because then
> there is no 'out-group' to compare ourselves with, and it instantly
> falls apart into sub-groups. In any event, you won't convince everybody
> to buy in to this idea (assuming that it's the knowledge of this idea
> that is supposed to give rise to World Peace (rather than the existence
> of the thing, which it clearly is not)). I'm certainly not sold!
>


I think you don't want it to be true.

If that's the case, well then you can't use reason to get out of a position
which you did not use reason to get into.


> If such a state as this not-group-consciousness group consciousness
> exists, and is not accessible to anyone as an individual, again, what
> use is it? I don't even know what it actually means, let alone how
> anyone could prove it exists.
>
> Is this idea like the concept of a body being made up of individual
> cells? The body has no direct knowledge of the cells, and the cells have
> no knowledge of the body as a whole, just their local environment? If
> that's so, then what does this Open Individual do? Where is the evidence
> that it exists? What effect does it have on the world? If the answer is
> "it's the sum total of all humans alive on the earth", then it's
> singularly ineffective as an 'individual'. It suffers from massive
> internal conflicts of several different kinds, and apparently hates
> itself. Sticking with the biological theme, it's an insane teratoma. So
> I don't think that can be the answer.
>
> I'm tempted to posit the existence of an Open Individual that consists
> of all male blonde humans over 6 feet tall. Is there any way of
> disproving that such a thing exists?
>

I don't think you have yet understood the idea. It's not about grouping
things.

It all comes down to one question: what did it take for you to be born? For
you you to be alive now in this moment? What principle in science says the
experience this one life you are in is somehow different or special
compared to all the trillions of other creatures who have lived on this
planet?

Jason


> Do cats have their own Open Individual?
>
> Monkeys? Hominids? Mammals? Cephalopods? Everything with a brain?
>
> All humans who understand calculus?
>
> Are there infinitely many Open Individuals?
>
> Etc.
>
>
> Ben
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