[ExI] Open Individualism

[ilsa]

Consciousness is a kind of clay, and so it couldn't be the thing that
connects us all, because it's a stuff that our animal bags of water use for
some experience. Hopefully all leading to joy, smile, ilsa

On Fri, Jan 5, 2024, 10:50 PM Jason Resch via extropy-chat <
extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:

>
>
> 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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