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this post was submitted on 30 Nov 2023
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Today I Learned (TIL)
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I’m mid-40s and not at all the same person I was in my 30s, which was very different from my 20s, which was very different from my teens, etc. What makes you certain that you’re the same person? What is there about you that, if it changed, would make you not the same person? I’m honestly curious about your perspective.
I love your username lol.
Consequence is key to personhood. One can make the argument that, at least socially, you are 3 different people throughout your life, each with different levels of social responsibility. At first, you are a child, and social consequence is isolated to your core internal group or family unit, then you transition into adulthood, where social consequence places you subservient to your tribe, nation, or even planet, and eventually, you will once again become a 3rd individual in the dusk of your life, when social responsibility once again falls to the family unit, where you are subservient to your caretakers. The key is that the mistakes of an 18yo -can- affect a 50yo, through debt, prison, social shaming/othering, etc. One might argue that the 3rd person doesn't exist, and maybe even the 1st, too. But socially, we appear to distinguish a person from their responsibilities in these stages.
52 here. I'm a different person, year by year. Nothing radical, but I'm not the same man I was at 50 or 40 or 30 or 20 or 10.
Blindsight, by Peter Watts:
Because I can trace a line of myself in time. I'm human, and I percieve time to be linear, so if I look back in time through my memories, I can see myself. Not only that, but there is hard physical evidence that I exist, and have existed since I was born in (what we label as) the year 1984
If, at any point, I was removed from the timeline I would cease to exist.
A sappling might not be a tree, but it's only that sappling that can grow into that, specific, tree. How it grows, and how it changes, is up to time. But even if it loses a branch, or gets scalded in a fire- it's still the same tree
I know what you mean. And I promise I’m not trying to argue, just exploring the boundary.
What if your body was injured and it became comatose. Then your brain was uploaded to a computer where you regained consciousness.
Are you the same person? Which one is you? If the computer were turned off, is the body you? If the body dies, is the mind you? What if your mind were loaded into a different body? What if your body has a different mind loaded onto it?
What I’m really trying to get at is: are you the composite of your body + your consciousness? How much would either one have to change to not be you?
My body is part of me, as is my mind. Whichever part of myself remains, is me. If I am brain-dead, the body on life support is me. If only my mind remains, that's me. If they are seperated, but alive in one way or another, then each of those parts are also me
Though, for the record, I'd rather not be a brain in a jar nor hooked up to machines to breath. In both of those cases, given the choice, I'd chose death
As far as how little remains of me (or a thing) even if all that remains of me is a single cell. That's still me.
I'd take it even further than that, actually because I've given this way too much thought in the past. I don't have the mental fortitude to type it all out atm, but: I will happily argue that you are me, and I am you, and we are all temporary parts of a greater whole, operating as individuals on borrowed time with borrowed resources.
It depends on how much you want to zoom in/out. At a certain point one becomes the same as the other, like soup. Still, that soup wouldn't taste the same without it's individual ingredients, and each spice has it's own flavor- even if there's so little of it left, that no one can even taste it
I love it. Thanks for sharing.