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Comment by stareatgoats | Hacker News Reader

The question is not correctly formed: what we really want to know is if there are life-like beings that could operate on a totally different scale than ours (both time and size wise, including viruses and whales here). Self centered thinking, i.e. restricting our inquiry to only include protein-based lifeforms or other qualities required on our scale obviously prevents us from having the required open minded mindset.

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There are more bacterial cells in your body than there are human cells. Where exactly do you draw the line between what constitutes "you."

A zoo is still a zoo if there aren't any animals in it, but it wouldn't stay in business very long. No matter how important the animals are to the long-term viability of the zoo, they are not the zoo.

My gut bacteria may be vital to my survival, but they are not me. I don't find placing that line to be difficult at all.

The only part of the flesh which is "you" is the nervous system. Everything else can be hacked off or replaced without a loss of identity.

So if somebody has a limb amputation, losing a lot of nerves, are they a different person? Is somebody a different person when they're drunk? I've heard both of these thrown around colloquially. It's not obvious or straightforward to answer.

You could imagine a Ship of Theseus style replacement of all the neurons in your head with artificial ones. At what point would you stop being you?

My thoughts are that 'you' as a person change constantly, year to year, and who you are now is not the same as 5, 10, more years ago. I don't think it's so much that you are a different person because you lost a limb or are drunk, it's the change in personality and mind that accompany those that makes that person different. You could absolutely lose a limb and be 'the same' person, but you could also change significantly.

Sure but my past selves are also part of who I am. Without them I would not be me, and so I think they are more me than not me.

Never. "I" am a pattern of self awareness. The constituent parts are irrelevant. So long as the parts support the self awareness, "I" am.

So you would have no qualms about stepping into a Star Trek-style transporter, having your pattern scanned, your matter destroyed and recreated at the destination? If so, I would ask: what if the destroy step malfunctioned? There would be two of you. Which one would you be?

Both would consider themselves to be me, as both would be a legitimate continuation of the pattern of consciousness that is me. The divergence would create something of an ethical dilemma in the case of marriage, property ownership, rank, etc. Would both be granted the rank of the original, seeing as they are both a direct continuation of that being?

Seeing as at least one episode of Star Trek dealt with such a thing, I wonder if any ever dealt with the possibility of a single individual with access to a transporter creating a continuous set of copies from the original scan, perhaps saving at intervals and allowing the instantiation of variously youthful or experienced copies to be made. The divergences over time in such a branching consciousness would make for an interesting sci-fi thought experiment, I think.

Without instant loss of identity, I would add. It is widely known how semipathological states are cause of character, mood, life style, etc. There is no strict line between 'you' and your body (and internal-external environment); cutting or hacking non-utility parts of it will change you in short period of time, compared to original, as it happens with less radical change of climate, country, job, gender, food.

> A zoo is still a zoo if there aren't any animals in it

Is it? Identity is an interesting thing. To use a commonly-cited example-- if I swap out the muffler of my car and toss the original in the backyard, I think most would say I am still driving the same car. If I do the same with the front left tire, it's still essentially my car. Even if replace all four tires, same. But what if I swap one part a day with a replacement, after a while I'll have all my original car parts in the backyard-- and am in effect driving a car made of totally new parts, but is this still the same car? If not, when would you no longer say it's the same car? And, if I assemble the collection of gradually discarded parts sitting in the back yard into another car-- now what? Which is my car? The thing I'm driving or the car made of the old parts? Or are they both the same car?

Am I really the same person I was when I was 10 ...or 10 months? What is the "me"-ness, or are we talking about a different person? Where's the line...

Or... when Captain Kirk uses the transporter-- his molecules are disintegrated, and then a copy of him gets assembled on some planet (using local materials I believe)... So is "he" transported, or is he being killed and replaced with an exact copy? (I think this question made its way to a Breaking Bad episode)

Anyhoo. Is a zoo without animals in it still a zoo? I dunno.

It's an age old question indeed, the example you cited has been recorded from at least the first century: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ship_of_Theseus

This kind of stuff is fun to think about. In my opinion identity is based on behaviour, not composition. So long as an entity matches a given behaviour profile, then for all intents and purposes that entity IS the thing that the behaviour is normally attributed to. Kind of like Duck Typing: "If it walks like a duck and it quacks like a duck, then it must be a duck."

So my response to your car example is that both vehicles are "the same car" since both get you around and both are owned by you.

In that sense, as your behaviour changes so does your identity. If you were able to 100% accurately encode all the actions you could ever take into a Markov Chain, then I would argue that Markov Chain is what makes you "you" at that point in time.

So if an alien abducted you, created a clone to replace you while you are experimented upon, you'd still agree that you are living normally, and nothing happened to "you"?

Interesting! I would say that I am living both normally and abnormally since "I", in this case, is referring to two entities which are indistinguishable in terms of their behaviour.

Conversely, people usually go through profound behavioral transformations several times in their lives. Does that mean they are not "themselves" anymore?

Very broadly speaking, I would say yes. Again this is just my take, but I argue that different sets of behaviours are indicative of different identities.

For example, at work I may keep to myself and be very quiet - in that setting my actions would define me as an introvert. With my friends I may be more outgoing and talkative, which is more characteristic of an extrovert. So I have two identities depending on my behaviour. I am not my introverted self when with friends, and not my extroverted self when at work.

Few years ago, I was in a PR show for a shopping center where Paris Hilton showed up. Everyone was interested to see her. It turns out she was not the true Paris Hilton but a doppelganger.

Well, technically speaking, at least for a car, you can draw a pretty clear line. Your car is your car because it is registered in your name through a number soldered on its frame. Changing the frame would change that number and you wouldn't be driving the same car, at least from a legal point of view.

But yeah, is a zoo without animals still a zoo? Hard to say. Even without animals, a zoo would retain its potential to be a zoo. Meaning that you could put animals in it and would be back to being a zoo. Same thing can't be said about a restaurant, for example. You can put animals in a restaurant, but regardless of how good you can lock them in it's still not a zoo.

It's hard to say because it's not a yes/no question, and the most useful answer is going to be very context/state dependent.

A zoo isn't a collection of animals - it's a social, financial, and cultural structure with associated buildings, signage, web site, and staff, that usually houses animals.

If you lose the animals temporarily, you can keep the rest and still have a zoo. (This has actually happened during wartime evacuations.)

If you lose everything, you have a former zoo.

We have minds that put simple labels on complex relationships.

Interestingly, at the sub atomic scale, the quantum state _is_ the identity. If you have two particles at the same state, then it's meaningless to say you have two particles, add they are actually the same particle...

A zoo without animals is just a collection of buildings, sure it could be a zoo again but it could also be anything else.

A bit like a Lego house, you can break it up and you have all the parts to make a house, so it is potentially a house but it could also be anything else.

http://imgur.com/a/UBDSO

Indeed it could ;)

You are also not the same person as 1 millisecond ago, since numerous neuronal connections changed.

So it definitely comes down to the definition. You would also be you if your brain were just in a glass with wires and you could process input and give output through a computer maybe without all the gut bacteria.

I think the key part is conrinuity here. What happens if you step into a device which disassembles you atom by atom then reassembles you (assuming that this is possible)? Relevant article: https://waitbutwhy.com/2014/12/what-makes-you-you.html

The Ship of Theseus question is certainly relevant to a discussion of identity changing over time (our body's cells are constantly turning over), but I think it's completely unrelated to a discussion of the line between my gut bacteria and me.

Though to answer your question, "I" am an emergent phenomenon resulting from the interactions of the atoms in my body. "I" am just a wave passing through the universe, with my body as the medium of transmission. Similarly, "wind" is merely a description of what the air is doing where you are. As the wind blows, the specific air molecules you're observing as "the wind" are completely different from moment to moment, but a breeze persisting through an afternoon is all perceived as being the same wind.

Your gut bacteria determine a lot of your behaviour.

And the most interesting animals determine the flow of traffic around the zoo. But the zoo is still not the elephants. My environment also influences my behavior, but I am not my environment.

> a copy of him gets assembled on some planet (using local materials I believe

Doesn't the Star Trek transporter use the _same_ atoms/materials without making a copy?

Are the dead cells you're carrying around like your hair "you?" What about food? At what point exactly in the digestion process does it cease to be something else and become part of "you?" Is your urine and fecal matter that's still within your body "you?" How about the oxygen in your blood? Is that you? Saliva? How about tears? When to tears stop being you and become something else?

Interestingly, the makeup of your gut biome con dramatically affect personality.

https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2015/06/gut-bacte...

Parasites can also alter your personality. Perhaps they can even turn you into a cat lady/man.

http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/health/2013/09/19/cat-lady-paras...

> "A zoo is still a zoo if there aren't any animals..."

Sounds like a Zoo-Wannabe to me.

If you fall into a coma or vegetative state, are you still you?

What about during anesthesia, or deep sleep? (disregarding the certainty that you will wake up)

When you're tasting yoghurt, it's tasting you.

I guess you are just an ever changing object, referenced by a name, created by your parents and affected by your environment.

Human myName = new Human(mother, father, environment, spacetime); Location birthPlace = myName.mother.getCurrentLocation; location bithTime = myName.myMother.getCurrentBirthTime; myName.removeAllLimbs(); myName.upgradeAllLimbs(); CloneUtils.cloneHuman(myName, 'myClone') AssertEquals(myName, myClone) //false

Hm what happens if we make those values immutable?

That's a bit interesting, what WOULD you do to model this?

Human individuals are a dynamic, changing pattern that persist for 80 years or so.

>There are more bacterial cells in your body than there are human cells.

I couldn't believe this was true so I looked it up. Apparently it really is! Of course the bacteria are on average much smaller and lighter than human cells. Also this:

>The numbers are similar enough that each defecation event may flip the ratio to favour human cells over bacteria

I think it's instructive to consider an article written by a bacterium about the possibility of living creatures at the metre length scale.

Whales are always the go to for examples of large lifeforms but even that is part of the issue you taken about, restricting the definition of a lifeform to being what we think it should be.

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/strange-but-true-...

http://oddculture.com/biggest-animal-made-structures-in-the-...

states, companies, religious communities, planets as whole ecosystems can all be construed as "single being"s.

Similarly fire ant colonies could be considered the same. https://youtu.be/NpiDADw5Omw

Well that rules out Boltmann brains https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boltzmann_brain

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