Comment by tritium | Hacker News Reader

Comment by tritium | Hacker News Reader

  A car is not a car without the human, with the keys to the car, sitting in the driver's seat, in a state ready and capable to operate the vehicle, and in possession of valid paperwork in good-standing, proving that they are legally entitled to operate the vehicle.
  A car is not a car without the human, with the keys to the car, sitting in the driver's seat, in a state ready and capable to operate the vehicle.
  A car is not a car without the human, with the keys to the car, sitting in the driver's seat.
  A car is not a car without a human sitting in the driver's seat.
  A car is not a car without a human to drive it.
  A car is not a car without a human inside it.
  A car is not a car without an animal inside it.
  A car is not a car without an object inside it.
  A car is not a car without an engine inside it.
  A car is not a car without something inside it.
  A car is not a car without anything inside it.

Doesn't hold up. The car remains a car, so long as it is actually a car.

If you really want to challenge views about being a human, consider that each of us all have been single celled animals for at least a couple of seconds, if not minutes or hours, of our lives. It didn't stay that way, but it's an incontrovertible fact for every last one of us, and indeed also for lots of other organisms.

Plenty of passengers ride the bus, but the bus is not redefined by this.

each of us all have been single celled animals for at least a couple of seconds

That seems wrong to me because it conflates different identity concepts. That cell wasn't me, but more like a seed from where I was built. Actually, if I'm not mistaken, identical twins come from a single embrio that gets splitted, so with that reasoning both twins were the same person at one time. I don't think so.

That's exactly what I mean about proposing a notion that serves as a challenge to a point of view. I was pretty confident I was putting forward a statement that someone would take issue with, even if it's part of a sentiment I buy into.

Anyway, the original atoms and molecules of that first cell are long gone, yet here we are. In terms of qualifying one's semblance of self, I think infant amnesia also represents a significant developmental boundary, for "counting" as a self aware human. If you don't remember learning to walk, was it "you" that learned? It's a pretty fluid and blurry line for human existence.

Speaking of challenges to a point of view:

Plenty of passengers ride the bus, but the bus is not redefined by this.

Smell, sickness, graffiti, background noise, and even the occasional pleasant conversation.. all things passengers bring to the bus that may not actually redefine it but do potentially have lasting impact on the bus itself and shape the experience for all parties involved.

The whole problem is anthropomorphism. There is no bus, there am just I, and the bus is part of my experience. There are no other people, even -- only me and that which looks and behaves similar to me. So I rationalize exterior events as just as involuntary as my own thought. When I rationalize that as free will, I must rationalize other exterior stimuli as expected, wanted and willed, too, but then there is no interior left. Which is a contradiction, so nihilism is the only solution. If that sounds like bollocks, I will still find a way to rationalize that.

> Plenty of passengers ride the bus, but the bus is not redefined by this.

The busriding-experience is shaped, which is all that matters. How many parts of a ship can you change until it's not the same ship anymore? There never was a ship to begin with. Just a build. Perhaps this is why Americans love the gerund. "building" is a process and an object at the same time.

> ... lasting impact on the bus itself and shape the experience for all parties involved

This prompted me to answer. I couldn't say it better.

I remember the time before I could walk or talk but can listen and communicate with body language... just FYI.

"Your honor, if I was asleep when my car ran off the road, can it truly be said that 'I' ran over the deceased?"

I often think that the person I was years ago is dead. But when I read what I wrote then, it's surprising how identical the "voice" is, how little the feelings changed in so many years.

We're the shape, not the matter, even if the shape is built on matter. Memories are part of the shape, but you can lose memories, same as you can lose an arm and it's still you, for the most part.

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