{"id":31739,"date":"2016-04-20T20:22:34","date_gmt":"2016-04-21T00:22:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/?p=31739"},"modified":"2016-04-20T20:22:50","modified_gmt":"2016-04-21T00:22:50","slug":"soma-ep10-dunbat-more-like-dumb-bat","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/?p=31739","title":{"rendered":"SOMA EP10: Dunbat? More like Dumb-Bat!"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><table class='nomargin' cellspacing='0' width='100%' cellpadding='0' align='center' border='0'><tr><td><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"1024\" height=\"576\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/vKbuzjT9-yk\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen class=\"embed\"><\/iframe><br\/><small><a href='http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=vKbuzjT9-yk'>Link (YouTube)<\/a><\/small><\/td><\/tr><\/table><\/p>\n<p>The most interesting thing about these philosophical debates is this: Many people, when presented with these questions, seem to <em>already<\/em> have some kind of mental model for how they think it all works. They have their own definition for what a person is, what consciousness is, and what it means to &#8220;die&#8221; in a world where people can be copied. And to them it&#8217;s all sensible, reasonable, and consistent. Perhaps even obvious. Everything is fine until they talk to someone else, who has a radically different mental model, which the other person feels is equally inescapable and obvious. <\/p>\n<p>For example? Everyone keeps linking the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=nQHBAdShgYI\">Transporter Problem<\/a> video by the awesome CGP Grey. In that video, the mental model is that since your cells are all destroyed, you die, and then a new thing &#8211; a copy of you &#8211; is created in a new location. This doesn&#8217;t match my mental model at all and so just comes off like a bunch of wanking to me. When talking about someone &#8220;dying&#8221; I&#8217;m much more concerned with the continuity and fidelity of their thought processes than with which particular pile of cells those processes are running on. <\/p>\n<p>This is one of the reasons I like this game. It seems to be pretty good at finding those narrow gaps between people&#8217;s mental models and wedging them open. <\/p>\n<p>For the record: I think the bit with Brandon is actually pretty tricky, ethics-wise. I shrugged it off during the game, but if we were causing him physical(?) pain then I might have reacted differently. But to me we were slightly upsetting someone for twenty seconds for our own survival, and that seemed like a pretty clear-cut case. The fact that he won&#8217;t even remember being upset makes this even easier. Also &#8211; and maybe I&#8217;m being unfair to Brandon &#8211; but I felt like he should have handled this better. He&#8217;s exhibiting Simon-levels of panic and confusion, when he ostensibly grew up around this technology and has been given ample time to wrap his head around the idea. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Link (YouTube) The most interesting thing about these philosophical debates is this: Many people, when presented with these questions, seem to already have some kind of mental model for how they think it all works. They have their own definition for what a person is, what consciousness is, and what it means to &#8220;die&#8221; in [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[188],"tags":[527],"class_list":["post-31739","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-spoilerwarning","tag-soma"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31739","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=31739"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31739\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=31739"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=31739"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=31739"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}