1 Soul Bound
1.2 Taking Control
1.2.2 An Awakening Epiphany
1.2.2.28 Who are you?
Later, much refreshed, she entered her bier in the Burrow, where Balthazar and Bilah were waiting for her. Bilah was wearing a beautiful turquoise sari and looked like she’d come straight from issuing a statement to the press.
Bilah: “Good afternoon Bhabhiji. I’ve been keeping track of the discussion forums for you. The Burrow has changed quite a bit, and you might want to look around later, but for now there’s just one thread I’d suggest skimming before you try the meditation room.”
Bilah waved a hand in a dance-like gesture with posed fingers, and a virtual screen appeared in front of Kafana, hanging in the air. Kafana glanced at Balthazar who gave her an encouraging nod.
She’d not seen Balthazar before, but his avatar immediately appealed to her. He had dark skin, wide blue eyes and an expressive face full of folds and wrinkles. He was wearing a soft white woollen tunic and trousers, tied by an excessively long multi-coloured scarf that he’d had to wrap five times around his waist, still leaving long dangling ends. On his head was a hat similar to the conical pileus worn by Kosovo Zoroastrians, except it had the tip bent over; white curly hair poked out from underneath it. Over a nearby chair was draped a thick purple woollen cloak fit for a king, covered in embroidered stars arranged into constellations. She could recognise the ‘big dipper’ of Ursa Major, but little more.
She looked at the first reply:
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Forum: Blue Sky Observatory
Subject: Questions on the wall : Identity
Reply: 1
Response to replies:
Responded to by replies: 2, 48, 163
Date: Monday 5th June, 2045 06:15 UTC
From: Bulgaria
Mood: *sad*
Tags: Balanced, Revealing, Enlightening, Relevant, Enjoyable
To: All
I just watched Kafana achieve unity with her Vessel, moments before she spared Kullervo from slavery and was taken off to the underworld by devils. So it seems a good moment to ask for people's thoughts about some more of the questions that the NPC posted on their wall; this time ones themed about identity and the relationship between spirits and vessels.
"What is the fundamental root of identity; the mind, the body or something else? Does a Vessel weigh more when inhabited by a Questing Spirit?"
"What are dreams? Can seers predict the future? Can you prove to me that you are not a detailed dream I am having? Can I prove to myself that I am not just a figment of your mind?"
"Why do emotions affect magic but not the speed that things drop or how hard a sword is? Can unlimited emotion provide infinite energy? Is energy conserved? Does sending a questing spirit here move energy between universes or parts of our own universe?"
You've experienced what she felt, first hand, when she became one with her Vessel. What do you think? Was the resulting unity the same person as Kafana or someone new? If expert systems were citizens under the law, what would be the implications of being able to merge with others?
What is identity?
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The number of headers on each reply had expanded alarmingly. She focused her attention upon the “Mood” and received back a mental touch of what Bulgaria had been feeling at the time he wrote it. She looked at the tags attached to the reply, some glowing more brightly than others. It appeared they were generated automatically by the Burrow, based on readers who opted into allowing the Burrow to directly gather their opinions from their tiaras, on whether the reply had been fair and balanced, whether it had been revealing about the life or personality of the author, whether it had been knowledgeable and enlightening, whether it had stayed on-topic and whether they’d enjoyed reading it. Selecting a further icon provided a link to the author’s track record, split by subject area, so they could compare their recent posts to their previous average and the average of others in each forum.
Too much information.
Kafana: “Thank you Bilah, I can see why you picked this thread. But please shorten the header section - I’ll trust your judgment on which to show me, and just focus on the header section for a bit if I want to see the expanded information for a particular reply. Oh and, yes, I’ll opt into helping generate tags.”
She carried on reading, still a little impatient to try the new meditation room, but willing to skim for a few minutes.
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Forum: Blue Sky Observatory
Subject: Questions on the wall : Identity
From: Sunnydale
Are we talking solely about personal identity or the identity of objects in general?
Games have a neat mapping between an object (which has a collection of properties) and an object identifier (which is a special unchanging property of the object that the system privately uses to refer to it). But we don't live in a game; reality is fuzzier. If the universe has a private identifier system it uses for objects larger than atoms, it doesn't let on.
How much can an object's properties change, and still remain the same object?
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Forum: Blue Sky Observatory
Subject: Questions on the wall : Identity
From: Tomsk
"This is my great-grandfather's sword, Foe Splitter, passed down from generation to generation, with each wielder swearing to look after it and bring honour to its name."
"It must be quite old. Is it still usable?"
"Of course! My grandfather slew the Thane of Kelso, chipping the blade, but he spent three months searching for a smith who could forge and fit a worthy replacement for the sword's blade. Likewise my father replaced Foe Splitter's hilt, when it grew worn after many battles. I myself had the guard and pommel upgraded when stronger materials became available."
"But if every part of it has been replaced, at one time or another, is it still Foe Splitter?"
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Forum: Blue Sky Observatory
Subject: Questions on the wall : Identity
From: AngelOfIslington
The ancient Greeks spoke about substance being a combination of both matter and how that matter is structured. They tried to identify which properties were essential (ones which, if changed, would change what the substance was).
The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.
Later philosophers took a linguistic approach. They allowed for different people using different names (object identifiers) to refer to the same object, and for different people to use the same name to refer to slightly different 4D collections of atoms in time and space. They embraced the fuzziness and concentrated on how meaningful communication could be achieved between people using words in different ways.
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Forum: Blue Sky Observatory
Subject: Questions on the wall : Identity
From: MorningtonCrescent
This is an issue biologists face too. Ensatina is a genus of salamanders that live in the moist woodlands of western North America, from Canada to Mexico. The poor things don't have lungs so they have to breathe through their skin. If they get too hot, their skin dries out and they can't breathe. They do have pretty colouration though, ranging from eschscholtzii which is brown and lives in the mountains of Monterey, to croceater which is black with yellow blotches and lives in the Sierra Nevada near Yosemite.
The Ensatina from Monterey can't breed with the ones from Yosemite to produce fertile children. So by definition they ought to be categorised as different species. But it turns out that there's a whole chain of populations in a ring around California's Central Valley, which is too dry for them. Eschscholtzii can breed with the yellow eyed xanthoptica, which in turn can breed with oregonensis, which can breed with Fresno's platensis, which finally can breed with croceater.
When it came to determining how to split this ring of individual salamanders into named species, Biologists made an arbitrary choice. There wasn't a single right answer. They looked at the ways that dividing individuals into species made things easier for biologists (by, for example, being able to write "Don't eat croceaters - they are toxic") and made a practical decision based upon which answer served those functions best.
Historians, or some other group, might have used different criteria and have ended up with the boundary lines between species being placed slightly differently.
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Forum: Blue Sky Observatory
Subject: Questions on the wall : Identity
From: Sunnydale
Let's consider Tomsk's example of the sword, Foe Splitter.
A metallurgist looking for examples of historical metalworking techniques, who is interested in the particular arrangement of atoms at time of forging, might choose to use a definition of "is the same object" under which the object referred to by the great grand-father by the identifier "Foe Splitter" is not the same object as the thing being held in the hand of the current wielder.
Whereas an auditor looking for tax cheats, who is interested in knowing whether the market price of an object physically present matches the declared value on the list in his hand, might choose to use a definition of "is the same object" to do with functionality, provenance and continuity, that matches the definition used by potential buyers of swords and which would say that the object then and the object now are, for their purposes, essentially the same object.
Both made a valid choice of definition to use, given their needs and interests.
But does that help us with the question of Spirit-Kafana and Vessel-Kafana?
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Forum: Blue Sky Observatory
Subject: Questions on the wall : Identity
From: Candaba
I think it does help.
It tells us that an NPC legislator looking to write a law governing the consequences of committing criminal acts, who is interested in not allowing people to disclaim responsibility for their own actions, might use one definition of what is being referred to by the identifier "Kafana"; while an XperiSense programmer might use a different definition. Neither are wrong to do so. Both definitions are equally valid, and it might be that neither precisely match what Kafana herself is referring to by that identifier in the privacy of her own mind - her self-concept, the "I" as in "I think therefore I am".
She might conceive of herself as a pattern of thoughts, as her memories, as her body, as her reputation, as a collective of the causes she'd die for, or even as a small blue teapot orbiting Mars. None of those are 'wrong', not even the teapot. They merely vary in how useful they are at serving the purposes to which she puts having a self-concept.
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Forum: Blue Sky Observatory
Subject: Questions on the wall : Identity
From: AngelOfIslington
It isn't quite that dire. Self-concepts usually boil down to one of just four views.
The Physical view, championed by Kant, that the root of personal identity is the body or future dynasty of bodies. This view is popular with evolution when it comes to the purpose of defining "self-interest".
The Psychological view, championed by Locke, that the root of personal identity is the mind, specifically the continuity of memories. This view is popular with ethicists considering amnesia and legal responsibility.
The Priestly view, championed by Descartes, that the root of personal identity is an immortal soul that's separate from both body and mind. This view is popular with those hoping for continuity of personal identity beyond death of the mind and body.
The Presentation view, championed by Stryker, that the root of personal identity is the ongoing performance we present to ourselves, just as our external identity is the ongoing performance, filtered through mask-wearing persona, that we create by interacting with others and our environment. This view is popular with anthropologists seeking an explanation of the patterns in how self-concept varies with the way a socio-cultural grouping raises its children.
I'm not sure how well these usual views will help us consider the case of Kafana and her Vessel, however. They tend to break down when it comes to considering edge cases such as chimp-human chimaeras, fusing the left hemisphere of one person's brain with the right hemisphere from someone else, hypothetical teleporter cloning accidents, and the like.
In practice, people often mix-and-match views, switching how they see themselves depending on context and not worrying about the contradictions except when drunk or high.
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Forum: Blue Sky Observatory
Subject: Questions on the wall : Identity
From: Bungo
Now there's a research project for in-game brewers. Create a potion of teapotness. If you drink it then, for the next hour you consider your true self-identity to be a sentient indestructible teapot artifact blown into orbit around Droob during the Aeon Exitium.
Useful for avoiding truth-spell interrogations. "No, your honour, I was nowhere near the jewelry store at the time of the robbery."
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Forum: Blue Sky Observatory
Subject: Questions on the wall : Identity
From: MorningtonCrescent
Bungo, we know quite a bit about the neurology of hallucinations, thanks to the detailed records we get using modern tiara technology.
The private speech of children starts by imitating parental dialog, but soon becomes abbreviated and then is internalised (which is much faster and less likely to reveal your position to passing tigers), only leaving tiny movements of the throat as an external sign it is happening. These internal monologues provide a narrative that helps reinforce the child's sense of identity, stringing together their memories and what they're told by others into a tale that gives meaning and context to their lives.
In some people these internal monologues become internal dialogs or even intrusive thoughts, with the thoughts or voices in their head being misattributed to people, robots, ghosts, spirits, angels or deities. The first clue that this is a misattribution comes from the type of thought, which is often either exactly what you want to hear or, more often, exactly what you fear (for example, that you'll hurt the ones you love, that you're a sinner, that you're not good enough, etc). The second clue is that we can artificially re-create the effect by stimulating or suppressing parts of the brain such as the temporoparietal junction, which cover attribution of identity.
They used to test for self-awareness using mirrors. If a monkey standing in front of a mirror sees a banana above the image of itself, does it reach forwards to try to reach the banana 'in' the mirror, or can it learn that the image is of the being that is itself, and reach up above its own head? Tiaras provide a far more reliable and direct means of determining self-awareness and similar properties. It turns out that we are not usually aware of our own decision making process in real time. Instead the mind observes that an alliance of subconscious instincts has made a decision and then constructs a justification for it. It is thanks to this internal 'verbalisation' depicting decisions in a linear form that we are able to consider its validity and look at counter-factual scenarios. In turn, this gives us the capacity to theorise about the minds of others, predicting what our actions and external events might look like to them with just the knowledge available from their perspective - a very useful survival skill for monkeys trying to outwit tigers.
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Holy wall of text, batman!
She threw up her hands, batting the virtual screen away, which disappeared with a pathetic blip sound. Hang on, she could fix that.
Kafana: “Bilah, bring that screen back, and give me a copy of Nothung from Tomsk’s Dojo.”
The heavy longsword materialised, the hilt chill in her hand. Even her breath turned visible, like on a frosty day, as it neared the blade. Right, let’s do this properly. She wound her arm back and swung at the screen with all the power she could muster. It shattered into a thousand pieces. Much better! She felt energised, and hoped inner-fragility could be dealt with as easily.
Kafana: “Balthazar, ok, meditation; let’s do this thing.”
He gave her a startled look and stepped aside revealing a simple wooden door, which he opened for her. She stalked through.