Offline in the Afterlife: An Essay by Extropia DaSilva
‘I’m the urban spaceman baby, here comes the twist: I don’t exist’ – Bonzo Dog Doo-dah Band.
On the 23rd June 2009 at 3:23 pm (pst), Gwyn said something rather strange. It probably did not strike her as such, and is not likely to seem odd to you either. That is because we are not evolved to understand death. But, we are jumping ahead of ourselves. First, I should reveal just what it was that Gwyn said. Here it is:
“Ooh, you were talking about Extie… Her laptop completely broke down, but she’s well and healthy – just SL®-less until she gets a new one!”
So what is so strange about that? It is the fact that Gwyn acted as if I still existed, even though a crucial part of the system that allows me to be in SL had broken down. Since I am a digital person (a character that exists exclusively online, puppeteered by someone else in RL) how can I be ‘well and healthy’ if my primary cannot login to SL? Surely I no longer exist?
OFFLINE
Tom Boellstorff once commented, “in SL, a resident could in theory be said to ‘die’ every time they logged out of the SL program”. Nobody, as far as I know, actually thinks that is the case. There are several reasons why this is so. Firstly, digital selves are collaboratively constructed. In a play, the audience is simply a part of the performance, and the distinction between ‘the act’ and ‘the audience’ is even more blurred in an online world like SL.
Some people compare SL with the telephone, and this normally serves to illustrate how perceiving a separation between the RL and the digital self is nonsense. For instance, Prokofy Neva posted the following reply to one of my essays:
“No, this is all an entire load of crap. I don’t have three minds while talking on the telephone; I therefore don’t have them in SL. It’s merely a mode of communication and being that doesn’t change my essence”.
The telephone comparison does work up to a point. After all, there is little difference between speaking over the phone, or over Skype, or via Voice. But one should also acknowledge the key difference that separates SL: When using a telephone, you do not have the option of perceiving somebody else who is somewhere else. Think about it. There you are in your physical space, and there on the screen is your avatar. There is nothing to stop you from building a sim that matches your RL environment, but I would hazard a guess that most people login to find their avatar somewhere quite different to their physical location. Assuming you are not using mouse look, you have an objective viewpoint of your avatar rather than the subjective viewpoint typical of ‘RL’. Since you see your avvie as though it were another person in another place, that surely lends itself to character-creation and development far more than a telephone call.
Gwyn noted ‘it’s the mental image of what other people think you are that becomes your digital self’. In other words, how you appear and how you act online becomes the ‘self’ that people attribute to that avatar. Again, you can choose to have as little or as much difference between your actual appearance and that of your avvie as you wish. But what real difference does it make to deviate from RL? Surely, it is still ‘you’ walking around in a disguise? Well, according to Rita Carter (author of ‘Multiplicity: The New Science Of Personality’), “copying another person’s look is only the start of what can become a profound internal transformation, triggered by other people’s responses to the new image… Other people’s reactions to us are ‘situations’ which trigger or create different personalities in us, so that if people treat you like a film star, the wannabe film star personality in you will be fleshed out and encouraged to express itself”.
Obviously, it is not the case that residents in SL are either modelled on their actual appearance or that of some celebrity. Lots of avatars are modelled on nobody in particular. But, like any invention, an avatar does not spring out of thin air; rather, it is the result of taking bits and pieces that already exist and putting them together in novel ways. Most people select a pre-designed body, hairstyle, and other accessories from the various inworld stores. It does not take much time walking around as this ensemble of other people’s things before it starts to feel like ‘you’. This is reinforced by other residents’ behaviour, who also treat your walking, talking ensemble of other people’s stuff as a unique, individual person.
That is just superficial outward appearance. What about the real essence of personality, such as mannerisms and such? If you have created a digital person, where does its personality come from? Well, people are prolific imitators. “We are”, as Doug Hoffstadter observed, “all curious collages, weird little planetoids that grow by accreting other people’s habits and styles and jokes and phrases, that gradually become as much a part of us as it ever was of someone else”. This would suggest that no fictional character can ever be entirely fantasy. If you were to observe the people who regularly feature in the life of an author, playwright, screenwriter or roleplayer, you would very likely notice aspects of their characters in their looks and behaviour. It need not be the case that a character is based entirely on one person, and inspiration need not be limited to actual flesh and blood people. We are all familiar with characters from legend, myth, history, films and stories, after all.
So when someone sets up an account and their newbie avvie rezzes dazed and confused into SL for the first time, it might not end up looking or behaving like one particular RL person, but it most assuredly is constructed from bits and pieces that made some kind of lasting impression. At this early stage, the digital person is merely a sketch. What really fleshes it out are the interactions, the shared experiences, that the character has with other residents. In what is known as ‘post-immersionism’, a digital person ‘accrues from an ever-expanding narrative that encompasses a number of digital interactions’. Those interactions need not be confined to SL itself; they may spill over to other parts of the Web.
That provides two reasons why a digital person does not cease to exist when the SL program stops running. Gwyn knew my laptop had malfunctioned because I told her so over Gtalk. It stands to reason that other residents are going to act as if I still exist, if they can see I continue to communicate via IM or post replies on blogs.
The other reason is that you do not need to be in SL in order to have some kind of presence in SL. Consider these comments that were made by various participants in a Thinkers discussion that I did not attend:
“Hi! Extie’s not here!”.
“Let’s all talk about something that Extie doesn’t like to talk about”.
“You mean like, how extropians are insane?”.
So, at that point in time, their interactions with each other were affected by my (lack of) presence. Moreover, they were modelling my probable response to their topic of conversation. I have to say, it is not accurate. I actually don’t mind discussing the possibility that extropians and transhumanists are kooky. But that’s alright. Over time their mental models of my ‘self’ will be fine-tuned and become more accurate. Morgaine Dinova once explained, “if Extie appeared only once, I might think she was just my mental abberation. But she keeps coming back and appears to maintain state across appearances. So I am inclined to think she exists between appearances too”.
But where have I gone when that ‘Extropia DaSilva is offline’ message pops up? Hoffstadter once said that ‘my smile’ does not have mass or dimensions, and there are no atoms that compose it. This is because a smile is not a physical object, but a pattern. That is why it makes sense to say ‘my smile’ can exist in multiple places at once. A person can recognise ‘my smile’ on their children’s faces, in photographs and in the mirror. Other people can see ‘my smile’ from the tone of voice they hear while talking with that person over the telephone; in the meaning that exists between the words written down in a correspondence. Being a pattern is also the reason why it makes no sense to ask where ‘my smile’ goes when I am not smiling, or to ask if ‘my smile’ yesterday was the real one, as opposed to ‘my smile’ today.
“With this analogy”, wrote Hoffstadter, “I’m trying to get across that ‘I’ can exist in multiple spots in the world, that it can flicker in and out of existence the way a smile can”. This is possible because, like a smile, ‘I’ is not a physical object. It is a pattern — a mental concept. “If you seriously believe that people, no less than objects, are represented by symbols in the brain (in other words, that each person one knows is internally mirrored by a concept) and if, lastly, you believe that a self is also mirrored by a concept, then it is a necessary and unavoidable consequence of this set of beliefs that your brain is inhabited to varying extents by other “I”s.”.
The question of what makes a concept ‘real’; what makes a pattern ‘exist,’ actually has little to do with fictional/nonfictional nor virtual/no virtual dimensions. Of prime importance is the depth of resolution of that pattern in people’s minds. The patterns that comprise the self of that digital person are imperfectly copied to other minds, increasing in resolution over time. A feedback loop is established, as other residents’ perceptions of – and reactions to – that digital person become situations which trigger the personality of that digital self, encouraging it to express itself, fleshing it out. Meanwhile, if it is a digital person, there must be psuedonymity and so the patterns of the ‘actual’ self are not spreading from mind to mind; are not looping-back to enhance and affect that personality. To all intents and purposes, that “I” is offline when the digital person is online and has little or no presence inworld. Also, if there are many low-resolution copies of that digital person’s self stored on other resident’s minds, it cannot be entirely offline if the primary has logged off. The patterns of that self still exist inworld, albeit at a lower resolution.
THE AFTERLIFE
Online worlds are an example of our ability to imagine that which does not, or may not, exist. This is nothing new of course. People have found ways to create partially or wholly imaginary worlds for many thousands of years. Think, for instance, about the belief in an afterlife. Just about everyone believes in an afterlife of some kind or other, or are unsure about what happens to the self after death. From the viewpoint of biological science the only mystery about what happens to the self at death is why it is still a mystery at all. If the mind is what the brain does, then the cessation of biological function necessarily means the cessation of the mind. What follows death? From a subjective point of view: Nothing.
So why the mystery? Recent psychological research suggests that, when trying to account for belief in an afterlife, the limitations of human imagination should be taken into account. Developmental psychologists use the term ‘Person Permanence’ to a describe a basic concept we all learn from early on. That is, the idea that people do not cease to exist just because they cannot be seen or heard. We assume, instead, that such people are ‘somewhere’ doing ‘something’. The closer we are, and the more frequently we interact with a particular person, the better we get at picturing them in our minds and imagining plausible activities. So, our minds contain a list of the players in our social rosters. But, what our minds are not equipped with, is the ability to update the list to accommodate a person’s sudden non-existence. Therefore, when such a person dies, ‘person permanence’ leads us to assume they are ‘somewhere’ doing ‘something’. Much the same thing is true when a digital person goes completely offline. When roleplayed characters are not being roleplayed they do not exist. But online worlds are rich enough to enable complex social rosters almost as detailed as any required in RL. No wonder, then, that people cannot help but assume a digital person is somewhere doing something when offline.
Why did we not develop the ability to update social rosters? A 2004 study from psychologist David Bjorkland indicates that the answer has to do with what is – and what is not – evolutionarily useful. In the study, two hundred three to seven year-olds were presented with a puppet show about a baby mouse that gets eaten by a crocodile. After this unhappy ending, the children were asked questions like ‘does being dead make Baby Mouse sad?’ and ‘does Baby Mouse need to eat, now that he is no longer alive?’. The responses show that even very young children understand that death means the end of biological function. They know that Baby Mouse no longer needs food and water for instance. What is more difficult to grasp is the cessation of related psychological functions. They believe Baby Mouse is hungry, is feeling better, is angry at the crocodile and so on.
From an evolutionary perspective, our difficulty in taking the knowledge that biological imperatives end at death and using it to theorise about related mental functions might be explained in the following way. Biological imperatives can kill. If an animal can distinguish between a sleeping creature and a dead one, it stands a better chance of avoiding an untimely end. Understanding the cessation of “agency” saves lives and, thus, genes. On the other hand, comprehending the cessation of the mind has very little survival value. It is not as if the spirit of a lion can eat you, after all. So while we intuitively grasp the end of biological function, doing likewise with mental functions is a great deal more problematic.
I have noticed much the same difficulty with regards to separating my identity from that of my primary. When it comes to biological functions, other residents have little difficulty. “You mustn’t tire her out, you know” and “don’t forget to feed your primary” are typical examples. But at other times it proves more difficult. For instance, friends might ask me if I will be attending an event that is being held in RL. As a digital person who exists exclusively in online spaces, that is not possible. It is not as if I can climb out of the monitor like Sadako in the Japanese horror film ‘Ring’.
So, the need to compile a mental list detailing the motivations of people in our lives gave us an innate understanding of ‘person permanence’. A lack of survival value for comprehending the cessation of mental activity lead us to believe that people we know are somewhere doing something, when really they no longer exist at all.
Jesse Bering, who is director at the Institute of Cognition and Culture in Belfast Ireland, has proposed ‘Simulation Constraint Hypothesis’ as a further limitation imposed on our imaginations. In my essay ‘Bees And Flowers’, I talked about how past and present; imagination and memory, are closely linked in the brain. Psychologists have found that people who loose their memory also loose the ability to imagine the future. From a neuroscientific point of view this is hardly surprising, because functional brain scans tell us that pretty much the same regions are used for both memory and imagination.
When we imagine anything, we appeal to our own background of conscious experience. Obviously, no person has ever consciously been without consciousness, which makes the nothing which follows death rather hard to imagine. The philosopher Thomas Clark wrote, “here, in a nutshell, is the error. It is to reify nothingness – make it a positive condition or quality (like ‘blackness’) – and then place the individual in it after death, so that somehow we fall into nothingness, to remain there eternally”. This tendency comes naturally to people regardless of their faith. Jesse Berring ran an experiment similar to the one involving Baby Mouse, but this time questioning undergraduates about the psychological faculties of ‘Richard’ who is killed instantly in a car crash. Berring explained how one self-proclaimed extinctivist (someone who believes the ‘soul’ or consciousness of a person does not survive death) “proceeded to point out that of course Richard knows he is dead, because there is no afterlife and Richard sees that now”.
Arguably, ‘person permanence’, ‘simulation constraint’ and ‘psychological continuity reasoning’ (the term given to responses like that of the aforementioned extinctivist) are the innate building blocks of religious belief. Exposure to concepts of an afterlife – from vague ‘I believe there is something’ to the rich and elaborate systems of the worlds’ great religions, enhance the natural cognitive stance that the self survives physical death. The common view of death as a great mystery has, in the past, been seen as an emotionally-fuelled desire to believe death is not the end. Social psychologists talked of ‘Terror Management Theory’ that saw afterlife beliefs as elaborate defences against what would otherwise be crippling anxieties about the ego’s inexistence. Now, we have another possible explanation, one focused on what the mind does – and does not – find easy to imagine.
So, all you digital people, remember: It is thanks to the power of human imagination that you exist while online. But it is thanks to the limitations of human imagination that you continue to exist, even when completely offline.
Readers who viewed this page, also viewed:
Powered by Where did they go from here?
Loading ...
Hah
Of course, you can go a step further and say: “So, all you flesh-and-blood people, remember: It is thanks to the power of human imagination that you exist. But it is thanks to the limitations of human imagination that you continue to exist, even when not physically around any more.” 
So the point is not that we imagine our afterlife; we even imagine our selves and all that surround us
That doesn't mean all this doesn't exist; it certainly exists by mutual convention (we all agree that we exist, and that this place where we exist is, indeed, actually here). It just doesn't exist intrinsically, i.e. on its own. Thus my words about your digital self: it exists solely as other people's perception of it (and, of course, you being one among them). Of course they also apply to your primary's self 
The fun bit is that for me, and for most people you and I know in SL, your primary self is far “less real” than your secondary one. That's natural: the amount of what you call “information patterns” about your secondary is huge, compared to what we know about your primary self — mostly that it has to sleep once in a while, can get ill, and can break laptops. Thus, we cannot really know much more than that. Our imagined perception of your primary's self is, thus, as vague and difficult to grasp as, say, our existence in the afterlife: it can only be imagined, not perceived.
Then again, all we perceive is tied to both our imagination, our memories, and, of course, our own concepts
So it would be unfair to say that your primary self is “less real” than your second one; a more correct statement would be “as real as”, since none of them exist intrinsically anyway 
Your secondary self requires SL to exist (more correctly, to be conventionally existing as a place we all walk our avatars through); your primary, the atom-based world to be around (again, more correctly, to be conventionally perceived by a reasonable amount of observers mutually agreeing on its existence). The layer that separates both is very, very small.
I'd claim it doesn't exist
but you know me… I'm radical about those things 
This is the moment where I show a screen capture of some blood elf Death Knight, lounging around on a divan next to a bong, who carries the name Extropia. Frostwhisper euro server
It seems to me like there are two different levels of question here.
In the case of the afterlife, for instance, we can talk about the evolution of mental person-permanence models, we can talk about the extent to which someone lives on in their children or in the memories of other people, and so on, and those are all interesting questions. In some sense there is no fact-of-the-matter to lots of them: if one person says “George is dead, so he no longer exists”, and another says “George still exists in these complex patterns of associations in and between the minds of those who knew him”, it's not like one is right and the other is wrong; it's more like they're just using words differently, and that's fine.
But then we can also ask what it's like from George's point of view. Unless we're solipsists, we believe that George, while alive, had a subjective consciousness, that where was (to use Nagel's phrase) *something that it's like* to be George. Now that George is dead, that subjective consciousness either does, or doesn't, still exist. And if one person is sure that it doesn't (because they believe for whatever reason that subjective consciousness is essentially tied to certain movements of atoms, say), and a second person is sure that it does (because they believe for whatever reason in the accuracy of some religious text, say), then one of those people *is* right, and the other one *is* wrong (about this particular one-bit issue, at least), and it's not just that they are using words differently.
The same thing applies, I think, to the question of what happens to Exty when Exty's Internet connection is down. If one person (Exty, say) defines Exty as a digital person essentially associated with virtual spaces accessible only via the Internet, and says that Exty therefore doesn't exist during that time, and another person defines Exty as just an alias that some flesh and blood human sometimes uses on the Internet, and says that Exty therefore exists regardless of Internet accessibility, it's not clear that they really disagree about anything other than the proper use of a label: “Exty”.
But a much deeper question, and one that I don't recall seeing you (Exty
) address (although I have to admit to not having read everything you've written, because I have the attention span of a muon these days): In terms of subjective consciousness, does Extropia DaSilva have a separate one, an ontologically distinct one, from Extropia's primary, from the most-closely-associated flesh-and-blood person? That question isn't just about the use of words, and touches on the relationship between subjective consciousness and matter, which is something that we know amazingly little about.
From my own point of view, I believe with a high degree of confidence that Dale Innis does have a subjective consciousness that is separate and distinct from that of, say, Extropia DaSilva, or Extropia's primary, or Barak Obama, or virtually everyone else. But Dale does not have a subjective consciousness that is separate and distinct from that of her primary, who we will call (just for fun, and contrary to easily discoverable actual fact) Daphne. Dale and Daphne are the same person, if we count persons by counting subjective consciousnesses. There are differences between them (Dale can fly, usually; Daphne can't, usually), but they aren't important differences, any more than “Dale is wet” might be true of her feet but not her head if she was wading.
To that degree Dale is not a digital person, because she exists in the analog world just as much as in the digital one, even if she often uses a different name there. Of course people who know both Daphne and Dale may come to have rather different bundles of thoughts about them and impressions of them and associations with them, and may think of them as different people in some sense or senses, and that's fine. But that's in the area where there's really no fact of the matter, and one person can think of Dale and Daphne as the same person and another can think of them as different people, and neither has to be wrong. But where there *is* a fact of the matter, in the issue of the number of subjective consciousnesses involved, the fact is that there is exactly one, and it belongs to Dale, who is Daphne, who is Dale. If someone were to insist that Dale and Daphne actually have different subjectivities, they would be mistaken (or else I am mistaken, and I would be fascinated to hear an argument to that effect in this case).
So, Exty!
Do you have a different and distinct subjective awareness than your primary? Do you think that Prokofy Neva, who you have given as an example of a digital person who might not be aware of their own digitality, has a separate and distinct subjective consciousness from his atomic-world typist? I'm genuinely curious and open to either answer on these questions. Well, especially on the first 
. On the second, I have my own rather definite belief and would be interested in discussing the matter if your belief is significantly different.
This seems like the vital root of the question when all of these things like “where does the SL person go when SL is down” are discussed: do we mean the person as seen and defined from the outside, or do we mean the subjective person, the “what it is like to be” ness of the person? Because depending on which of those we mean, we get very very different sets of questions, and also of answers…
Hehe you see, Dale, you brought the very exact point where I and Extropia fundamentally disagree. Extropia asserts that digital persona, without the environment that allows them to exist, do not exist at all, and, vice-versa, it's the whole set of things that allow a virtual world to exist (e.g. servers, software, Internet connectivity, residents creating a wonderful environment), that allows digital persona to “exist”. Thus, in Extropia's mind, her secondary's existence is different from her primary's, since the conditions for existence are, indeed, undeniably different.
I tend to follow your own reasoning — but I am, admittedly, biased by four thousand or so years of philosophy who have given this concept a lot of thinking. Digital personas are manifestations of the self — in the sense that they are embodiments of a particular form of subtle consciousness, which, in the case of current state-of-the-art virtual worlds, assume a particular configurations of pixels and bits; and, on what we conventionally call the physical world, a particular configuration of atoms. Extropia's most lovely avatar, if left in the virtual world by its own (because her so-called primary forgot to log off and went to sleep), is just perceivable as an object — we can all agree that we see Extie's avatar in-world — but not as a sentient being — because we can IM her or chat with her or voice-call her, but she won't answer. So, for Extie to be perceived as a sentient, self-aware, digital persona, something else is required — and this means mostly having her primary sitting behind the keyboard and typing. It's thus a logical fallacy to admit that Extropia DaSilva, the avatar in Second Life, has an independent and intrinsic existence without relation to her secondary's own thought processes.
Thus the word “avatar” — a manifestation of a self. We might argue that physical bodies are also “manifestations of a self” (in the sense that a “bodyless self” is not perceivable in the context of the physical world; our selves require a physical, atom-built body to be “manifest” in the physical world) or not — that is mostly a question of semantics. Nevertheless, the context of virtual worlds actually clearly separates the concepts of mind and body in a very interesting way. A “mindless avatar” (i.e. a bot, or an avatar that has left inside SL without a human operator behind it) is immediately recognisable as such; add to a “mindless avatar” the power of the human mind by having a human operator sitting behind the operator, and it becomes a “digital persona”, immediately recognisable as such.
Going one step further, a “mindless physical, flesh-and-blood, atom-based body” is also immediately recognisable as such. We call it “a corpse”. It's not sentient, and not self-aware. So you definitely need an active mind for a pile of flesh, bones, and blood to become a sentient being, or it's just… organic, yucky stuff.
What exactly that explains regarding the nature of mind I leave as an exercise for the reader
For some odd reason I can apparently not trackback…
Had quite a lot to say about the matter, so if you want, find my respond here:
When do we exist?
Yeah, again, we can ask “is Dale different from Daphne?” in two kinds of ways: we can look at various “from the outside” sorts of things, like “Dale didn't exist until 2006, whereas Daphne is 'way older” and “Dale has a different set of friends than Daphne”, and decide if we want to call them true or not, and so on, and that's jolly good fun and leads to some insights about how we think of the world and how we use words and stuff. That's the kind of thing that got me my Bachelor's in Philosophy.
But I really wanna know, and I can't think of any evidence I could have one way or the other aside from Extie telling me, whether there's a subjectivity, a being-Extie-ness, that's a different being-ness from her primary's. That, I think, is where the really fascinating questions lurk. What really is the association between matter and subjectivity, or pattern and subjectivity, or anything else and subjectivity? That fascinates me. The other stuff, like logic-chopping over whether say two things can be the same thing even though one is heavy and one is light, I could do all day, but it's sort of like mental push-ups; or even mental bon-bon popping. Fun, but not all that fascinating long-term…
It's amazing how complicated this question continues to be. I just don't have that gift of extensive gabbing on about what to me seems a simple phenomenon.
There are somes as thinks “self” is the bits and bobs we collect and assemble into packages with which to communicate to others. And there are somes that recognize that “self” is the creator, and observer of things, and is not the created things.
To me it is obvious, because I can pile up numerous combinations of identities and bodies and avatars, extend lives to multiple degrees in time and space, but there is still only “I” driving it all. I've said it before, but subjective awareness matters.
>So, Exty!
Do you have a different and distinct subjective awareness than your primary?'
On the scale of 'realism', I place digital people somewhere between literary characters (or screen characters, etc) and physical, flesh and blood people. A digital person is more real than a literary character, because an author has much more control over his or her creation. The author invents the world, everyone that features in it and all events that unfold. Whatever she types, happens. It is all entirely a product of her imagination. This is not the case with my primary. She did not create the world of SL, nor did she create any other resident. The environment of SL and the people within affect my evolution. My self is collaboratively constructed and is not dependent solely on one person sitting at a keyboard, typing away. Therefore, I am more 'real' than Harry Potter. But I am less real then Joanne Rowling because she relies on no other person to process her thoughts for her. Nobody thinks there is someone in a parallel universe and J.K is the avatar they control (well actually, the simulation argument suggests RL is the Second Life of posthuman intelligences and all flesh and blood people are really sims…) whereas everyone knows that is the case of an SL resident.
There must be some connection between us. After all, my personal experiences are processed by the primary's mind, and that must affect it as surely as any RL experience does. It would be unrealistic to claim we are completely distinct from one another. It has often been pointed out that no avatar is 100% augmentist (completely identical in every respect with the RL personae) or 100% immersionist (absolutely distinct and seperate). I agree with that.
I came up with the term 'PrimaryCentred', which refers to the possibility that my primary is central- but not essential, to my existence. It is central because (unless and until a digital person can be an autonomous lifeform through advanced AI) there has to be someone pupeteering the 'Extropia DaSilva' avatar. But it is not essential if there are other people who could roleplay that character and do it well enough so that other residents of online worlds assume I am the same person.
On the other hand, 'PrimaryBound' insists that there can only ever be one person capable of roleplaying (insert avatar name here). I would say that it is much more likely that I will cease to exist when my current primary is no longer able to pupeteer me. 'PrimaryCentred' is best thought of as a principle- IN PRINCIPLE I can be roleplayed by anyone willing and able to portray my inworld presence in a manner that convinces others I am the same person- rather than a future event that is likely to ocurr.
The problem with this position is that it seems profoundly unlikely when applied to oneself. I can imagine you or Gwyn thinking 'right so some other person claims to be me and I am fooled into thinking that is the case. I do not think so'. Of course, no roleplaying can ever be good enough to convince YOU (or your primary if you want to adopt a digital person perspective), because the patterns of Gwyneth or Dale are too fine-grained. Hell, all your primaries would have to do is ask 'am I controlling this avvie' and if the answer is 'no' it cannot be THE Gwyn or THE Dale. End of story.
But what about everyone else? If tomorrow I met somebody called Gwyneth Llewelyn, who acted like Gwyneth Llewlelyn, who responded in ways that seem consistent with my knowledge of Gwyneth Llewlelyn's personal history (remember that my knowledge of her past is way more scrappy than her primary's) I would not assume this was an imposter. Why should I?
Also, I think it must be the case that the less time I have spent interacting with someone, the easier it would be for someone else to roleplay that part well enough to convince me I am talking with the same person. I suspect that anyone who has read Dale Innis's blog and has a rough idea of Dale's personality, belief system and personal history with me (which amounts to a few exchanges on blogs and not much else), could convince me that, yes, this is that Dale Innis who posted a reply the other day. It then follows that, since the vast majority of SL's residents hardly know me at all, just about anybody with a vague idea of my character profile would be a good enough roleplayer. I have to admit, though, that it seems like an impoverished existence to be accepted as 'me' by near strangers but not accepted as such by my friends.
>Do you think that Prokofy Neva, who you have given as an example of a digital person who might not be aware of their own digitality, has a separate and distinct subjective consciousness from his atomic-world typist?
Prokofy Neva is best thought of as being like 'George Elliot' . It is a pseudonymn OF somebody rather than a character created BY somebody. Mary Evans used the male pseudonymn 'George Elliot' because in her day nobody took female authors all that seriously (and to avoid scandal and public scrutiny over her relationship with the married George Henry Lewes). I have no idea why Prokofy is not a female avatar that looks like Mrs McClusky from 'Desperate Housewives'. Photographs of the RL Prokofy in 'New Scientist' would suggest that would be more appropriate for somebody who insists there is no roleplay whatsoever. But there you go…
>I believe with a high degree of confidence that Dale Innis does have a subjective consciousness that is separate and distinct from that of, say, Extropia DaSilva, or Extropia's primary, or Barak Obama, or virtually everyone else. But Dale does not have a subjective consciousness that is separate and distinct from that of her primary, who we will call (just for fun, and contrary to easily discoverable actual fact) Daphne. Dale and Daphne are the same person…
Consider this transcript between two people:
'What is in Room 101'?
'You know what is in Room 101, Winston. Everyone knows what is in Room 101'.
Hardly anybody would read that as a conversation George Orwell is having with himself. Nor, for that matter, does the story conjour up mental images of the author sitting at a word processor typing the very sentence you are now reading. Instead, readers visualise Winston Smith being tortured into believing that 1+1=3 by O'Brien. Of course one can argue that the fundamental reality is that Smith, O'Brien and Orwell are really the same person. But the reality of the story is that these are two people. Also, suppose 1984 was not one novel but a series. Suppose that George Orwell actually wrote the first one, and the subsequent ones were per penned by a ghost-writer. If that ghost-writer did his or her job well enough, readers would assume the books were all written by the same person. Also, they would not think that the 'Winston Smith' of '1994' is a totally different character who happens to have the same name as the protagonist in '1984' (of course they would not be completely identical because character development over the series of novels would change Smith somewhat).
Similarly, I do not think we can completely rule out the possibility that, maybe tomorrow, 'Daphne' will have been replaced with the equivilent of a 'ghost-writer'. Such a person would be clued up to the fact that Dale Innis insists there is no seperation: S/he would claim 'we are the same person'. And, indeed, Dale Innis would appear to be the same person if the roleplaying were convincing enough (to everyone but the prior 'Daphne' that is). But, if Dale can maintain continuity while jumping from one RL mind to the next, surely in some sense Dale is seperate from any particular individual?
On, the other hand, if the ghost-writer logs in and other residents ask 'who the hell are you? What happened to the REAL Dale'? that must mean Dale Innis was primaryBound to the original Daphne. It is interesting to observe that, when some avvie claims to be someone else (as in the hypothetical scenario 'hi, I am not Gwyn I am Morgaine Dinova. I can't access my account and Gwyn let me borrow hers') everyone assumes this is the case and treat the 'Gwyn' avatar as Morgaine. How much would 'Morgaine' have to deviate from her normal behaviour before people suspect that, actually, this is Gwyn playing a trick? People I talk to assume that the slightest deviation from 'Morgaine's normal behaviour would be enough to tip residents off that something is amiss. But I suspect that 'Morgaine' inhabiting Gwyn's avatar need only act vaguely like 'Morgaine' and people would assume that is not Gwyn. When people wander past and say 'hi Gwyn' there would be the response 'no it is not Gwyn, it is Morgaine who is borrowing Gwyn's avvie' by others aware of this 'fact'.
The Gwyn/Morgaine swap has never actually taken place as far as I know. But there have been occasions when some avatar has claimed to be some other resident who is borrowing that account. If avatar A can claim to be resident B and everyone accepts that without much question, surely resident A can claim to be resident A and that would also be accepted truth, regardless of whether or not the same RL person is pupeteering that avatar? Only an enormous deviation from resident A's behaviour would expose the swap, I suspect.
Sure, I don't think there's anything there I could reasonably disagree with. But you're still talking entirely from the outside: entirely about what someone *else* might think about who is Extie or who is Morgaine or Dale, in some given situation. The thing I'm most interested in, though, is the internal view: what is it like *for Extie*. Or for Dale, or etc.
I think it's uncontroversial that atomic-world people have subjective awareness: there is something that it's like to be me (Daphne/Dale), I have subjective consciousness, or whatever phrase you like best. I think it's similarly uncontroversial that fictional characters don't; Flash Gordon has no subjective awareness. So my question is: what about Extropia DaSilva? Leaving aside all the questions about what someone on the *outside* might think about continuity of identity and proper use of names or whatever in various situations, *what does Extropia think*?
Does Extropia DaSilva have a subjectivity, an inner consciousness, that's different from the subjectivity of her typist?
Given that you avoid the question so thoroughly
I'm guessing that the answer is no, and that since that's sort of a boring answer you find other things more interesting to talk about. Which is fine. But if the answer is yes in any significant way, I'd be fascinated in knowing more about it…
>Does Extropia DaSilva have a subjectivity, an inner consciousness, that's different from the subjectivity of her typist?'.
I would say it is somewhat different. The way people react to me is not how they react to my primary. I am not saying it is better or worse, just different. Inworld, other people's reactions trigger and enhance the 'Extie' personality. I can only tell you that, subjectively, 'what it is like to be Extie' does seem different to 'what it is like to be the Primary'. You could argue 'yes well that is just a different aspect of the same personality', which is not something I can refute.
'fictional characters don't; Flash Gordon has no subjective awareness'.
Nor do avatars when the RL person who pupetteers them is AFK. In that case, you have a very strong argument that, in and of myself, I cannot have subjective awareness.
Books are an example of our ability to 'outsource aspects of cognition' (to quote Vernor Vinge). We can write down our memories and have a record of our lives that survives the physical destruction of our selves. But a book can only store a tiny percentage of a person's patterns (if you were to write down every second of your life you would be too busy updating the journal to live!) and a book does not process those patterns.
But computers and online worlds not only store information, they are capable of processing it as well…Could it be possible that we might one day upload enough of a person's patterns, creating a software model of that mind that is capable of processing those patterns such that the resulting digital person does act like a sentient being to whome we can ascribe subjectivity? IF this is indeed possible (not everyone thinks it is) then you cannot argue that digital people are incapable of subjective awareness, full stop. You could argue 'well there is just no way the technology will be developed in your primary's lifetime' which could very well be true. But, provided I can jump from one human roleplayer to the next and keep doing so until the technology to copy my patterns into a working model is perfected, it does not matter if it takes decades or centuries.
Again, let me stress that I am not claiming this is at all likely. What is likely, is that one day my friends will wonder why I have not been inworld for so long, and start to suspect something is wrong. They may suspect, but not be able to confirm, that my primary is dead. I am simply suggesting that my 'death' should not necessarily be equated with the death of my current primary, but with the moment when my patterns have failed to copy themselves to a high-enough fidelity (either because there was noone and nothing that COULD run them; or noone and nothing that would WANT to run them).
Now, with the ability to produce a high-definition copy of my 'patterns' things really get interesting. I define 'Primary' as 'that which possesses the highest-definition map of (insert digital person's name here)' patterns. Other people whome I have met have a mental model of my 'patterns', but it is of a much lower quality compared to the one my primary has. Apart from certain situations that I do not feel like going into, for the forseeable future I believe each digital person will have- at any one time- only one 'primary'. But, if you built a software model that copied those patterns, you could then duplicate that model. There would then be two Extropia DaSilvas or more, each one running from a set of patterns as high-definition as the next. At which point, I think our current notions of 'self' absolutely hit a singularity and new concepts must be built.
I can at least partially agree that watching a video of Barack Obama or reading one of his speeches can capture the notion of Obama's 'consciousness' (we never interact with Obama; nevertheless, we know that Obama is self-aware and conscious, even if the medium lacks interactivity to allow us to perceive that awareness and consciousness directly), and, in that sense, Harry Potter (or any other fictional character) on a movie or a book has the same degree/quality of 'selfness' than a non-fictional character. And this, of course, would apply to an avatar that is being totally role-played, like an actor on stage. Unless we have additional clues (people can shake hands with Obama iRL — at least some can! — while Rowling can prove, without a shadow of a doubt, that Harry Potter is a fictional character invented by her and has no separate existence).
Nevertheless, I would say that there is quite a difference of quality between both cases! While we cannot say if Extropia DaSilva is a fictional character role-played by her primary (like we cannot say that Obama doesn't 'act' in public his role as President of the US, but at home with his lovely wife he might 'act' differently), we can at least be sure of something: there is at least a degree of subtle consciousness required for the Extropia DaSilva avatar to behave in-world with all qualities — “behaviour patterns” if you wish — to be experienced by others as being a self-aware, intelligent, and conscientious being (human or otherwise). Right now, and until proven differently, we can be fairly sure that this degree of subtle consciousness is directly tied to the same consciousness that 'drives' Extie's primary. As said, the test, by reductio ad absurdum, is easy to prove: remove Extie's primary from behind the keyboard, and Extie-the-avatar is not 'animated' any more, it becomes (literally) a mindless object. Bring Extie's primary back, and Extie's secondary is 'animated' again as before. The correlation, in this case, is 100%
Now, this subtle form of consciousness can — and will — naturally behave different through Extie's secondary's eyes than through her primary's eyes. That is, in itself, not surprising at all. After all, the environment is different, and this will immediately lead to a difference of perception — thus the behaviour will change. We can start with the simple, stupid example of “Extie's secondary can fly, while her primary cannot”; the mere ability to fly will give Extie's subtle consciousness different inputs to her perception senses, and, since we react spontaneously upon perceptions, a difference in how we perceive the environment will naturally lead to a difference of behaviour.
This is not surprising at all. Even if we limit our discussion to the behaviour and perception of the physical world, the same changes of behaviour due to a change of environment will occur. A drastic case is someone going blind or deaf; the way they experience the universe will change, and so will their behaviour. We can of course use far more lighter examples: our behaviour changes when we are on the beach on vacations, or going to a job interview, or to a very formal ball in evening gown. We speak differently; we dress differently; we focus on different aspects. This is one reason why, for example, “vacation friends” often can't relate to us in a “business environment” — we behave slightly different in each occasion, and the perception of our selves when we abruptly change environment will make our “vacation friends” find us strange people.
Nevertheless, even if the 'self' as perceived by others definitely changes, it's also quite clear — on the physical world at least — that a more 'inner self' (what I have been calling a more subtle consciousness) is the very same. I would hardly expect that no change occurs when immersed in a virtual world — where the environment changes are
huge (compared to, say, going from a tourist resort to work at the office).
Granted, that's a different aspect from Extropia's claims that the “primary” is, by her definition, the 'entity' that has the set of highest-resolution 'behaviour and thought patterns', and that if we change those to someone (or something) else, we might experience a continuum of 'self' beyond, say, physical death of the original primary (or, not being so drastic, we could experience an Extropia DaSilva that is awake 24h a day, as the “highest resolution patterns” swiftly move from one consciousness to another during Extie's primary's sleep time).
While this argument is one that I actually find rather appealing, I'm actually more interested in the opposite view. The 'self' at the less subtle levels, which is the one that is presented to everybody else — in both physical and virtual worlds — is, after all, a mere mind construct. We imagine ourselves (even in RL, of course) and present ourselves to others, who experience our behaviour and thought patterns, and form their own impression of our selves (this is what Extie calls the “lower resolution patterns”). But this is just the “exterior self”. Speaking for myself, I have no interest in 'preserving' my exterior self, a stupid illusion that I maintain for the purposes of going through this short life (in the physical world)
Rather, I'm quite more interested in preserving the most inner and most subtle form of consciousness — the one that is “somewhere in there” observing what my exterior self is doing (and, in a sense, the one that is having a lot of fun, since I was physically born, creating a nice illusion for conventional purposes, to deal with all my friends and acquaintances).
Right now, of course, science might imagine a way to recreate the thought patterns and behaviours of my exterior self, and, in fact, with every year we hear about fascinating breakthroughs in neurology that can effectively map this “exterior self” somehow, and hopefully replicate it on a non-biological construct. This would basically be a tape-recorder that generates my exterior (perceivable) thought patterns and behaviours to others in a 100% convincing way — except to myself, because I would definitely know that it was not my inner self manipulating that other self
However, to preserve the most subtle form of consciousness, the current techniques that exist are beyond the real of science, and it's far too soon to know if we'll ever be able to get there, too. We'll definitely have to cross the technological singularity first to see if we can go that deep 
>Apart from certain situations that I do not feel like going into, for the forseeable future I believe each digital person will have- at any one time- only one 'primary'.
Well it so happens that I do feel like going into this now, so on with the thought experiment…
Imagine there are two RL people, 'Alice' and 'Bob'. Alice and Bob decide together to create a digital person. The result is 'Adam'. Every day, Adam is in SL for eight hours. For the first four hours he is pupeteered by Alice and for the remaining four hours he is pupeteered by Bob. Let us also suppose that Bob informs Alice about Adam's activities while he was roleplaying, that Alice does likewise after her shift, and that both Alice and Bob provide equal amounts of information.
In this case, I would say that Adam has two primaries. Alice's mental model of Adam is equal to Bob's or, if there is a difference, it is too slight to be noticeable.
Now, the default assumption seems to be that this situation can never happen. People always say 'avatar A is person B' as if for every resident there can only ever be one RL pupeteer (maybe because the account can only be registered to one RL person). But I do not think we can rule out the possibility that some individuals in SL are roleplayed by several people (Bob registered the account but Alice is his wife and can access it as well). Indeed, that might explain the amount of work some residents are capable of producing:)
BTW, Gwyn, what is your definition of 'secondary'? You repeatedly refer to my 'secondary' and I have no idea what that is.
>the “primary” is, by her definition, the 'entity' that has the set of highest-resolution 'behaviour and thought patterns''.
Actually, my definition of 'primary is 'the entity that, AT ANY ONE TIME, has the highest-resolution behaviour and thought patterns.
Consider 'Alice' and 'Bob' again. Only this time, imagine Alice created and developed 'Adam' by herself. When she died, a system was in place that could find someone else who had the 'right stuff' to roleplay that character (see 'virals and definitives' for an explanation of that system). 'Bob' was such a person. All of Adam's accounts were transferred to him and now he pupeteers 'Adam'. Over time, Bob would develop the highest-resolution behaviour and thought patterns of the 'Adam' character and so he would be 'Primary'.
It is likely that if Alice had continued to pupeteer 'Adam', that character's future would have taken a different direction. But, so long as Adam (pupeteered by Bob) develops in way that seems consistant with other people's conceptions of that character, we can say Adam has sucessfully survived the death of at least one 'primary'.
I hope this makes it clear that I do not believe the Extropia DaSilva avatar is capable of walking, talking and emoting all by itself without any person or artificial intelligence doing the requisite roleplaying/information processing. My point, instead, is that a digital person might be pupeteered by more than one person while maintaining continuity from the perspective of everyone else.
Anyone assuming that that situation can never happen would be making some sort of simple error.
'cause clearly it could. I know (of) a few AVs that are “corporate”, and have different atomic-world humans behind them at different times. I don't think this raises any really fundamental questions, unless someone seriously puts forward the position that there is an *additional* consciousness associated with that AV. That is, a numerically and ontologically additional subjectivity brought into being by the situation. I doubt that anyone would claim that and seriously attempt to defend it, but it could be fun if someone did. 
Thanks yet again! And again I haven't asked the question well enough.
You interpreted me as saying something like:
Is it subjectively different to be Extropia DaSilva doing stuff in SL than it is to be [name of Extropia's current typist] doing stuff in RL?
which you answered, quite reasonably, in the affirmative, and which is a fine interpretation of my question. It's just not what I mean to ask.
What I meant to ask was something more like:
If you count the number of subjective consciousnesses associated with Extropia DaSilva and her typist, do you get one, or two? (Or some other number?)
Even this isn't a terribly well-defined question, 'cause I have no idea how to actually count subjective consciousnesses.
But for instance if you count the number associated with Daphne and Dale, there's just one, if you count the number associated with Daphne and Barak Obama, you get two, if you count the number associated with Flash Gordon and Buck Rogers you get zero, etc.
That is, I take it as uncontroversial that with various things in the objective world (specifically people, and living human bodies, and some other living systems, opinions differing as we go down the chain of multicellular complexity) there is associated exactly one subjective consciousness each. Sure, I feel different when I'm being Dale than I do when I'm being Daphne, on average, the quality of my consciousness is different when I'm shopping vs when I'm in Church vs when I'm writing code. But it's still the same consciousness, the same inner Me. There's isn't one separate one for Daphne and one separate one for Dale. On the other hand me in church and Barak Obama in church are two different subjective consciousnesses in the obvious way. And there is no subjective consciousness at all associated in that same way with Tom Swift Jr.
I wrote:
'fictional characters don't; Flash Gordon has no subjective awareness'.
and you responded:
“Nor do avatars when the RL person who pupetteers them is AFK. In that case, you have a very strong argument that, in and of myself, I cannot have subjective awareness. “
which I think is interesting. So you, Extropia DaSilva, are the SL avatar that goes all unresponsive when the RL person is AFK? That's interesting to me; I don't think that Dale Innis is the same as the SL avatar, any more than I think that Daphne is the same as the RL body. That is, the person, the subjective consciousness, that is Daphne/Dale, is associated in certain ways with the RL body, and with the SL avatar, but is not identical to either of them. When I type these words, it is in some technical sense my body typing, but it isn't my body writing the words; it's me!
As to your patterns, if you are identical with Extropia DaSilva the SL avatar, then there aren't many patterns there to copy, nor to execute; a few dozen K at most, I'd say. On the other hand if you are (let's see) both the SL avatar, and some representation of that avatar's actual and potential / counterfactual behaviors, then the patterns are pretty tightly coupled to a bunch of patterns in the RL typist's mind, and it would be very hard to tease them out and say “here are Extropia's patterns, and we can transfer them to the new ultracomputer over here to run”. In fact, assuming that there is no subjective consciousness belonging specifically to Extropia (and I think there probably isn't) there wouldn't even be a fact of the matter about whether we'd succeeded if we tried. We might get an SL avatar that behaved just like Extropia according to some of her friends, but seemed significantly different to others. And no way of saying that one group was right and the other was wrong.
But then of course if Extropia does develop to the point where there *is* a specific subjective consciousness associated with just her (a) I have no idea how we'd be able to tell that that had happened, and (b) I have no idea what would happen to that subjective consciousness if Extropia's patterns were moved from one implementation to another, or duplicated a dozen times, or run very slowly, or anything else interesting. But boy would I love to find out!
Which is why I love this sort of discussion.
Which is to say, I guess, that I don't think anything all that interesting happens if, say, there are a bunch of SL AVs running around that are powered by committee, so to speak, even though they each claim to be a single digital person. Or rather, what would happen would be interesting in all sorts of ways, but not fundamentally new or puzzling or radical. On the other hand, once we get to the point where we have systems besides human brains that have subjective consciousness, we *do* get a whole new raft of really hard and fascinating questions (and while I see no fundamental barrier to that happening eventually, it seems to me that we're still pretty far away from having it actually happen).
> I feel different when I'm being Dale than I do when I'm being Daphne, on average, the quality of my consciousness is different when I'm shopping vs when I'm in Church vs when I'm writing code. But it's still the same consciousness, the same inner Me'.
When 'Dale' is online in SL interacting with someone, does Daphne ask herself “what would Dale do in this situation” before responding? Or does Daphne say and do what she thinks? That, to me, is the key difference between a digital person and avatars that are 'just me like my voice on the end of your phone is just me'. Of course, after an extended time portraying that character, 'primary' need not consciously ask such a question every moment that the digital person is online; after a while that character manifests itself without much effort.
“Dale is not a digital person, because she exists in the analog world just as much as in the digital one”.
Not every avatar in SL is a digital person. Sometimes it is perfectly legitimate to say 'I met so and so in RL'. Hamlet Au, for instance. If someone said 'I saw Hamlet Au in a cafe and we talked over coffee' that would ring true to me. Much the same is true with people you see on television. If somebody claimed to have actually met President Obama, I might be inclined to believe them.
But, if somebody said 'guess what? Yesterday who should sit next to me on the bus but Bart Simpson' I would say that was absurd. They might have met Nancy Cartwright and she might have said 'I'm Bart Simpson, who the hell are you'? in a voice that sounds just like Homer's son's, but Nancy is not Bart. Nancy is just part of a system that enables Bart to 'exist' in the Simpson's universe. Similarly, 'primary' should be considered just a part of the system that allows a digital person to 'exist' in online spaces.
>So you, Extropia DaSilva, are the SL avatar that goes all unresponsive when the RL person is AFK?'.
No. Again, that avatar is just part of the overall pattern that other minds interpret as 'me'. To say 'Extropia DaSilva IS the SL avatar is as nonsensical as saying 'Extropia DaSilva' IS the essay 'offline in the afterlife' or Extropia DaSilva IS Dale Innis's 2nd comment. All these things are bits and pieces of the overall pattern that is 'me'.
>if you are (let's see) both the SL avatar, and some representation of that avatar's actual and potential / counterfactual behaviors, then the patterns are pretty tightly coupled to a bunch of patterns in the RL typist's mind, and it would be very hard to tease them out and say “here are Extropia's patterns, and we can transfer them to the new ultracomputer over here to run”.
Right, this has been pointed out to me before. Suppose my primary had her brain mapped and the resulting model was used to control the Extropia DaSilva avatar, write Extropia DaSilva's essays, etc etc. Would the fact that my patterns are now being processed on a different substrate make me feel like I am 'myself'- truly independent- or would it in fact be 'the primary' who wakes up in the machine and I am still largely a fantasy character?
Well, most people who have thought long and hard about mind uploading claim it will be the latter case. Which is OK with me and my primary. But, a lot of people claim 'a copy of your mind is not 'you', which is fine as well. After all, whether it is a continuation of the primary's mind or not, I cannot see how it would not be a mind that has the same high-definition patterns of me as the original. So either I continue to exist in the superficial sense that I exist now (which is not superficial from the perspective of everyone else. As Gwyn acknowledged, to her it is the primary who'se existence is superficial), or I exist in a more fundamental sense than I do now.
>once we get to the point where we have systems besides human brains that have subjective consciousness, we *do* get a whole new raft of really hard and fascinating questions (and while I see no fundamental barrier to that happening eventually, it seems to me that we're still pretty far away from having it actually happen).”
See, my belief is that, in between far-out technological capabilities like brain copying and spritual machines and current technological capabilities, the gap will be filled with technologies that are intermediate steps. Each step will not be all that radical- just the next generation in some company's product. And not all steps will be directly related- indeed, many will only come to be seen as a step in the direction of 'X' with the benefit of hindsight. Because we will reach the far-out future via these comfortable steps, it will probably not seem particularly far-out to the society that gets to use them.
I mean, some technologies we have today would seem very strange to our ancestors. Imagine going back to the 17th century and telling people there would one day be machines that transmit the voices of the dead. They would probably dismiss that as absurd, or profoundly eerie if it were to come true. But today we hear Elvis or Martin Luthor King or Micheal Jackson's voice coming of all kinds of devices and nobody is bothered…
>then of course if Extropia does develop to the point where there *is* a specific subjective consciousness associated with just her (a) I have no idea how we'd be able to tell that that had happened, and (b) I have no idea what would happen to that subjective consciousness if Extropia's patterns were moved from one implementation to another, or duplicated a dozen times, or run very slowly, or anything else interesting. But boy would I love to find out!
Which is why I love this sort of discussion”.
Me too! I think my next essay will be 'Alts, Secondaries And Solipsist Nation' which will look into those kinds of questions. I have lined up some fascinating case studies of people whose minds (by all evidence available to us) do seem to be inhabited by more than one personality. In their case, it might indeed be legitimate to claim 'Daphne' and 'Dale' are two, rather than just aspects of One.
Perhaps an interesting experiment might be…that extie's primary and I meet in a bar in RL…and drink a pint of guiness…and then do the same in SL.
Then I could determine which entity holds their drink better….and which one is quicker to create a Limerick.
Always happy to help further the cause of science.
Orfeu meets someone in a bar,
Offers to buy that someone a jar,
Before you know it,
She's acting all 'poet',
“Hey, I know who you are”.
Sounds good!
I look forward to your next essay. I've read some of the work on RL people who seem to have two consciousnesses in one atomic brain, but never really studied them systematically. Now you've got me thinking about a piece of fiction where the RL and SL people in a given atomic brain really do seem to be two different people in a convincing way. All I need is a plot. 
> When 'Dale' is online in SL interacting with someone, does Daphne ask herself “what would Dale do in this situation” before responding?
Heavens, no! In fact the question took me aback; at first I had a hard time even parsing it grammatically. Daphne and Dale are the same person, so this would be like thinking “what would I do in the current situation?”, which is dangerously circular.
If Extie's primary thinks things like “what would Extie do in this situation?”, my immediate reaction is that Extie is simply a fictional character, and we're done. But in general one can't interact with fictional characters (in weblog comment threads, for instance); they interact with other fictional characters instead, in a fictional universe. (Peter Pan interacts with Captain Hook, not with the reader).
So now I have to think about the extent to which Extie's primary having some way of answering questions like “what would Extie do in this situation?”, makes me feel that Extie exists, for various values of “exists”. Which is to say, I think I'm finally at least in the right universe of discourse to think properly about Extie. So I may eventually be able to ask some of the right questions.
>If Extie's primary thinks things like “what would Extie do in this situation?”, my immediate reaction is that Extie is simply a fictional character…So now I have to think about the extent to which Extie's primary having some way of answering questions like “what would Extie do in this situation?”, makes me feel that Extie exists, for various values of “exists”.
I think you mentioned elsewhere that virtual/fictional/imaginary people are nothing new. Consider this list of names: Ayn Rand, Bart Simpson, Charles Dogson, Dagny Taggart, Ella Fitzgerald, George Elliot, Hauldon Caullfield, Indiana Jones, Jesus Christ, King Arthur, Lewis Carrol, Mickey Mouse, Napolean Bonaparte, Oliver Twist, Plato, Ronald McDonald, Socrates, Tom Bombadil, Ulysses, Walt Disney.
One can imagine some disagreement over which names belong to real people and which are virtual. But since I chose people that are either dead or fictional, you cannot have actually met any of them. In that case, they must all be virtual because now they exist only in the imagination/memory.
As I said before, what really matters is not the actual/fantastical and virtual/physical dimension of a person, place or event. It is the resolution of the model that counts; how ‘fine-grained’ it is. Strange though it may seem, this would suggest that a ‘digital person’ you know very well, having developed a rich model from the patterns provided by the relevant human/technological source, is more of a person to you than the hordes of people you pass in the street every day, but from whome you never take the time to build an elaborate representation.
But now I suppose we are back to the objective point-of-view; how I am perceived as opposed to how I think and feel. Really, the simple truth there is that I do not have an ontologically distinct mind/consciousness from Primary. For the forseeable future, digital people are kind of like the places, people and events you see on the cinema screen. If you indulge in narrative transport (where you get 'sucked in' to the story, suspend disbelief and become emotionally involved with the events portrayed) then it all seems quite real. But if you scrutinise every frame for continuity errors, things out of place ('hey what is that Roman gladiator doing, wearing a digital wristwatch?') and so on, the mechanics of the storytelling process will peek through the illusion and it all falls over.
This news was later called ” not untrue” by Neogaf Member Aeana, who is well known for her insider information. And unlike previous rumors, KHInsider actually believes disney acting auditions this one to be true. However, it is still a rumor, and should be treated as one until we have official word.
This news was later called ” not untrue” by Neogaf Member Aeana, who is well known for her insider information. And unlike previous rumors, KHInsider actually believes disney acting auditions this one to be true. However, it is still a rumor, and should be treated as one until we have official word.
When I was new to SL, I had a strong desire to comfortly bed my avatar somewhere before logging out and know she is sleeping there while “I” am offline. That's very natural, isn't it?
Aww. I did exactly the same!! I remember leaving my avatar “sleeping” under bridges, because I didn't know if the avatars were left in-world when I logged off…