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Scientists identify brain waves that define the limits of 'you'

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Re: Scientists identify brain waves that define the limits of 'you'

#81

Post by pixl97 »

arnoooooo wrote: post #78
Tarq0n wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Dualism is almost always unhelpful as a model. Your soul is a process your body runs, they are indistinguishable.

You make it sound like we are flesh robots : sensors and motors, with a central "CPU" that channels between the two. But a robot has no first-person experience, it's just smart electron flows. That we have first-person experiences shows the soul is definitely not "a process your body runs" : it's where your whole experience "registers". That we are not flesh robots is also why we have free will. You could coherently…

>You make it sound like we are flesh robots

Yes, with an advanced version on an LLM on top that makes it seem like you is you. As of so far we've found zero external magical devices that cause our body to act like it does other than the cells and electrical signals they produce.

>we have first-person experiences

Do you? You say you do, much like an LLM says it knows things. But all these things you say about you are actually effects many orders separated from the cause. Your idea of first-person is something you're experiencing many filters later. Which is what the article is somewhat about. Messing with the input signals to your brain via physical mechanism changes what you feel about who you are. There is not magic, just electron flows.

>but you can't argue that first-person experience is an illusion, as you need something to perceive the illusion.

A computer can generate and play it's own video game. This can be entirely virtualized like a dream, or it could be more like AR where it's getting inputs from the world around us. "But, but, but, that's totally different in ways I cannot explain nor do I want to because I'm special"

Our improvements in AI will never lead to AI being proven smart. It will just lead to humans being proven dumb.

Re: Scientists identify brain waves that define the limits of 'you'

#82

Post by pixl97 »

ajuc wrote: post #46
zozbot234 wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You can do that with mental phenomenon too - eg, having memories, feelings, consciousness, thoughts. But once you carry that reasoning to its full conclusion, the original argument for a "soul" or "self" that can even be meaningfully called "I" vanishes entirely. There still is some sort of underlying "true" subjective awareness that's felt to be ontologically basic in some sense (just like the "soul") but now it's…

Yes. That's the point? Your personality might change and you're still you.

From an evolutionary viewpoint this makes perfect sense.

You better always feel like you otherwise you may not help this non-you survive, hence the non-you's went extinct quickly.

Re: Scientists identify brain waves that define the limits of 'you'

#83

Post by E-Reverance »

judahmeek wrote: post #61
BrtByte wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It also makes the self feel uncomfortably fragile

This technique is likely to be utilized in some government interrogation methods now. An excellent example of research that maybe shouldn't have been pursued, although it's possible that there are a large number of potential recuperative applications as well that I'm not aware of.

I don't think we should stop learning about ourselves out of paranoia. This sort of research could end up just like many powerful tech before (ex. nukes->green energy)

Re: Scientists identify brain waves that define the limits of 'you'

#84

Post by inanutshellus »

bamboozled wrote: post #67
tehmillhouse wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Buddhism has bad news for you

I once read “The Joy of Living” by Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche. It should come with a warning. It broke me for a year. I’m actually grateful for the existential crisis it caused me. But it was a brutal experience at first.

OK so... what warning should it have had that would've prepared you for it?

Re: Scientists identify brain waves that define the limits of 'you'

#85

Post by luxpir »

inanutshellus wrote: post #84
bamboozled wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I once read “The Joy of Living” by Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche. It should come with a warning. It broke me for a year. I’m actually grateful for the existential crisis it caused me. But it was a brutal experience at first.

OK so... what warning should it have had that would've prepared you for it?

I read it last year, enjoyed the book, no existential crisis.

I already subscribed to the idea of the self and identity being independent and constructs. A lot of reflection around that and physics in younger years maybe helped.

Re: Scientists identify brain waves that define the limits of 'you'

#86

Post by hirvi74 »

accrual wrote: post #73
cogman10 wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That fragility is something you have to come to grips with if you've ever known someone that has a brain injury. The self changes rapidly when dementia, alzheimers, a car crash, or a concussion which rocks someone's world the wrong way. Who we are is incredibly fragile. You are just one bad infection away from being a different person.

I agree with you and I think we're changing at every moment, all the time, but it's usually gradual enough that most people don't notice or care until it manifests as new behavior. My life is materially the same as it was on Friday but I definitely feel different after events this weekend.

"A man cannot step into the same river twice, for it is not the same river, and he is not same man."

- Heraclitus

Re: Scientists identify brain waves that define the limits of 'you'

#87

Post by jhickok »

bamboozled wrote: post #67
tehmillhouse wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Buddhism has bad news for you

I once read “The Joy of Living” by Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche. It should come with a warning. It broke me for a year. I’m actually grateful for the existential crisis it caused me. But it was a brutal experience at first.

I had a similar experience with Derek Parfit's "Reasons and Persons", but he offers some solace:

‘When I believed [that personal identity is what matters], I seemed imprisoned in myself. My life seemed like a glass tunnel, through which I was moving faster every year, and at the end of which there was darkness. When I changed my view, the walls of my glass tunnel disappeared. I now live in the open air. There is still a difference between my life and the lives of other people. But the difference is less. Other people are closer. I am less concerned about the rest of my own life, and more concerned about the lives of others.

When I believed [that personal identity is what matters], I also cared more about my inevitable death. After my death, there will be no one living who will be me. I can now redescribe this fact. Though there will later be many experiences, none of these experiences will be connected to my present experiences by chains of such direct connections as those involved in experience-memory, or in the carrying out of an earlier intention. Some of these future experiences may be related to my present experiences in less direct ways. There will later be some memories about my life. And there may later be thoughts that are influenced by mine, or things done as the result of my advice. My death will break the more direct relations between my present experiences and future experiences, but it will not break various other relations. This is all there is to the fact that there will be no one living who will be me. Now that I have seen this, my death seems to me less bad.’

Re: Scientists identify brain waves that define the limits of 'you'

#88

Post by zxcvasd »

shippage wrote: post #56
taurath wrote: post #35

I wonder how those with multiple identities (DID), would affect this measurement. I know there are direct biomarkers in folk with it having to do with the frontal cortex and amygdala, and some neuroimaging being able to note vast differences in processing: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9045405/

I have DID and am also curious how it would affect the measurement. I'm just waking up so I've only skimmed the paper so far, but I suspect the results would differ depending on which of us was fronting. We've noticed that each of us integrates not just sensory information differently, but we also seem to be "wired" differently. For instance, we are AuDHD, and I, the primary host, lean strongly to the autism behavior…

[dead]

Re: Scientists identify brain waves that define the limits of 'you'

#89

Post by yetihehe »

BrtByte wrote: post #53

What they seem to have identified isn't "the limits of you" so much as a timing parameter the brain uses to decide whether two sensory streams belong together

I think this is still important. How do you define a system? By boundary of communication, where inside system communication is fast, communication with outside is slow and limited. Think ( ( ((CPU) Memory) ((GPU) memory) PC ) Internet ). Your PC is a hierarchy of systems split on boundaries of communication speed. So, it would be proper that a brain identifies what's "inside" the brain in similar way.

So, ping>1 = that part is outside.

Re: Scientists identify brain waves that define the limits of 'you'

#90

Post by nuancebydefault »

jhickok wrote: post #87
bamboozled wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I once read “The Joy of Living” by Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche. It should come with a warning. It broke me for a year. I’m actually grateful for the existential crisis it caused me. But it was a brutal experience at first.

I had a similar experience with Derek Parfit's "Reasons and Persons", but he offers some solace: ‘When I believed [that personal identity is what matters], I seemed imprisoned in myself. My life seemed like a glass tunnel, through which I was moving faster every year, and at the end of which there was darkness. When I changed my view, the walls of my glass tunnel disappeared. I now live in the open air. There is stil…

I think we could summarize all as follows: _everything_ is inter-connected and hence influences its surroundings and hence everything, indirectly. Some connections (in-brain) are stronger/wider than others (human to human etc).

Hence 'I' is relative.

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