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Eliezer_Yudkowsky comments on Rationality Quotes - July 2009 - Less Wrong
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-- Princess Waltz
Commentary: What's odd is not how many people think they contain other people. What's odd is how many of those people think the other person is the real one.
But we do - in the same sense that racing sims contain cars.
Voted up for striking very home for me - I just finished watching His and Her Circumstances, which had far too much adolescent wangst about 'real mes'.
voted up for "wangst".
The person I think of as "me", the person the world sees, and the person that could be figured out by a very detailed examination of my actions would probably each barely resemble the other. Also, they would shift over quite short timescales as bits of personality are triggered and demoted by context. I can't really claim to be a unitary person, only a unitary brain. So "the real me" is a terribly messy question. Or 1.5 kg of grey goop, depending how it's asked.
Yes, humans try to present themselves as simple, so that others can understand and trust them. But humans really are quite complex. Hence an inevitable divergence between what we are and how we appear must be managed. Hence others can reasonably wonder of how we appear is how we really are.
Perhaps the "person inside" is a metaphor for the vision of who they would like to become?