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Kevin comments on Open Thread: January 2010 - Less Wrong
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How old were you when you became self-aware or achieved a level of sentience well beyond that of an infant or toddler?
I was five years old and walking down the hall outside of my kindergarden classroom and I suddenly realized that I had control over what was happening inside of my mind's eye. This manifested itself by me summoning an image in my head of Gene Wilder as Willy Wonka.
Is it proper to consider that the moment when I became self aware? Does anyone have a similar anecdote?
(This is inspired by Shannon's mention of her child exploring her sense of self) http://lesswrong.com/lw/1n8/london_meetup_the_friendly_ai_problem/1hm4
I don't have any memory of a similar revelation, but one of my earliest memories is of asking my mother if there was a way to 'spell letters' - I understood that words could be broken down into parts and wanted to know if that was true of letters, too, and if so where the process ended - which implies that I was already doing a significant amount of abstract reasoning. I was three at the time.
Strange, I have no such memory. The closest thing I can think of is my big Crisis of Faith when I was 17. I realized I had much more power over myself than I had previously thought. It scared me a lot, actually.