"Although many people understand on one level that this is false, the intuition of a special observer keeps reasserting itself in various guises. As the philosopher Jerry Fodor writes: ”If... there is a community of computers living in my head, there had also better be somebody who is in charge; and, by God, it had better be me.” "

I have built a business. It has customers, employees, office space, tax returns, vendors.... It has a separate name and existence from me. It operates according to compatible, but distinct, purposes, opportunities and choices to mine. And, if I accomplish my goal, it will operate even more independently in the future than it does now, and may at some point, exist entirely separate from me. But, I'm not tempted to attribute an "I" to it.

When a system achieves sufficient complexity, we have a tendency to reify it. I don't know what that bias is called.

Thanks for the article.