Good presentation: just out of curiosity do people here consider the question of whether we are brains settled? Obviously no one here is going to hold that we're immaterial souls and I think the claim that we are brains is less wrong than the claim that we're souls. But I'm also pretty confident that persons aren't brains and I imagine the people who expect future persons to upload themselves to computers will agree with me. To give the usual computer analogy I think saying you are a brain is like saying an operating system is a couple computer chips- you've named the substrate but not the thing itself.
But I'm just curious since Liron said this came of Eliezer and I haven't read everything on OB... is this the popular opinion here that we are brains?
is this the popular opinion here that we are brains?
"You Are A Brain" is not strictly accurate, to my mind, but it's catchy and sufficiently less wrong to be useful as a hook for the concepts.
My preferred clarification is "I'm not my brain, I'm something my brain is doing."
Here is a 2-hour slide presentation I made for college students and teens:
You Are A Brain
It's an introduction to realist thinking, a tour of all the good stuff people don't realize until they include a node for their brain's map in their brain's map. All the concepts come from Eliezer's posts on Overcoming Bias.
I presented this to my old youth group while staffing one of their events. In addition to the slide show, I had a browser with various optical illusions open in tabs, and I brought in a bunch of lemons and miracle fruit tablets. They had a good time and stayed engaged.
I hope the slides will be of use to others trying to promote the public understanding of rationality.
Note: When you view the presentation, make sure you can see the speaker notes. They capture the gist of what I was saying while I was showing each slide.
Added 6 years later: I finally made a video of myself presenting this, except this time it was an adult audience. See this discussion post.