TheOtherDave comments on Dissolving the Question - Less Wrong

44 Post author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 08 March 2008 03:17AM

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Comment author: TheOtherDave 31 March 2011 04:28:42PM 0 points [-]

Sure.

And as long as you're just as indifferent to the state of mind of the individual who is executing those physical results as you would be to the putative state of mind of an orbiting planet, then there is no particular reason to engage with the two differently.

And that hypothetical indifference is itself the physical result of earlier causes, and the consequences of expressing that indifference (for example, engaging with people the same way you engage with planets in their orbits, and people being upset at that, and etc.) are just further physical results, and on and on.

Conversely, if I am not indifferent to individual states of mind (because my prior causes are hypothetically different than yours), then I may engage with people differently, and they may respond differently, and that is also a physical result emerging from prior causes.