A typical paradigm by which people tend to think of themselves and others is as consequentialist agents: entities who can be usefully modeled as having beliefs and goals, who are then acting according to their beliefs to achieve their goals.
This is often a useful model, but it doesn’t quite capture reality. It’s a bit of a fake framework. Or in computer science terms, you might call it a leaky abstraction.
An abstraction in the computer science sense is a simplification which tries to hide the underlying details of a thing, letting you think in terms of the simplification rather than the details. To the extent that the abstraction actually succeeds in hiding the details, this makes things a lot simpler. But sometimes the abstraction inevitably leaks, as...
There are several different aspects to this that I have different attitudes towards.
The multi-agent theory of consciousness is plausible. In fact, it is almost tautological. Any complex object can be considered "multi-agent". "Agent" is not necessarily identical to "consciousness". Otherwise, you know, you get homunculus recursion.
But there is another side to the issue.
The idea "You should force your brain to create new characters. You should mentally talk to these new characters. This will help you solve your psychological problems."
There are not really m... (read more)