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chaosmage comments on The Useful Definition of "I" - Less Wrong Discussion
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Comments (47)
Try to taboo the word "I", use terms like "what the brain that types this refers to as itself", and you won't be lost anymore.
That sounds much, much worse than just using the word 'I'. And why do you think that's the correct taboo-replacement?
Edit: I worked out what bothers me about this advice.
A: I'm lost, can you help me find the hospital?
B: Just call this street corner 'the hospital'. Now you're there!
Because it helps me not be confused, and I imagine it would help you to not be confused either.
It is unfortunate the more precise terms are hard to express in the languages developed by our tribes of hominids, but it appears nature wasn't written in those.
I think this is useful. "I" seems to refer to two quite different coherent things current-me (specific thing) and general-me (collection of things I consider to be in group "I"), plus sometimes a few others which fall apart at edge cases, like physical and causal continuity "I"s. Consciously going over exactly what you mean by "I" makes it much easier to not skip around different definitions, though it is super-clunky in English.