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Comment by erikerikson

2 years ago

You have to disbelieve anyone who says they aren't a derivation of their previous person states. That's just physics.

25 comments

erikerikson

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dumbo-octopus  2 years ago

Oh you have a comprehensive physical model of individual human behavior do you, in particular the decision making process of life-changing choices? I'd love to see the publication.

  • __MatrixMan__  2 years ago

    The future is still a function of the past, even if we lack that function's complete specification.

    • dumbo-octopus  2 years ago

      Yes, we can believe many things without any proof or justification. We call that religion, not "physics".

      Edit: this was in response to a prior edit of the parent that (correctly) explicitly stated their position was a personal belief, not some sort of universally acknowledged axiom as they have since edited it to seem.

      1 reply →

geysersam  2 years ago

This is too simplified. What is the state of a person? It's an object of infinite information, the question what aspect you focus on is very non-trivial.

You don't have to disbelieve anyone who says a certain aspect of a persons life typically has little influence on their later life. Another issue is that for some a particular event might be life changing and for some the same event might be a nothing burger, for no obvious reason.

  • erikerikson  2 years ago

    I agree with you that like the post I responded to that my response is too simplified. I also agree with the post I first responded to that we are, physically or mentally and emotionally, in at least some regards never in the same exact state twice.

    To clarify my comment, I was attenuating to the causal progression of identity and referencing the physical dimension of that as it is less likely to dissolve into wasteful argument. Once we exist past a day boundary we don't get to be us today without an us yesterday. I admit that the lines of existence and self can be plausibly taken as very fuzzy and I don't want to debate any of that minutiae.

    My point is that we are the intersection of what we are across all the domains of our being to whatever extent we exist at the times that we do. Confusing ourselves about what we mean by a person doesn't help.

ClumsyPilot  2 years ago

You have like zero molecules left in your body from 10 years ago. If you are worried about physics, the most important consideration is your diet.

And are you really a derivation of your state, or of the things that happen to you? The guys who were drafted into war in Vietnam and then got killed there, was there anything about them that would have made a difference to their cruel fate? If we go by this philosophy, the most import decisions are when you were born, where, and into what environment.

For example if you want a house, you should have timed your birth to 30 years ago.

  • thfuran  2 years ago

    >If we go by this philosophy, the most import decisions are when you were born, where, and into what environment.

    Isn't that basically the gist of TFA?