Posthuman Norms

[JohnnyYesterday]

I don’t understand how the physical distance between the mind and the body(s) alters Cray’s point, though. Unless the mind’s body(s) are the whole world (universe, multiverse . . .) there are objects and beings that aren’t itself. It would have to notice this.

[stevebowers]

I suspect that there may be a class of sophonts that do not distinguish between themselves and the environment, because they have been designed that way. Such entities may be particularly common in virtual reality scenarios, and in the Solipsist Panvirtuality. These entities might be unaware of their own physical substrate, and take no part in the maintenance and growth of that substrate; a Solipsist computation swarm might be built, maintained and propagated by autonomous robotic systems, just like a tree or a fungus.

Inside such a virtual scenario there are many ways that the 'me/other' dichotomy could be subverted or dissolved, via merging, group minds, the creation of partial subminds with limited access to memories, and so on. Once again, I'd expect the Panvirual Solipsists to have many examples of this kind of identity blurring; this could be a problem when more conventional sophonts attempt to interact with the Panvirts, since there may be no sentient mind present in a Panvirt colony that is interested in or even capable of interacting with the outside world as a distinct individual.