Well, obviously I think it scales, whether with or without ratchets ...
processes like chemotaxis up through things like social stomachs and grooming
all the way up to human/group identity. Ideally, we could find a cross-scale
element. Smell might work well.
There are COVID and head injury victims who lose their smell. I can imagine
there exist experiments testing their identity changes from before and after.
But more importantly, it seems we could design experiments to measure their
non-subjectively directed behavior changes. I wouldn't choose acquired tastes
like the smell of bourbon, but something like food (fresh meat) versus poison
(rotten eggs?). This framework should map across scales of subjects.
On 12/2/25 11:02 AM, Steve Smith wrote:
Tx, I did read that article myself and it (also) whetted my appetite a bit for
(yet more) abstractions about the emergence of systems, couplling and identity
in that sense as well.
Hi Steve,
This was the Wikipedia link Glen had in this paragraph, in the same post I
replied to:
Changing gears a bit, I ran across the "as if" personality
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Identity_disturbance>. I can't help but wonder about a room full of
agents "concealing their inner emptiness, living *as if* they had genuine feelings and desires."
>8^D I'm at risk of Get-Off-My-Lawn, here. But 90% of the time, when I'm in a room with more than, say, 5
people, it *feels* to me like they're all philosophical zombies, maybe me included.
I don’t know more than whatever I might have learned to parrot from reading
that link….
E
On Dec 2, 2025, at 12:35, Steve Smith <[email protected]> wrote:
EricS -
I'd like to hear more on this tangent (identity-stability) in the broadest sense (my
focus would be abstract markov blankets, active inferencing, "nearly decomposable
systems") if possible.
Not sure if the abstractions of emergent self-other can be reached from this
discussion or not.
Back to Glen’s branch in the above thread, I could probably imagine an analysis
in which some of these distinctions do propagate up to how identity is formed,
and whether or in what ways it is stable or unstable, as in borderline
personality disorders and associated. Or maybe not, and the identity-stability
question is a distinct matter (?).
Anyway, thanks for patience or indulgence if anybody read this far,
Eric
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