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Originally Posted by Ken G
First of all, there are obvious survival advantages in modeling other primate's behaviors. But why model our own? The hypothesis must be that this type of modeling is an inevitable spandrel of the helpful type.
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You could certainly treat it as a spandrel, but the idea is that the creation of a sense of self hugely improved our modelling of other people: introspection immediately yields a better dataset than simple observation of others.
So the hypothesis would be that depersonalization shuts down your own sense of self, but at the same time it disconnects your ability to identify with other humans. One can imagine there might be evolutionary selection pressures on either or both of these options.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Ken G
That reminds me of the end of the movie "Dark Star", where the crew tries to convince the artificial intelligence of the ship not to self destruct. I forget how they tried to do it exactly, but it might have involved giving it a sense of self... (I don't believe it worked).
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They introduced the intelligent bomb to solipsism. How could it know it was carrying out its mission correctly (to explode and destroy "unstable planets") if it couldn't be sure that the external world existed at all?
The bomb accepted the reasoning that it could only be sure of its own existence, as a lone intelligence in an otherwise unknown void, and then said: "Let there be light!"
Bang.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Ken G
I agree, but don't see how the modeling concept comes directly into play. I think your argument is the same if one substitutes "self-building" where you have "modeling".
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See above. The whole "self" thing is hypothesized to be part of an applet in which introspection and modelling of other humans as "people like me" are strongly linked. So taking "self" out of the loop removes both functions.
Grant Hutchison