Thoughts on the exoself \ stacker news ~mostly

2973 sats \ 18 comments \ @elvismercury 12 May mostly_harmless

A weird thing about the current moment is how much of ourselves exist outside the boundaries of our own flesh.

For instance, I was reviewing some notes just now and was struck to discover that, for the first time, a piece of my canonical thinking belongs principally somewhere else. In this case, a reference to evergreenness linked, not to internal notes, but to a SN post.

Then I thought: in some ways, this has always been going on. The artists who make up stories or create art about Superman can't make use of those Superman art or stories, even if they represent the most intense expressions of their identity over the course of years. The actor who we all think of as Wolverine can't lay claim to Wolverine; nor can the creator of the idea of Wolverine: each has relinquished themselves, repeatedly, to the world.

I have a number of patents, signed over as a matter of course to my employer as part of the employment contract. And so for the code and the text I wrote while employed in those various places. Some foundational thoughts, the products of untold hours of rumination, are not mine to give or to use, and nobody thinks this is weird.

I started wondering about exactly how and when we can be considered to be 'sovereign' of ourselves. What such an idea would even mean.

This fugue reminded me of some more recent expression of the idea, where people create an AI avatar of a loved one who survives their death. Here's an example that I haven't watched; here's a gut-wrenching Black Mirror episode that I have.

But that's science fiction, even if it doesn't seem so far away. A real example that I read about, but whose source was removed from twitter for some reason [1], is a guy who used to play some kind of multiplayer driving game with his girlfriend. Then his girlfriend died. Then when he played the game afterward, now on solo mode, he discovered that her driving behavior was rendered into an NPC car.

So the guy had this strange experience of being with the phantom of his dead girlfriend, spending time together the way they had used to. It made me shiver.

The larger idea for me here is the idea of the exoself, a kind of instantiation of yourself that extends beyond the boundaries of your own flesh. In certain circles they talk about this as being a 'centaur' -- as a collective entity, where you incorporate elements of the environment into yourself and become something greater as a result. This is an idea that Heidegger made famous seventy years ago, in incomprehensible gibberish language: how do our tools make us into other kinds of Beings? [2]

It makes me think, hard, about what I want, and what we (collectively) should aspire to with the idea of social media. What kind of Beings are we becoming when we instantiate parts of ourselves in this way? Where we reliquish parts of ourselves to the world, and absorb parts of others?

What could emerge from this mode of interaction that would affirm life, that would make us bigger and nobler, instead of stupider and pettier?

[1] If anyone can find a reference to this I'd be grateful. [2] Please don't nitpick me on this one.

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218 sats \ 2 replies \ @k00b 12 May

What kind of Beings are we becoming when we instantiate parts of ourselves in this way?

Evergreen beings.

What could emerge from this mode of interaction that would affirm life, that would make us bigger and nobler, instead of stupider and pettier?

If we aren't divorced from the consequences of our digital selves, if we can stay human online, where we record humanity better than anywhere else, then we are all making the world wiser.

100 sats \ 1 reply \ @elvismercury OP 12 May

I think the evergreen beings must have a different perceptual system than do we, their constituents. Which means:

If we aren't divorced from the consequences of our digital selves, if we can stay human online

may be misleading in its consequences. Although I'd still greatly prefer it to the current state of affairs.

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @k00b 12 May

Oh good point. Evegreen keynesian beauties then. :)

218 sats \ 1 reply \ @halleck 12 May

Great fugue. Love the term exoself, and I think it's not new with modern technology but there are new manifestations of the exoself coming all the time. Also I love the instinct to pause and reflect (to the extent we can) about what kind of people we become when we let technologies into our lives.

10 sats \ 0 replies \ @elvismercury OP 12 May

And also to reflect on what you might mindfully curate, or aspire to curate. That's my principal obsession, anyway.

218 sats \ 0 replies \ @cryotosensei 12 May

If one has good intentions, he or she can galvanise the masses to make a stand and take action against undesirable policies/programs via his or her social media. Greta Thunberg comes to mind, for her raw anger and anguish left imprints on the hearts and minds of many people - and motivated them to join her movement.

218 sats \ 0 replies \ @Taft 12 May

The concept of the exoself is a fascinating exploration of how technology can extend our human experience beyond our biological boundaries. It looks like a vision that challenges our understanding of identity and the boundaries of humanity.

What could emerge from this mode of interaction that would affirm life, that would make us bigger and nobler, instead of stupider and pettier?

People could expand their knowledge, and wisdom, could enhance empathy and compassion, could transcend physical limitations, which are positive things.

But while the concept of exoselves could hold great promise, there are also potential downsides and unintended consequences associated with their widespread adoption, such as dependency, loss of autonomy, loss of authentic experience, and the list of negative things can be continued...

This is a very interesting topic to discuss about!

218 sats \ 5 replies \ @Undisciplined 12 May

To be fair, some of us do think IP is weird.

I like this term exoself. Sometimes I think about what must be the oldest form of it, which is the version of ourselves that is rendered in the minds of others.

I don't have time for a really thoughtful reply this morning, but I'll loop back in later to see what other people have to say.

69 sats \ 4 replies \ @k00b 12 May

To be fair, some of us do think IP is weird.

I'm in camp IP is weird. When I was bothered by it in the past, most research suggested it didn't increase innovation or whatever utility is given as the excuse for the rent-seeking. The political boundaries for and against IP were the most surprising. It was libertarian types that didn't think IP made sense and progressives who were capitalists when it came to, not capital, but ideas. I haven't thought about it much, but there's something interesting at work there.

150 sats \ 3 replies \ @elvismercury OP 12 May

The political boundaries for and against IP were the most surprising.

I wonder if it's because the default situation without IP, or at least, the mythology of it, is some lone inventor spends his life pursuing something and then dies a pauper, while others grow fat on the profits of that work.

To me, this one seems damn near impossible to even research with good intentions, since figuring out how to control for assorted factors would make natural experiments really hard to do. I expect people get the results they want to get.

150 sats \ 2 replies \ @k00b 12 May

I expect people get the results they want to get.

Good catch. That was my sense too which is probably why it's such a political thing.

It seems that corporations benefit disproportionately from IP, at the expense of the inventor, but maybe that's hard to appreciate.

I was hoping there might be an interesting double standard. Like, thoughts are sacred and their manifestations aren't.

129 sats \ 0 replies \ @elvismercury OP 12 May

I was hoping there might be an interesting double standard. Like, thoughts are sacred and their manifestations aren't.

There's an intriguing idea. Perhaps: the more obviously connected in origin to a human being, the more sacred? And the more connected to abstract hierarchies (e.g., a company) the more profane?

Although I can immediately think of examples that violate it.

I expect there's something to your idea, but it's super nuanced, just like Terry Regier's work showed the underlying sensibility of why prepositions work the way they do.

100 sats \ 0 replies \ @Undisciplined 12 May

I highly recommend the work of Stephan Kinsella on IP.

He’s a patent attorney and after years of trying to justify IP philosophically, he concluded that it just isn’t justifiable.

107 sats \ 2 replies \ @DiedOnTitan 13 May

The vast majority of people exist exclusively within themselves and when they die, they are completely and utterly forgotten. To put it in your terms, they have no exoself. The only people we know of from 100 or 1,000+ years ago are those who have:

Lived a life worth writing about.
Wrote something worth reading. And this is a high bar, because the vast majority of writing will not survive the cruel threshing machine of time.

100 sats \ 1 reply \ @elvismercury OP 13 May

I think that's sort-of true, and is one implication of an exoself of sufficient breadth / magnitude that other people care about it, or that it even incorporates them in some fashion s.t. they become part of each other in important ways.

But there are also much "smaller" variants that are interesting to me. For instance, a friend of mine, the most talented hacker that I know, has turned his house into an extension of himself -- both how the place is designed, how it's decorated, and the million little hacky features where he's built to augment it. To go into his house is to enter a part of his Being. You're very aware of being present in the heart of a respirating meta-organism, part of it.

This guy is pretty amazing and stands a reasonable chance of being remembered in 100 years for other things, but this would still be a beautiful and impressive type of exoself even if that weren't true.

54 sats \ 0 replies \ @DiedOnTitan 13 May

That sounds fascinating and intriguing. And it adds color to your exoself idea with a very concrete example. A physical extension of a person that made their house an extension of their body or mind.

I was thinking more of a metaphysical extension of one's being captured in art or writing where a person's physical being, which inevitably withers, is replaced by a metaphysical embodiment of their mind which if done well has the potential for immortality. When one thinks of Socrates for example, although he did not write a single word, Plato captured his dialogues in a timeless manner where we have a very good sense of who he was shaped by Plato's writings that survive.

There are more abstract examples, such as Euclid, who gave us Elements, which laid the foundation for mathematics. His writing tells no story with no characters, but the progression of his theorems are so elegantly structured that we get a sense of the greatness of his mind - or exoself.

And of course, Satoshi gave us Bitcoin which has every possibility of surviving for centuries and positioning his exoself among the very greats in history.

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @Athena 13 May

We are definitely becoming the beings of our human aspirations. Our fancy or psyche needs a beating and to be bigger and nobler, we need to create some exoselfs around us. Always contemplating and always making good decisions.

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @Coinsreporter 12 May

Exoself! This is becoming more and more popular. I mean people are getting more inclined to it.

Thanks for a grat post again. I found out out one blog that kinda represnt an may resonate with the idea.

https://exoself.blog/about/

Yes, I can attest that the story about the boy playing with the exoself of his girlfriend is true. I've also reaf it somewhere, I don't remember.