Mindscape Ask Me Anything, Sean Carroll | September 2022 

Who didn't wake up to this, is the big question

Me Right now, uk 7.30am lol

@Sean Carroll can you mic + tape your lecture set? Considering how awesome "The Biggest Ideas in the Universe" was, I'm sure the quality would be stellar. I'd happily pay a few hundred dollars to compensate for the extra labor to get a lecture set for myself, or for some 15 year old kid who is specifically interested in this sort of exposition but can't afford it (The Oxford lecture set that you and Nima both did were fascinating to watch. As someone who would read Hume, then Russell on Hume, then a psychedelic here and there, if I had found them @15 rather than @25, my career trajectory might very well have changed. I can say with 100% certainty that despite discovering them 'past neuroplasticistic-prime', they're still worth their weight in gold.)

@@wither8 after watching Robert Sapolsky's lecture series from Stanford, I second how super high-value Sean's participation in such endeavours would be.

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theologian

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Maybe it used to be what was called Political Science.

go down to your morgue and ask them

@@scambammer6102 I'll go down to the local morgue, if you explain consciousness fully to me.

@@chromabotia sure. Consciousness is when you are thinking. I can see why you are confused about that

So subjectively I think that I consciously make up to ? choices per second. Hmm instead of maximum I will guess 5 to 500 choices per second that are conscious choices. Most meaningless even to me such as distinction from a foot placed at point X or same foot placed 1/8th inch from point X. Also ignore subconscious choices that could be 100 times more per second; if I am not even aware of subconscious choices I cannot say to myself they are me, but just blame my brain and brownian motion and quantum weirdness and random biochemistry...all working together to not prevent free will, but to put my mind in a box of allowed choices for my conscious mind. That box is not real but still metaphorically it exists. The box is choices I can think of while I am awake, thoughts reasonably likely for me personally given my memories and my personality. Outside the box is Thoughts technically possible for me to have, but that would only happen as me reacting to external events I consider unlikely. Outside the box is also choices unlikely for me because they are contrary for my personality or they are reactions to unlikely external events.

I will not claim there are infinite choices possible in five minutes.I will arbitrarily do a WAG. My wag is there are Tree(3) choices possible for each Human, in each 24 hour period. A finite number so large that if you tried to fit that number in a Human Brain...brain implodes into a Black Hole. It's really hard to even imagine a computer AI mind in a Jupitor size computer...being able to really understand Tree(3) Monster Group or Rayos Number are far larger concepts than Tree(3) but still not infinite...

It is explained at start but yes, it is for Patreons to ask questions. Originally, the whole thing was going to be Patreon only but everyone voted to make the answers public. I really enjoy this format, even though some does get repeated, having public access to a world-class well, anything, can only help get people interested in the field!

@@Choofalong Yes. I am amazed at how productive Dr Carroll is--so many courses to teach, papers to read, papers to write and he still manages to engage the public in this way.

Good pitch 😁

There, I said it, the emperor has no clothes. ;O)-

yup. I've heard it said that every gene affects every trait

And what's the best predictor of achievement (ie, your "merit and competence" ) is among high school students/graduates? Zip code. Which is to say, how much money your parents have. And then who is best positioned to pursue higher education regardless of actual merit? Students whose parents can already afford college, who didn't, eg., have to carry a job and all their classes, who had the time and resources to pursue interests outside of school, the kind that are so critical to setting one's self apart in college applications, etc., etc. I assume you're a bright person. Why must we pretend that childhood achievement is a meritocracy, against all the evidence to the contrary?

The USA fought an entire war to be free from UK voter influence!

Logically, yeah you should at least get a vote in what the US exports to y'all and what you export to us. Products, pollution, pop culture... Perhaps all countries could form a new United Notions with an actual democratic parliament. It could take on stuff like bird migration, international tax shelters, CO2, and fair trade and work for the people instead of the presidents!

How about proportional representation? To me the biggest problem is the two-party duopoly. A majority party can be bad, but when they work together... we get the Patriot Ax and a Drawer on Wugs.

I was quite confused by Sean's answer here. Does he think that the two Alice's are a single entity somehow? If Alice 2 was created while Alice 1 was still alive, would he want both of them held responsible? They each would have a separate conscious point of view, which makes them two separate entities, regardless of if they have the same "pattern". His definition of self seems incredibly odd to me.

@@TheFuzzician totally. I guess no matter how you cut it ,,Alice 2.0,, still didn't do it.

I sympathize with the disagreement. You're creating a clone, and you're forcefully inserting criminal memories. Very unethical in my opinion, and would be against it. But if we're more charitable with (what I suspect is) the point of the question, I think it could be reworded like this: If the criminal's microstate was somehow restored back to the state it was prior to death, should she still be processed by the justice system, or not? Should she be treated like a new person and allowed to carry on as she was before her death? If we lived in a society where this thing could happen, we would have to rethink the rules in lieu of the reality that there may be strong incentives for some criminals to reincarnate their way into legal immunity. To the criminals exploiting this, They are the same person. To the outdated legal system, they are just a new person who did nothing wrong.

@@jamesmantooth7364 It's really interesting to think about and you make great points. Things start to change as you add context. Id imagine in a world like this rules would need to be followed before reincarnating is green lit. Not anyone could do it. As you pointed out a criminal cant just loop hole through crimes like that. I'd imagine in a world like this if you have a criminal record you lose the privilege of being reincarnated unless you absolve it somehow. Therefore unauthorized reincarnation is also a crime. Here's a thought, perhaps if a criminal commits a crime, any copies that proceed to have this memory inserted does NOT get there criminal record wiped. every crime that was committed until the date of memory recorded also gets that memories criminal record copied as well. It would mean that they would still have to absolve any outstanding crimes afterwards. But this would fix the already alive problem. The already alive don''t get convicted, only the one committing the crime. But that individual still has to deal with the carried over crime record. This would mean multiple copies with the memory would all have to absolve their records. In a sense its convicting the memory not the body. You can imagine that a criminal could frame some one by placing their memory in another persons body not identical to their body of origin. Just to add there is already laws that criminalize people aiding in a crime. So even if someone else reincarnates you, if you both planned it and it was unauthorized. Both of you would get a criminal record.

@@ray17506 I totally agree that it should be a crime to knowingly create a criminal. In my opinion, criminals shouldn't be sentenced to prison/jail out of revenge, or because of who they are... I see it more as risk-reduction/ prevention/ deterrent. A criminal who commits a crime has demonstrated that under some circumstances, they are likely to commit that type of crime and society has to deal with that somehow. If you made copies of a mass murderer, even five copies... It doesn't even really matter if you consider them the same person. They have the same risk profile as the original and that needs to be considered. But the person creating the copies could be even more dangerous.