The soul likely doesn’t exist (outside our nervous system), with predetermination holding. At the same time, the lie of self determination is an extremely useful one, but as an individual, and as a society.

It’s slowly shifted for me. It’s now less “NTs suck” and more “NTs are boring”. The weirdos of various persuasions are generally far more fun and interesting.

As a fellow autistic, I fully feel you.

If it helps, I treat it like dancing. The moves don’t make logical sense, but if you deviate too far, people get upset.

Also, counterintuitively, being both unapologetic and positive gets remarkably good results. NTs instinctively follow the group mindset. We struggle. If we set the default, they will often sync to us, particularly if it’s a positive vibe. Also, NTs are very good at spotting mismatches. If you almost got, but not quite, you trigger uncanny valley effects. If you don’t try and hide (all) your weirdness, they are often a lot more accepting. They don’t pick up “lying creepy” vibes, with no context. It doesn’t work with everyone, but it’s become my default interaction mode.

They might, but is more likely their balance of what is important is shifted. Screwing over NPCs is not massively evil activity. Particularly if they assume they are just doing the same.

Only if you’re sure they wouldn’t happily send a shell your way, were the situation reversed. That is a rare situation.

That’s basically what I mean. They don’t see themselves as weak and helpless. They are the powerful hero main character. It might be an anti hero, but rarely a villain.

Very few people see themselves in a massively negative light (and function well). If your understanding of their motives requires themselves to be weak or evil, it’s likely got serious flaws.

They might see themselves as privileged, but rarely as the villain. Narcissists see themselves as the hero, through a VERY distorted lens. Sociopaths don’t get the empathy feedback making them the villain.

It’s a good way to get a handle on their minds. How would it have to be twisted to make it seem either a non-issue or good.

E.g. the rich see money as closer to a score in a computer game. Blue shelling your brother in Mario Kart, just before the finish doesn’t make you a villain. Similarly taking $50 dollars/month more from 10,000 families doesn’t look bad. That’s barely a trip to the pub! (The low income households involved would disagree massively).

I’ve found a working hypothesis that seems mostly true.

“No-one is the villain of their own story.”

If someone seems to be doing something evil for no reason, you likely don’t understand their reasoning. It might not be a good reason, from my perspective, but they will have a reason. Once you can figure out where your values differ, it often becomes obvious why they are acting that way.

He hosted a kids cooking competition show once. Watching him get down on a panicking 12 year old’s level and rebuild their confidence was heartwarming. He also did a cooking show with his own kids. They took full advantage to sass the hell out of him.

He only lays into someone with both barrels if they call themselves a “professional” then act like an idiot. He also hams it up for the American shows.

Given there are people suffering from exactly that. It’s also unfortunately common in Alzheimer’s patients. The classic example is piano playing.

Muscle memory is a short hand for changes to the low level reactions. It’s a mix of brain spine and muscle nerves. E.g. I can still do martial arts moves fine from reflex, even though I no longer have explicit memories of learning them. A large chunk of our personality is built up of implicit memory. They act in the same way, just internally. E.g. your maths skills are based on implicit memories. The memories that created the skills are long gone, but the skills remain.

You would lose your self identity. Identity as a whole is more than just self identity. It’s an amalgam of self, social, familial, governmental identities. This matters even more with things. A car has no sense of self. However, if someone lovingly repaired and replaced the parts, it would maintain its continuity of identity through the changes.

Similarly memory is more complex than one term. I could lose my explicit memory (remembering my past) but keep my implicit memory (skills and muscle type memories). In that case, am I still me? What about the reverse?

At that point it is no longer a yes no question, but a lot of grey creeps in.

Continuity of material, you mean? The paradox disappears when you understand there are multiple types of continuity.

Identity is as much a social structure as a personal one. E.g. in star trek, when Will riker is duplicated. Both have continuity of memory, but Thomas has his continuity of identity broken. Though he doesn’t realise this until he meets his eigen twin, who’s been continuing on. Even though both are nominally identical at the moment of creation, Will’s continuation of his career maintained continuity of identity. Thomas Riker had his broken by being stranded. Hence why Thomas changed his name, while Will continued using Will.

I’ve not played that one, so no idea.

AI can be a force multiplier for humans, but often can’t replace them. The current usage is often idiotic at best.

E.g. excluding the issue of data misuse, an AI system could be extremely helpful to doctors. It could flag possible issues, complications and unusual conditions in a way that would otherwise require a deep dive by a specialist doctor. A doctor or nurse could then parse the results for useful points, while filtering out hallucinations.

Look up shed 17, the real story of Thomas the tank engine.

https://youtu.be/462KBuAhncU

The full copy, “cloning” adult body and up to date brain. Think “The 6th Day” film.

Hence why I put “mind” in brackets. I was more referring to Hollywood style “cloning” variants.

It depends if the swapped mind considered themselves me or not (clone’s brain?). If not then perceived identity would follow the mind, even if the legal identity didn’t.

If it were a clone’s mind, we would have to come to some sort of understanding on the subject.

It can quickly get convoluted. E.g. if I became a digital identity, would I be willing to split off versions of myself for particular tasks, only to absorb them later. Conversely, could I function as such an entity? How long would I need to diverge before I became a truly separate entity in my own mind?

The book “Accelerando”, by Charles Stross plays with this. He refers to them as eigen-minds. A collection of minds overlapping within a single identity. How liable is a diverged eigen-mind from its alternates, when it comes to contracts and debts?

2 reasons, remembered from a lawyers lecture on the subject at uni, years ago, in the UK.

1. Some people produce small amounts of alcohol in their gut. It’s generally not much (more becomes auto brewery syndrome) but not zero. This can blip the test up slightly, even when they haven’t drunk.

2. The awkward fact that a small amount of alcohol actually improves driving. It’s somewhere between 1/4 and 3/4 pint of beer. It’s also the reason alcohol is considered a performance enhancing drug in some olympic sports.

The limit is set high enough that there is no arguing these points in a court. It also covers the residual alcohol in people’s systems the morning after. It’s well into the point where all but the heaviest alcoholic will definitely be impaired. That lets them use blood alcohol as a proxy for impaired driving due to alcohol.

On a side note. I know someone who blew red on the breathalyser. He knew something was wrong, since he has been teetotal for 20 years. He got arrested, only for the blood test to show 0.0. The police were quite confused, but let him go. It turned out, he had (unthinkingly) eaten a liqueur chocolate before being pulled over. It was enough to mess up the breathalyser.