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0 pointstechbio4y ago0 comments

This is an incredibly important point that I agree with. I would take this further to separate "legal person" from "mind", as I understand the mind is itself an emergent and self-supporting adaptive process[1], very common to find among any persistent complex systems. Politicians don't make politics, it's the other way around.

[1] I use this phrase to replace "intent", because outside of requiring the "intender" to be person who can be held to account with punishment or reward, the reward mechanism is the same environmental pressure.

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3 comments · 2 top-level

unyttigfjelltol4y ago· 1 in thread

Reminds of research of termite mounds. A researcher mused that maybe mounds are best understood as a composite animal that in some sense, itself has a soul. One particular scientist "imagined that eventually the mound would evolve into a being that could move across the veldt – very slowly in its dirt skin – a monster hybrid of soil and soul."[1]

[1] https://www.theguardian.com/news/2018/sep/18/a-giant-crawlin...

teddyh4y ago

This is a very old idea; see, for instance, the “Aunt Hillary” character from Gödel, Escher, Bach (written in 1979).

h2odragon4y ago

There's an interesting other side there too: corporations are our "slow AI", if we take a more realistic approach to their legal personhood perhaps we can all benefit.

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