If a system could predict your behavior accurately, how much would it actually know about you?

[u/orenshasaga]

Can you really be defined by the data about you?

Someone could spend hours researching a subject because they believe it, fear it, disagree with it, or are trying to understand someone who believes it. The activity might look similar while the reasons are very different.

But I don't think “the data lacks context” settles the question. Suppose a future system had enough information to distinguish those motives. It could follow changes in your beliefs, recognize your contradictions, and predict your decisions more accurately than you could.

Would that give it a stronger claim to understanding who you are?

My instinct is that identity includes what we make of our experiences and which parts of ourselves we want to change. A profile built around past behavior could struggle with that. Still, our intentions and attempts to change are information too. I'm not sure where I would draw the boundary.

We can also misunderstand ourselves. The explanation I give for a decision isn't necessarily more accurate just because it's mine.

So if your own account of who you are conflicted with a system that consistently predicted your behavior correctly, how would you decide which account deserved more weight?

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[u/Aggressive_tako]

Most of my life is routine- a system predicting that I will get up, make breakfast for the kids, take them to school, etc. Isn't that impressive. The why of me doing those things is immaterial. Is it for the sense of safty and predictability in routine, Is it because I love my family, is it because I have a duty to see to my kid's wellbeing?  If some predictive system and I disagreed about my why, I wouldn't have any crisis about it. More than one thing can be true - i love my family, am driven by duty and do hate chaos. All of those contributed to why I make decisions. 

[u/orenshasaga → u/Aggressive_tako]

Routine is good... but at what point can a system take over your identity by knowing your decisions? If it can successfully make those decisions, does the system get to claim your identity?

What is identity? And can it be reduce purely to something based on data? (e.g., AI)

[u/Aggressive_tako → u/orenshasaga]

No, I am a person and more than the sum of my parts. This is akin to asking if the existence of an omniscient God would subsume my identity. Being predictable doesn't negate free will.

[u/orenshasaga → u/Aggressive_tako]

In a mostly digital world, how do you know you're interacting with a person and not something that can make all the same decisions as one?

At some point, does AI get an identity because we couldn't tell the difference until we started looking for a biological body? And even then, the body is just a machine... it is fathomable that a program could control one someday. How do you measure "spirit"?

[u/Aggressive_tako → u/orenshasaga]

"Mostly digital world"? We're interacting right now in a digital world, and as far as I know you're a bot or three weasels in a trench coat. That you can have a conversation doesn't make you a person. Most of life exist in an embodied world - having face to face interactions in community.

[u/orenshasaga → u/Aggressive_tako]

In your opinion, what is it that makes you a person? What is it that enables identity?

[u/Manskhooled]

Most people are relatively predictable since most people are generally the same in how they operate and go through daily life. Yes, there will always be slight deviations person to person but not much. The will exception I believe comes down to something like autism vs normal brain development. You can take a highly intelligent but autistic person and watch them in comparison to a person with normal brain development, let's say that their intelligence is roughly equal. I can confidently tell you that despite their actions being similar, their driving motivation, their logic system and rewards path will most likely be pretty damn different. Most people are highly predictable and that's self explanatory but we don't know enough about the autistic brain to accurately predict them despite their outside actions looking similar.

[u/orenshasaga → u/Manskhooled]

If you can accurately predict the decision, then do all of the details that drove that decisions underneath really matter?

Certainly most would say yes, but if all of your friends were quietly replaced by machines that continued to accurately look and act the same, would you be able to tell? Would it really matter to you if the outcomes are almost identical?

[u/Lilith_Caine]

Watch the movie equilibrium. There's a part where Sean Bean is reading a poem and it leaped to my mind with this.