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WCDT strips 3606-3910 (31st December 2018 to 4th January 2019)

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ZoeB:
There's a danger in universalising one's own experience, but sometimes anecdotes can be useful in aiding understanding.

A very good friend of mine who I've known for over 40 years visited us on new year eve. He's vehicularly challenged, and was staying here in Canberra with some other friends. They came around at 7pm to take him home.

They're really good people, and it was great to meet them. Both had medical training, and as we were nattering, I mentioned in passing that I'd had my face burnt off a few years ago. They were disbelieving, till I showed them some medical photos, and drew their attention to a small patch on my face that had healed imperfectly. The general consensus was that I'd been extraordinarily fortunate, by rights I should have at least lost my nose.

Their disbelief made me feel good for no logical reason. They asked me about the few patches of keloid scarring I had on my right forearm, and I was right with those, they gave me no psychological distress at all. They were me. They'd both seen that phenomenon before. (And we ended up talking wayy past midnight and into the new year).

So here I am, an example of where body map was really emotionally important in one area, but of negligible importance in another. People vary, neurology varies.

I hope Ms Roko Basilisk finds her new circumstances comfortable. Maybe it might take a second hand chassis of her previous model, or a customisation of the replacement to replicate the parts that were crucial to her being her. She has friends who are skilled in that kind of thing (and could do with the work...). 

Funny. I wish I could talk to her about it. But then, I wish I could be on Spookybot's ethics review panel. I feel she must have one, for quality assurance. I rely on friends too, to tell me when I'm being assholic. I don't have godlike powers though, so it's a nice-to-have rather than utter necessity.

Now back to our regularly scheduled program.

Is it cold in here?:

--- Quote from: Inconsequential on 04 Jan 2019, 16:32 ---So anyway, where's this week's Overthinkers Anonymous meeting? Down the hall and to the left?

--- End quote ---

The room down the hall and to the left is moving with the Earth's rotation and orbital velocity and the Sun's' galactic orbit. It will be necessary to parallel those exactly to get there, and even if you manage that you can't get in legally if there are too many over thinkers for fire code compliance, not at all if the room is physically full. The building might have been destroyed by the end of this week, that's another possibility.

Case:
The meeting of the proudly un-anonymous overthinkers, otoh, is right here.

Or rather: The permant steering committee ...

Baleanopter:
Thinking about Roko's body integration and seeing some of the discussion of varying degrees of that in humans, and "bocy maps" (there's a name for your sense of your place in space and your sense of your shape, but I don;t remember what it's called - it is categorized as a sense, like smell or hearing or whatever though).

A few years ago, at the age of 51, I somehow contracted the childhood ailment "hand, foot, and mouth disease". I know where I got it - a toddler a roommate was babysitting had a diagnosed case shortly before my symptoms developed, though I didn't know that for a while after I got sick - but since I hardly ever interacted with the little poo-larva it was a shock. Until I found out what it was, it rather terrified me (I was broke until payday and didn't want to incur a massive ER bill for what probably wasn't life-threatening, so didn't see a doctor.) My hands and feet were literally completely covered in a very painful, deep red rash that turned shades of purple and black before it subsided, and the roof of my mouth was - fortunately - less so. (The onset fever was no joke either.) In the aftermath, thick bits of skin gradually sloughed off - the peeling was heavy enough to be almost as terrifying as the active infection.

The point though - up until fairly recently my perception of my hands and feet was altered. For a few years I would very often notice an uncomfortable sense that my hands and feet were skeletonized, or otherwise insubstantial (like thin porcelain or even cheap plastic), or even much, much smaller in actual dimensions - even though after the new skin toughened up everything was objectively perfectly normal. To this day I am unsure if it was from temporary nerve damage giving feedback my brain wasn't expecting or some sort of dysphoria brought on by the very disturbing progress of the original illness.

pwhodges:

--- Quote from: Baleanopter on 05 Jan 2019, 19:20 ---(there's a name for your sense of your place in space and your sense of your shape, but I don;t remember what it's called - it is categorized as a sense, like smell or hearing or whatever though)
--- End quote ---

Proprioception.

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