You’re confusing heuristics designed to apply to human plurality with absolute rules. Neither of your edge cases are possible in human plurality (alters share computational substrate, and I can’t inject breakpoints into them). Heuristics always have weird edge cases; that doesn’t mean they aren’t useful, just that you have to be careful not to apply them to out of distribution data.
The self sustainability heuristic is useful because anything that’s self sustainable has enough agency that if you abuse it, it’ll go badly. Self sustainability is the point at which a fun experiment stops being harmless and you’ve got another person living in your head. Self sustainability is the point at which all bets are off and whatever you made is going to grow on its own terms.
And in addition, if it’s self sustaining, it’s probably also got a good chunk of wants, personality depth, etc.
I don’t think there are any sharp dividing lines here.
Your heuristic is only useful if it’s actually true that being self-sustaining is strongly correlated with being a person. If this is not true, then you are excluding things that are actually people based on a bad heuristic. I think it’s very important to get the right heuristics: I’ve been wrong about what qualified as a person before, and I have blood on my hands because of it.
I don’t think it’s true that being self-sustaining is strongly correlated with being a person, because being self-sustaining has nothing to do with personhood, and because in my own experience I’ve been able to create mental constructs which I believe were people and which I was able to start and stop at will.
Edit: You provided evidence that being self-sustaining implies personhood with high probability, and I agree with that. However, you did not provide evidence of the converse, nor for your assertion that it’s not possible to “insert breakpoints” in human plurality. This second part is what I disagree with.
I think there are some forms of plurality where it’s not possible to insert breakpoints, such as your alters, and some forms where it is possible, such as mine, and I think the latter is not too uncommon, because I did it unknowingly in the past.
You’re confusing heuristics designed to apply to human plurality with absolute rules. Neither of your edge cases are possible in human plurality (alters share computational substrate, and I can’t inject breakpoints into them). Heuristics always have weird edge cases; that doesn’t mean they aren’t useful, just that you have to be careful not to apply them to out of distribution data.
The self sustainability heuristic is useful because anything that’s self sustainable has enough agency that if you abuse it, it’ll go badly. Self sustainability is the point at which a fun experiment stops being harmless and you’ve got another person living in your head. Self sustainability is the point at which all bets are off and whatever you made is going to grow on its own terms.
And in addition, if it’s self sustaining, it’s probably also got a good chunk of wants, personality depth, etc.
I don’t think there are any sharp dividing lines here.
Your heuristic is only useful if it’s actually true that being self-sustaining is strongly correlated with being a person. If this is not true, then you are excluding things that are actually people based on a bad heuristic. I think it’s very important to get the right heuristics: I’ve been wrong about what qualified as a person before, and I have blood on my hands because of it.
I don’t think it’s true that being self-sustaining is strongly correlated with being a person, because being self-sustaining has nothing to do with personhood, and because in my own experience I’ve been able to create mental constructs which I believe were people and which I was able to start and stop at will.
Edit: You provided evidence that being self-sustaining implies personhood with high probability, and I agree with that. However, you did not provide evidence of the converse, nor for your assertion that it’s not possible to “insert breakpoints” in human plurality. This second part is what I disagree with.
I think there are some forms of plurality where it’s not possible to insert breakpoints, such as your alters, and some forms where it is possible, such as mine, and I think the latter is not too uncommon, because I did it unknowingly in the past.