This is a special post for quick takes by ErioirE. Only they can create top-level comments. Comments here also appear on the Quick Takes page and All Posts page.
What would the minimal digital representation of a human brain & by extension memories/personality look like?
I am not a subject matter expert. This is armchair speculation and conjecture, the actual reality of which I expect to be orders of magnitude more complicated than my ignorant model.
The minimal physical representation is obviously the brain itself, but to losslessly store every last bit of information —IE exact particle configurations— as accurately as it is possible to measure is both nigh-unto-impossible and likely unnecessary considering the moment-to-moment changes living causes to the particles, while "self" appears constant.
So would the detailed information of cell positions and compositions be sufficient granularity? How practical would it be? I don't know of any existing technology that is able to achieve the level of detail that would likely be required. MRI is very impressive, but while structure can be viewed (at least down to a 0.2mm resolution as of 2024-04-02), chemical composition cannot (as far as I know).
Do we know what the important variables are, and do we know what tolerances within which the hypothetical "Mind of Theseus" is still the same mind? (I suspect this is a philosophical question and the answer is fully subjective and we have no way of knowing.)
How can I boost real-life 'charisma checks' with int?
(For those less familiar with D&D lingo, I'll rephrase: What are some methods to become better at social skills using study and theory if one lacks the intuitive understanding that extroverts appear to naturally possess?)
For example:
In my case, attempting to get to know other students in my university classes is made more difficult by my aversion to small talk.
Why am I averse to small talk? Because while growing up I didn't see the value so I didn't bother to learn very many 'canned' questions and responses that other people seem to be equipped with. Since I don't have many cached patterns for things are useful for small talk it makes it much more 'risky' to attempt, since I have a significant chance of running out of things to say before any productive headway is made in a conversation.
Is there any collection of small talk patterns that can be read to fill in this deficiency? Has anyone published a study about, say, the 500 most common small talk patterns and responses?
(And yes, I acknowledge that actual practice is necessary as well, but until I'm confident that I have sufficient 'tools' to succeed I will find it difficult to make myself attempt any practice.)
This difficulty doesn't seem to share much connection with my proficiency in more general social skills. For example, I have few difficulties talking to coworkers, since in a work environment I will typically have a purpose in mind for talking to someone. The open-ended nature of —talking to strangers for the purpose of getting to know them— seems to be a large part of the challenge.
How much of the developed world's economy is devoted to aesthetic personalization of products rather than accomplishing the essential functions of [product here]?
I am not saying aesthetics or personalization are 'bad', however I suspect that if the cost were quantified and demonstrated to people along with examples of more productive things that could be done with that money, many people might prefer forgoing some of our more wasteful things.
Example:
The cost of having thousands of different styles of sink faucet, instead of a small number of highly efficient and optimized faucet designs for distinct use cases [small household kitchen, large household kitchen, small form factor, high throughput restaurant]. These costs are created via the overhead caused by the redundant costs of engineering, design, manufacturing, and logistics.
These same factors apply more or less to every product where variations are sold primarily for aesthetic rather than functional purposes, particularly when they replace existing functional versions.
I believe the root cause of this inefficiency is our psychological tendency to overvalue ephemeral utility such as using possessions as social status tools rather than trying to optimize how we collectively use our limited economic output. For example, if a sizeable portion of the money in the market for functionally useless decorations were able to go towards medical research.
I do not know how a more efficient allocation of resources could be practically enacted. According to my understanding most attempts at centrally planned economies have even less success than the free market, as inefficient as it is.
If a large portion of people decided to prioritize their purchases better that would work, but that's obviously a very challenging coordination problem.