[foobarbecue]

When my computer glitches, e.g. if a key stops working on my keyboard or the mouse doesn't respond as expected, I sometimes experience a physical sense of of discomfort or disorientation that's not unlike dizzyness or the feeling of missing a step on stairs. I think it's because, as you describe in terms of immersion, my brain has extended its concept of my body through my typing fingers to the computer screen, building a proprioceptive loop which includes the computer.

We are already cyborgs.

[whatwhaaaaat]

I don’t buy this for even a minute. If my starter solenoid goes out on my old time Jeep I get the same feeling. (It’s happened a few times now). Does this mean the Jeep is now part of my body? Of course not.

It’s called being annoyed or caught off guard by external stimuli.

I think there is a large portion of people on this website who have not spent a day in years without their devices. That doesn’t mean their devices are integrated with their biology. Just that they have become dependent on things.

[feoren]

> Does this mean the Jeep is now part of my body? Of course not.

Why is that "of course not"? Is your arm part of your body? Your hair? A wig? A pacemaker? A well-fitted mechanical exoskeleton that you use without thinking about it? A poorly-fitted exoskeleton that you're still learning how to use? A Jeep? It's not as clear-cut as you make it sound. If the criteria is: well, I can't feel the Jeep -- well, you can't feel your liver either.

[filleduchaos]

> Is your arm part of your body?

Of course yes.

> Your hair?

Of course yes.

> A wig?

Of course not.

> A pacemaker?

Depends on who's asking and why.

> A well-fitted mechanical exoskeleton that you use without thinking about it? A poorly-fitted exoskeleton that you're still learning how to use?

Of course not to both of these things.

> A Jeep?

Of course not, and framing a Jeep and a human's liver as if the only possible point of difference between them is whether or not you can "feel" them is strange.

Half of us are fully capable of growing an entire other human being within our bodies, with a physical connection so tightly integrated that breaking it causes bleeding for weeks - and yet it's debatable whether even that counts as being a part of our bodies (especially medically speaking). Navel-gazing about the distinction between your body and a car not being clear-cut is simply inane to me in comparison.

[feoren]

So your definition seems to be that it's part of your body if it was built via instructions in your inherited DNA? So tattoos are not part of your body, nor are the gut bacteria you were mostly born with (or their ancestors) and without which you would quickly die. Phlegm that you spit on the street is still part of your body? Your tears? What about clonal colonies and parthenogenesis? Do identical twins have the same body?

The point is, your "of course" is based on some "obvious" definition that always gets fuzzy at the edges. Someone else's "of course" is based on some equally valid and obvious definition that gets fuzzy in different ways at different edges. Don't act like everyone who doesn't think exactly like you is just pointlessly navel gazing. The pointlessness is in trying to have a clear definition at all, which saying "of course" implicitly assumes.

> and framing a Jeep and a human's liver as if the only possible point of difference between them is whether or not you can "feel" them is strange.

Good thing that's nowhere near what I said. I said "I can feel it" is obviously not a good criterion.

[filleduchaos]

> So your definition seems to be that it's part of your body if it was built via instructions in your inherited DNA?

I think you'll find discussions significantly more straightforward if you don't make up the other person's side of the conversation for them and run off tilting at windmills.

What part of the comment where I e.g. said that whether or not a pacemaker is considered part of your body "depends on who's asking and why" gave you the impression that I define body parts as being built by you? What part of my comment mentioned genetics at all?

By the by, tattoos are a modification to a part of your body (your skin) but are very much not a part of it (your immune system is literally constantly trying to get rid of them). And your gut microbiota is very clearly considered to be a _separate_ organism from you, with its relationship described in symbiotic terms.

[feoren]

> I think you'll find discussions significantly more straightforward if you don't make up the other person's side of the conversation

You never specified your "obvious" definition, so I had to reverse engineer it from your examples. I wouldn't have to make up your side of the conversation if you just actually said what it is. You're still using "obvious" and "clearly" as meaning obvious to you, based on every iota of experience you've ever had, but totally failed to justify why exactly your "obvious" opinions should be obvious to anyone else. Either you have a hard and fast definition that can definitively determine whether that thing is or is not part of a body, or it's not obvious. Unless your rule for determining whether something is part of a body is: "just ask filleduchaos, and he'll tell you whether it obviously is or obviously is not."

> And your gut microbiota is very clearly considered to be a _separate_ organism from you

"Very clearly" again. It's considered a separate organism because it has different DNA than your germ cells. But so do your mitochondria. So does a chimeric twin. Is a chimera "obviously one" or "obviously two" bodies? Tell me which one of those is so obvious that I'd be completely stupid to believe the other one, please. I suspect you'll say it's obviously one body, but then you have a problem with gut bacteria being obviously not part of your body.

[photonthug]

Ever go rock-crawling for several hours off-road with that jeep? If the stakes are high because you're far from a paved road, 4x4 is also a very immersive experience. After a while the tires become like toes, and finding a good line with the vehicle starts to feel like stepping carefully around broken glass. You cringe almost in anticipation of personal pain when you take a bad line. There's surely some neurological basis for this, some kind of reverse of phantom-limb syndrome. Similarly that sense of "stumbling" when you're fighting with a glitching IDE or whatever is also very real, at least for me. If you haven't ever felt something along these lines, then you might not have found something yet that you're accustomed to fully focusing on.

[skydhash]

Even with playing a racing simulation, where it's a constant challenge to control the car, while the controller or the wheel become quickly abstracted away, the car itself become something your conscious inhabits. You react to stimuli (sound, visual, and vibration), not from your point of view, but from the car.

[kgwxd]

> not from your point of view, but from the car.

I think you just improved my Rocket League game by just accurately describing what probably should have been obvious, that's exactly what it feels like to be in the zone.

[jonahrd]

Wait but driving cars is pretty much the classic example of how learning to use tools can become an "extension" of our visual, motor, spacial perception.

It's why a new driver feels so uneasy while a seasoned driver can almost "feel" the amount of space their car takes up.

[foobarbecue]

Bad news, my friend: you're a Jeep cyborg. Basically something from a Transformers movie.

And yeah, I'm stretching the argument a bit -- of course at least on a conscious level there's a boundary at my fingertips where I know that my body ends by the more generally accepted definition of "me".

[blocko]

I'll get this occasionally when I've scrolled to the end of an article without realizing, attempt to scroll further a few seconds later, and then have my eyes/vision caught off guard by the absence of movement. Missing a stairstep was a good example--there's a similar moment of "frozen time" in both cases