Clarity didn't work, trying mysterianism

Summary

: The ring makes you a p-zombie I can't be certain you're wrong, but I wouldn't expect that. That's really good, although rather scary! I am not sure I would *care*!You're living an abnormally successful life, a rich and much-loved member of the community with a happy family?Who the heck cares *who* is living such a life? It's being lived, right? If you can do it with an earring and half of the brain, instead of all of the brain, so much the better! Would you voluntarily ingest a parasitic worm that eats your brain, absorbs your goal system, hangs out in your skull, connects to your nervous system, and then lives about the same life you would live only better?(suppose for the moment that you're being selfish and ignoring concerns about whether the parasite would be better at pursuing efficient charity and so on) In Greg Egan's "jewelhead" stories, everyone gets a jewel implanted in their head at the age of 18. The jewel gradually learns to predict the brain's responses to stimuli, without inspecting the internals of the brain. When the jewel's predictions become indistinguishable from perfect, the organic brain can be removed surgically, and the person lives happily ever after (the jewel grants immortality). Yup, this story reminded me of those Greg Egan stories. If I came to possess such a ring, I would commit (by any means at my disposal) to the following policy: I will wear the earring for a day or two every week and do as it says, with the proviso that if it ever tells me to do something for which I cannot see a plausible rationale, I will immediately take it off and not wear it again for another month.I wonder whether, in those circumstances, it would begin by telling me that I would be better to take it off. (If it did, I would.) Such an *earring*, I mean. The idea of such a thing being a *ring* seems somehow terribly natural, Western culture being what it is. One problem with the earring is similar to the problem with video game walkthroughs: it's more fun to...