Existential riddles: Eye for an I

What does it mean to be an “I” in a time of intelligent traffic signals? Meghan O’Gieblyn, 39, author of God, Human, Animal, Machine (Penguin Random House; 2021), tackles questions of the self in her writing. The essayist and author (her last book was Interior States [Penguin Random House; 2018]) draws on and contrasts points of view from her conservative Christian childhood, her search for answers in science, and her study of technology and its impact on individuals and societies.

One thing her research has taught her, O’Gieblyn says, is the necessity of living with question marks. Finishing her second book amid a global pandemic and a climate crisis, she was confronted with new questions surrounding the idea of what it means to be an “I”. Where does the self begin? Is it possible to have a sense of self in isolation?

Excerpts from an interview.

In some ways, I think the central questions about subjectivity, or what it means to be an “I” become more acute during moments of social disruption, particularly when those disruptions are happening on a global scale. I was wrapping up this book at the beginning of the pandemic, and many of the ideas I’d been writing about felt newly urgent: where does the self begin and end? Can one have a sense of self in isolation?

If there was one question you could retire entirely, what would it be (‘Are we a simulation?’ ‘Do parallel realities exist across a multiverse?’)?

When I set out to write the book, I was really tired of the question: Is the brain a computer? The computational metaphor has become so integral to cognitive science and artificial intelligence. It’s a limited and imperfect analogy. But... the computer analogy is just one of many metaphors we’ve used over the centuries to try to describe how the mind works (previous thinkers argued that the brain was a telephone exchange, a chariot, a loom). Metaphors are crucial to thought and discourse, even when imperfect. The harm comes when we forget that the metaphor is a figure of speech.

I suppose... that we’re limited by our biology. Our brains can only hold so much information, our bodies can only last so long. The interesting question is: what other essentially human qualities are bound up with those limitations? Is empathy possible without suffering? Is meaning dependent on us having a limited lifespan? These questions will become more important questions as technology advances.

Given that this is a time quite unlike any other for our species (the pandemic, climate crisis, economic and political upheaval), how do you think the sense of an I is being altered? What in your opinion differentiates us from the most advanced humanoids we can currently imagine?