Quote Originally Posted by Tellos Athenaios View Post
You cannot fundamentally change the assumption of agency, you can merely shrug it off until the time your brain is damaged and the higher order intelligence to shrug it off no longer functions -- then you will become your old paranoid self.
I accept that a decrepit person's brain is likely to fall back on primordial patterns of just about everything: thought, behaviour, sensation. And memory lapse goes a along way toward explaining elderly peoples unwillingness to use modern gadgets.

But suspension of the assumption of agency should be within a normal adult's grasp. Take this example of a recent prank in the city of Delft.



Some muppet put up a puppet in a bell tower. Passers-by contacted the police saying there was a 'ghost' in the tower. Of course the callers didn't believe that at all, they just wanted to see some action. A policeman climbed up and confirmed it was a puppet. It was later taken down and confined to a police cell to 'cool off' for the night.

Maybe some people would have believed it was a ghost if the puppet had been battery-driven and had moved quasi-spontaneously and said 'booh' at irregular intervals, but I doubt it.

What do you think was lacking in the puppet so that it immediately disabled peoples' agency pattern?

AII