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Simpler: are reified collective constructs like "community", "public" and "collective intention" real in a PKD sense? Ie do they go away when people stop believing in them, or are there parts that persist regardless of belief in them, that have no natural alternative locus?
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Ontology problem. Can "interinstitutionality" (by analogy to "intersubjectivity") be considered the same as "public"?
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Ie, ontologically, are "community", "public", "commonwealth" etc. more like "god" that are entirely functions of belief in them (speaking as an atheist) or more like "ecosystem" that exist in a PKD sense independent of belief in them.
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"Market" is another one. You could think of all these as pure egregores, existing only as long as belief in them persists.
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Another way to ask the PKD-reality question is: what remains if all the *people* go away. Before computers, you'd only have material realities, but now with AIs you have the possibility of interesting perpetuation of robotic behaviors that might constitute egregores.
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I think we'll be at There Will Come Soft Rains level (hollowed out echoes of once-vital egregores) for a long time before we reach a Robots And Empire level (egregore-capable robots).
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