[extropy-chat] Identity and becoming a Great Old One

[Jef Allbright]

On 1/26/06, Russell Wallace <russell.wallace at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> The thread view (identity is a verb, a continuing thread of consciousness)
> and the pattern view (identity is an adjective; as John Clark put it, "I am
> the way matter behaves when it is organized in a Johnclarkian way") give the
> same results most of the time; the one scenario that always gets adherents
> of the two arguing with each other is destructive scan uploading (fine by
> the pattern view, semelparous suicide by the identity view). (Happily,
> gradual uploading is a potential way around this problem for the thread
> view.)
>
> Another scenario in which the two views might give different results is
> the wish expressed by some transhumanists that can be summarized as "when I
> grow up I want to be a Great Old One"; that is, over the next while - say, a
> million subjective years - they want to continually modify and augment
> themselves such that the result will be, as they see it, as far beyond the
> original as the original was beyond an amoeba. (I don't personally accept
> the analogy even given the premises, but it gets the point across nicely
> enough that I did happily make use of it for science fiction purposes.)
>

While I subscribe to the pattern view of personal identity, I also recognize
that the pattern is ever-changing and that the closer one looks, the more
one finds that there is no discrete or continuous self to be preserved.  As
we live, grow, and develop, we update and edit an ongoing narrative
describing the Self to which we feel so attached.  This narrative is replete
with gaps, errors, inaccuracies and fabrications, but to the subjective Self
it is complete and true and the only point of view available.

In my thinking on this and related topics, I have come to see to that to be
consistent, all that  really matters to the Self at any given instant is
that its current values are projected into the future.

- Jef
http://www.jefallbright.net
increasing awareness for increasing morality
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