[extropy-chat] Probability of identity - solution?

[Russell Wallace]

On 10/13/06, Lee Corbin <lcorbin at rawbw.com> wrote:
>
> Well, I can't go along with that.  It's really not the case upon the usual
> meaning of words, to say that Smith has just died when Smith looks
> and sounds just the way he did ten minutes ago. We really are concerned
> with *survival*, and so we have to reject philosophical stances that
> introduce concepts that wouldn't be useful in any imagined situation.
> (At least in any situation I've ever been able to imagine.)


To add, swiping a movie quote: "I don't know, I can _imagine_ quite a bit."
I imagined this scenario, after all :) My point really is that in most
circumstances there is a single notion of *survival* that we think we can
concentrate on; this paradox I think exposes the fallacy of that single
notion.

And to extend: We normally think of e.g. immortality through one's
descendants as a metaphor (at least until we step into the evolutionary
perspective); one of the things I like about my solution to this paradox is
that it extends to cover a lot of things that looked separate - immortality
through one's descendants _isn't_ a metaphor, viewed from an appropriate
choice of reference class.
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