[extropy-chat] How to be copied into the future?

[Lee Corbin]

Stathis writes

> If I-now think I've survived as a continuation of I-before,
> then that's what matters in survival. Is that objective or subjective?

There is an *objective* claim that you are making, namely that
he is the same person as so-and-so, or is the same person who
occupied spacetime coordinates X,Y,Z,T at some point in the
past.

But he may be simply mistaken.  You at this moment are possibly
not the person who wrote all those posts;  so little of your true
personality is revealed by them that it is marginally possible that
they were written by someone with your name (and a few of your
memories), but then that person indeed was killed and replaced
by you.  It all depends on how much *factual* overlap there is
in memories.

> Both sides appear to be utterly blind to the necessity of an observer
> function, to any discussion of meaning.

Does the statement "Many people have been to Hawaii" require an
observer to have any meaning?  I say no!  I say that when we *talk*
about Hawaii, we *refer* to something outside ourselves and outside
of all sentient observers. What we say may be true or false *about*
that thing, and the truthity or falsity of the statement stands on its own.

> "What is personal identity" doesn't have a clear answer;

I say the answer is quite clear:  although it's a continuum, of course,
it amounts to memories.

Lee

> the best I can come up with in an attempt to be clear and consistent is to say that there is no objective self persisting through 
> time, but that this is a construct from separate moments of observerhood, which usually but by no means necessarily originate in a 
> single brain. "What do we mean by personal identity" is best answered by asking what matters in survival, as above.
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