[ExI] The Anticipation Dilemma (Personal Identity Paradox)

[Stathis Papaioannou]

On 16/07/07, Lee Corbin <lcorbin at rawbw.com> wrote:

> > If you can discard this strong feeling of anticipation as a motivator,
> > what's to stop you also discarding the desire to survive at all?
>
> Hmm, sorry if I implied somewhere that I'd remove anticipation
> as a motivator if I could (e.g. after uploading). Heavens, no.
>
> It's just that in some very specially new and contrived---well,
> new, special, and contrived in 2007, not in 2107---situations,
> anticipation suggests an *incorrect* choice between A and B.
> That is, you really are better of by choosing to have your
> instance perish so that your duplicate gets rich.  Or, as an
> alternative, you are better off today if at 3pm last night a copy
> was made, and at 4pm the original you was disintegrated,
> and at 5pm your duplicate was substituted for the original
> instance, and voila!  you awake to discover you're rich.

You assume that the similarity criterion for survival trumps the
anticipation criterion. I could put it the other way around: the
similarity criterion is only important to the extent that it allows us
to anticipate the experiences of future selves. I am similar to my
copies in the past and in parallel universes, but as I don't
anticipate their experiences, I don't consider that I survive through
them. This is just the way human minds have evolved to think. You have
said that you would change this aspect of your mind if you get the
chance, but then it would be just as easy to change the will to
survive in any other sense.



-- 
Stathis Papaioannou