[ExI] The Anticipation Dilemma (Personal Identity Paradox)

[Mike Dougherty]

On 7/19/07, Lee Corbin <lcorbin at rawbw.com> wrote:
>
> > Once you lead down that road, it's much easier to introduce
> > mind uploading and arrive at the same conclusions with
> > (possibly) fewer hangups.
>
> You mean to say that upon hearing an AI's account, we'd
> be in a better position to have our own opinions as to what
> constitutes surviving?
>

I meant that the anthropomorphizing maybe could be sidestepped if people
made clear(er) assertions about a non-human AI.  Once their position is
established, the introduction of an previously meat-based human now in a
uploaded state should be little/no different than they claimed of the AI.

I was thinking about your Anticipation Dilemma.  If you should be eagerly
anticipating the dinner you ate last night because some earlier
point-in-time version of yourself has not yet eaten it and you must embrace
the anticipation of all your selves.  I facetiously suggested your
acceptable exchange rate of $5M per week of memory erasure should have a
comparable rate for suppression of future experience.  Your answer was
funny, but I don't follow logically.

If you are willing to lose access to the runtime of an arbitrary week from
your past and you identify with earlier point-in-time selves, are you
allowing them to be erased because your "now" awareness has deemed them less
valuable than the unknown future moments you have not yet experienced?  Is
the exchange fixed for any arbitrary week, or only for the immediately past
week?  Does the time have to be contiguous?  Could we erase 1 week's worth
of memory from a disconnected set of 1 hour intervals?  (memory/life edit
reminds me of some movies "Paycheck", "Click", "50 First Dates")

Suppose far future you has rated the next two weeks so uneventfully boring
that they should be sold.  Your "Now" self is given the choice of selling
either your next two weeks (based on your future self's suggestion that
they're for sale) or any two weeks from your farther past.  If your future
self has not given you an alternate period to choose from, do you vote with
them on losing the next two weeks of your future or select a past period
from on own?  (with the possibility that future self either would not have
selected that period for sale, or had already lost that time because of your
choice and therefor did not have it available anyway)

I'm not necessarily making a point or trying to trap anyone, I was just
thinking about this and wonder what is your opinion.
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