[extropy-chat] What should survive and why?

[Heartland]

Stathis:
>> >> >> If I-now think I've survived as a continuation of I-before,
>> >> >> then that's what matters in survival.

Heartland:
>> That doesn't matter at all. Why should it matter? Is there an argument for why
>> this should matter? If it exists, I would love to read it.

Stathis:
> Because that's how people define survival, as in not dying.

That argument breaks down quite easily. What you're saying here is that if I think
I-now survived, then it must be true that I-before survived and that this mechanism
for determining truth (I think it is true -> it is true) is reliable just because
most people use this mechanism. Let's apply this logic to something that has
nothing to do with survival so that emotional attachments to our ideas about
survival don't blind us to the fact that this argument doesn't work.

Many centuries ago someone believed Sun revolved around Earth. Even though
overwhelming majority of people at the time shared that belief, was it really true
that all these centuries ago Sun actually revolved around the Earth? Did people's
(subjective) beliefs cause Sun to revolve around Earth? Of course not, so the
argument is not a reliable way of finding truth.

Just because I-now thinks I-before survived does not cause "I-before survived"
statement to be true. In other words, I-now cannot subjectively determine if
I-before survived. I-now can determine that I-before survived based on objective
evidence only.

The only thing that I-now can determine subjectively is I-now's survival (I think
therefore I am therefore I survive) which is what I think you've been focusing on
exclusively while completely ignoring I-before's fate.

Stathis:
>> > You haven't answered yet (that I have noticed) what you would do if
>> medical
>> > science discovered that you didn't actually survive a situation you
>> hitherto
>> > believed harmless, such as falling asleep or being photographed by a
>> traffic
>> > camera.

This question is posed in such a way that it assumes the conclusion you haven't
proven yet. You said, "what you would do if...you didn't actually survive... ." Now
think about it for a minute. You're asking me what I would do after I died. Well,
not much because I would not exist anymore and people who don't exist are incapable
of doing anything. You assume your conclusion which is that 
someone-before-being-fatally-photographed and
someone-after-being-fatally-photographed is the same person. You have not shown 
that yet.

H.