[ExI] Digital identity

[Anders Sandberg]

Just a note: personal identity is probably in the same category of 
flypaper philosophical concepts as intentionality, consciousness and 
free will - it matters to many of our social institutions, everybody has 
an opinion about it, yet it is not even clear there is anything the term 
properly refers to.

On 26/04/2013 01:52, Alan Grimes wrote:
> Anders Sandberg wrote:
>> It depends on what kind of selfhood you are using.
>>
>> For example, if you regard selfhood as linked to having memories of 
>> your past and overlapping core characteristics (say some cherished 
>> personality traits) then there might not be a problem with enhanced 
>> uploads. Or multiple copies of them. If you use some other selfhood 
>> your identity might not be preserved in uploading, or perhaps even in 
>> simple enhancement. Or even when passing through sleep.
>
> So what reward/benefit do I receive for adopting this definition? Why 
> would I consider uploading when there are a hundred and one ways to 
> modify my being, using technology even, which don't raise this issue?

Reward/benefit to *whom*? This is one of those tricky indexical 
situations, where depending on your definition very different systems 
matter and even the kind of benefit they gain differs.

Uploading can do things other technologies cannot do, like enabling 
accurate backups, multiple realisation and all the benefits of having 
easily upgradeable software body/minds. Very beneficial if you think it 
is identity preserving... or think that creating a being in such a state 
is a good thing, even if it is not you. The buddhist that doesn't think 
identity exists at all can still want to have a world with more happy 
and compassionate minds.


>
>> But which selfhood definition is true? I don't think there is a true 
>> one. There is just stuff morphing across spacetime, and some parts of 
>> the stuff use certain definitions. Selfhood is not a natural category 
>> for most systems and there is no reason to think it has to apply to 
>> transhumans.
>
> It can't not apply.
>
> If it didn't apply, you would just have either something akin to a 
> book or, at best, a utility program that could be used to answer 
> biographical queries about yourself.


In fact, it is a not uncommon philosophical view hereabouts that what 
people exist in the same loose way that nations or clubs exist. So it 
might be a good thing to have a person changing into another person if 
that person has a better life. But those changes can be mergers and 
splits, temporary dissolutions and reassemblies, or even recreations 
with new components. That is why I regard Myself as the equivalence 
class of all Anders-like processes. Right now there is just one 
instance, but in the future there might be many different instances. 
Where the boundary of Anders-likness goes will change over time as I 
evolve, but what I think matters is that they are having fun and 
enjoying their existence.

Note that Anders-the-book is an inert instance of the above equivalence 
class: not a member since it is not doing anything, but if it could be 
turned into an information processing process it would become an 
instance (by a reader acting it out, say: "If Anders sees red, go to 
page 46, if he sees green, go to page 82.")


-- 
Anders Sandberg,
Future of Humanity Institute
Oxford Martin School
Faculty of Philosophy
Oxford University