[ExI] Open Individualism

[Jason Resch]

On Sat, Jan 6, 2024, 2:31 PM Ben Zaiboc via extropy-chat <
extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:

>
> On 06/01/2024 17:32, Jason Resch wrote:
>
> I don't think you have yet understood the idea. It's not about grouping things.
> It
>  all comes down to one question: what did it take for you to be born?
> For you you to be alive now in this moment? What principle in science
> says the experience this one life you are in is somehow different or
> special compared to all the trillions of other creatures who have lived
> on this planet?
>
>
> I don't understand the idea at all. It seems like complete nonsense.
>

Perhaps this question will sharpen the issue at hand:

If you step into a star trek style transporter, but some error causes 5
identical copies of yourself to bean down, which one do you become?

A) none of them
B) one of them
C) all of them



> To answer the (two, not one) questions above:
>
> 1) Innumerable things, that nobody can possibly completely answer (the
> question is a bit broad, really)
>
> 2) I am unique among the trillions of other creatures because genetics and
> the many variables involved in my development ensure this, but I'm not in
> any objective way 'special'. Subjectively, on the other hand... Well, I'm
> the only 'Me' (so far), and that counts as special, at least to me.
>
> But I don't see what this has to do with 'Open Individualism'. In fact,
> these questions seem to be completely at odds with the idea that 'I am
> everybody'. Everybody's different, so they can't be the same.
>

The "2024-you" is also different in many ways (different place, different
atoms, different experience), from the "2023-you".

But we also, as a matter of general practice, believe/assume that despite
these difference, they are experienced by the same person.

Personal identity theories attempt to answer the question of what, and how
much, can change while retaining the identity of a person.

Empty individualism says any change at all, no matter how small,
constitutes a new person. Closed individualism, says you can only change so
much while being the same person. Open  individualism says there's no limit
to how much can change and yet still remain the same person -- that all
variations of material composition of the body or psychological content of
the experience, are mere contingencies.


I'm not everybody, I'm just me.
>

Are you the same person as when you step out of a teleporter or is that
someone else? Are you all your clones in the many worlds or are those other
people? Are you the same you when you reappear in a similar form in another
future big bang of eternal inflation, or is that someone else? Are you the
same person in other mirror images of earth that appear in infinite
locations across the infinite space of our universe, what about the ones
that have one less hair on their head, or a different color of eyes? How
much can change across all the infinite instances in reality while still
being you?



And the same is true for everyone else. We are all alone, no matter how
> much we communicate with each other, or how well we know someone else, we
> can never be in their heads.
>
> Perhaps this concept of Open Individualism is a result of reluctance to
> accept that? Similar to some religious ideas (particularly the oxymoronic
> 'afterlife') being a result of reluctance to accept that when you're dead,
> you're dead?
>


It comes from attempting to answer questions that arise in uncommon
situations: split brains, fused brains, duplication machines, teleporters,
cloning devices, healing devices. These normally don't come up, so it is
easy to go all ones life without considering anything beyond the
conventional view of personal identity, but the moment you venture into
these uncommon situations, you will find conventional theories are no
longer adequate.

Jason

>
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