[ExI] Uploads are self

[Jason Resch]

On Sun, Mar 22, 2026, 2:05 PM Jason Resch <jasonresch at gmail.com> wrote:

>
>
> On Sun, Mar 22, 2026, 10:02 AM Ben Zaiboc via extropy-chat <
> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:
>
>
>>
>> > Based on everything you have said about minds and illusory notion of
>> self, I think your position fits best with open individualism, though I
>> don't think you'll ever admit that.
>>
>>
>> Hm, I'd have thought my position fits best with 'closed individualism' (I
>> exist), based on the above. Even though it's totally silly, at least it's
>> coherent, unlike the rest.
>>
>
> I would have put you there, except that in several cases you acknowledge
> surviving beyond a single moment in time.
>
> I agree that empty-individualism is more consistent than
> closed-individualism. It avoids most of the problems closed-individualism
> gets into. The primary advantage then that open-individualism has over
> empty- is the probability arguments.
>


Correction: I misread what you said above, I thought you said you would
have put yourself in empty-individualism, but I noticed you said
closed-individualism.

The reason I said you might fit best with open, rather than closed, is that
you acknowledge material bodies don't matter for survival, duplicates
(fission) doesn't matter for survival, and on a few occasions, you
acknowledged perfect pattern preservation is not required for survival.

To me, this leads to what I call, a permissive survival theory. That is,
the view that you could survive in all of the following situations:

Invasive brain surgery
Partial and even total memory loss (amnesia)
Personality changes
Morphing into a completely different person
A long term coma during which your body is metabolically replaced
A teleportation to another location
Destructive mind uploads into a robot brain and body
Having your body assembled from a different pile of atoms

When neither perfect bodily or psychological continuity criteria are
necessary to survival, this opens the door to survive as *similar but not
identical instances*. And those similar but not identical instances are
similar to still other, more distant instances. And so on, leading to
possible survival via any mind across the total spectrum of possible
instances of conscious minds.

So we thereby reveal, that the contents of a conscious experience are a
mere contingency, one of no more relevance to the question of your survival
than the color of the shirt you are wearing. You can change it, and get you
would still be there.

Jason
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