[ExI] Uploads are self

[Jason Resch]

On Mon, Mar 23, 2026, 6:07 AM Ben Zaiboc via extropy-chat <
extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:

> On 22/03/2026 22:35, Jason Resch  wrote:
> > 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.
>
>
> How is it possible to not? Surviving (let's say 'existing', to avoid
> ambiguity) in only a single moment in time is not possible, not detectable,
> not even remotely feasible.
>

Okay good.


>
> >
> >     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.
>
>
> Who are you agreeing with here? Certainly not me. I think that all of
> these 'individualisms' are daft, to various degrees, and none of them are
> consistent with reality.
>

As I define them they're exhaustive. So at least one must consistent with
reality. This is an especially important point. If you still disagree that
logically one must be true you need to show why the three together so not
span the realm of all logic possibilities.

Think of it like this:
Given at least one universe exists, then either:
1. A single universe exists.
2. 2-10 universes exist.
3. More than 10 universes exist.

Without doing a single experiment, we can know a priori that one of these 3
theories of how many universes there are, must be true.

Do you agree?

This is why I setup theories of person identity in an analogous way. Given
a person is an entity with at least one consciousness experience, then
either:
1. A person has only a single conscious experience.
2. A person has multiple, but not all, conscious experiences.
3. A person has all conscious experiences.

So again, we know one of these must be true.

If you still think otherwise you should explain why the list is not
exhaustive of all possibilities, or why you don't think being exhaustive
provides sufficient reason to conclude the correct theory lies with the
exhaustive set of theories.


> >
> >
> > 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.
>
>
> I shouldn't have said anything, it gives the mistaken impression that I
> take any of these categories seriously.
>
> >
> > 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
> Depends on the nature and extent of the surgery
> > Partial and even total memory loss (amnesia)
> Depends on the extent of the loss
> > Personality changes
> Depends on the degree of change
> > Morphing into a completely different person
> You're the one who's saying 'different person' here.
> > 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
> These would all result in the same person
> >
> > 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.
>
> By this logic, if you take a banjo and make various incremental changes to
> it so as to turn it into a tambourine, it's still a banjo.
>

You've changed substantially since you were a three year old. Do you think
the three year old still lives on as you? Or do you think the three year
old died somewhere along the way because too much information was added to
his brain?


> If you make lots of small changes, they become equivalent to one big
> change. I think the word 'survival' is causing problems here. You need to
> define what you want it to mean, as it's being used to mean several things,
> from 'the same as' to different degrees of 'derived from'.


I've defined it many times. Subjective survival, as I define it, refers to
any situation where after some process, you emerge with the subjective
feeling that you have survived the process.

In my view you need not be the same after the process as before. You
survive trips by train, you survive invasive brain surgery that leave you
needing to relearn how to walk, etc.

I think we'd get much greater clarity from ditching the word altogether,
> and in each case using a more exact term.
> To see what I mean, consider the question "If you become a different
> person, do you survive?".
>

If you become a different person do you "emerge with the subjective feeling
that you have survived"?

You've become a different person since you were 3. Do you have now the
feeling that you have survived those intervening years?


> >
> > 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.
>
> "Reveal"??
> Telling language, there.
>

If you follow the logic and reason as I've laid out, I don't see how the
conclusion can be avoided. You have managed to avoid the conclusion by
giving inconsistent answers to questions which should have the same answer.


> You are not 'revealing' anything, you are drawing a conclusion. A
> confusing one. We were talking about minds, not isolated conscious
> experiences, and the word 'survive' can mean many different things.
>

Do you have a better definition for subjective survival than the one I have
offered?

Taken literally, that sentence seems to be saying nothing more than that
> someone can have different thoughts or experiences without them ceasing to
> exist, but I'm pretty sure that's not what you mean to say.
>


Yes that is what I am saying there. That there's no limit to the range of
experiences that you can have.

Jason

>
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