[ExI] Uploads are self

[Jason Resch]

On Mon, Mar 23, 2026, 9:38 AM Ben Zaiboc via extropy-chat <
extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:

> On 23/03/2026 11:12, Jason Resch wrote:
> >
> > 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:
> >     >
> >
> >     >     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 [be]
> 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 do not span the realm of all logic[al] 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?
>
>
> Hmm, what if 1.5 universes exist?
> What if a complex number of universes exist?
>

Excellent counter-examples! If there could be fractional universes or
complex numbers then the space of definitions I provided was not exhaustive.


> >
> > 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.
>
>
> I'm not arguing that in your self-defined space, the things that you say
> aren't logically consistent. I'm saying What has this got to do with the
> real world?
>
> You keep using unusual terms without defining them.


I don't want to take credit that isn't mine. These are distinctions in the
philosophy of personal identity, as defined by Daniel Kolak (
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_Kolak ).

For instance, what is anyone supposed to understand by your use of "all
> conscious experiences"?

Does that mean all experiences that all humans could possibly have, all
> experiences that all humans have ever had, all experiences that any human
> could have, all experiences that are possible to any kind of system capable
> of having experiences, all experiences that a single human (or non-human
> system) has had/could have, some other meaning that I can't think of at the
> moment??
>

All extant conscious experiences, had by any creature, human or non human,
alien, robot, AI, etc, so long as it is something capable of conscious
experience, it's conscious experiences count.


> Without knowing this, I can't evaluate statements like 2 or 3 above (1 is
> obviously silly (unless you mean something unusual by 'a single conscious
> experience')).
>

It may seem silly, but many serious philosophers have adopted and defended
this position. See:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_identity#No-self_theory


>
> >
> >     >
> >     >
> >     > 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.
>
>
> However, I have never said that material bodies don't matter for survival.
> If your current material body is destroyed, I don't think you are going to
> survive, no matter how you define the word.
>

The above should be read as "a particular material body" -- of course I
agree with you some body is necessary to instantiate you.

>
> >
> >     >
> >     > 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?
>
>
> I think that I have developed into the person I am now, from the person
> that I was at the age of 3. I don't know how to express this in your rather
> stilted language.
>

That is fine.

Then consider: is there any limit to the kind of person you could develop
into (especially within a world with mind uploading and the ability to
modify and extend uploaded brains at will)?


The example of an acorn growing into an oak tree comes to mind. Can it be
> said that the acorn has been destroyed? That the oak tree IS the acorn?
> That the acorn was an oak tree all along?
> These are just words. The reality is the same, no matter how you express
> it.
>

I would say, the acorn becomes the oak tree. Or the acorn survive as the
oak tree. Just as I would say you survive as an upload even if during those
millions of years as an upload, you evolve into something far greater than
you could imagine becoming.


> >
> >
> >     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.
>
> You might want to read again what you wrote there.
> You are defining "subjective survival" as "the feeling that you have
> survived". Great. Accurate, but useless.


Can you do better?

As I said before, the word could mean several things, from 'exactly the
> same as' to 'derived from', or even 'vaguely related to'. It would help if,
> every time you want to use the word, you instead explain what you mean by
> it. This is not Alice in Wonderland.
>

Definitions are,bad you point out, of critical importance when it comes to
reasoning in thought experiments.


> Alternatively, how about if we pick one definition of the word and stick
> to it?
> Maybe "exactly the same as".
> According to that, then the 3-year-old me has not survived.
>

This leads to empty-individualism, as any modification at all from one
state to another results in death, thereby confining a person to a single
experience.

But if we pick "derived from", then the 3-year-old me has survived.
>

If derivations are sufficiently flexible such that any conscious state B
can be reached (via derivation) from any starting conscious state A, then
you recover open-individualism. As there would be no definite borders
confining persons to particular ranges of psychological states.



> Hmm, tricky.
> How about we accept all the possible definitions of the word?
> Then a lot of questions are going to have the answer "Yes and No".
>

That doesn't work in philosophy. Just as one wouldn't mix and match
definitions of "integer" between Robinson arithmetic and ZFC, and still try
to form mathematical proofs.


> That feels, to me, appropriate to this discussion. We are, after all,
> talking about philosophy.
>

It seems you want to keep things obscure and inscrutable in order to avoid
the reasoning and conclusions that would follow.


> >
> > 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"?
>
>
> That's just a rewording of the question.



I substituted my earlier definition for clarity.

It doesn't make any more sense.
> But I suppose, given the above, we can say "Yes and No".
>
> >
> > You've become a different person since you were 3. Do you have now the
> feeling that you have survived those intervening years?
>
> Am I exactly the same? No.
>

I was only asking about your feeling. Do you feel alive or dead right now?

Am I derived from that person? Yes.
> Is that 3-year-old person dead? Depends what you mean by 'dead'.
> Does that 3-year-old person 'live on' in me now? Depends what you mean by
> 'live on'. There are aspects of him that are still present, and aspects
> that aren't. At least I presume so. Don't ask me to identify them.
>
> This is why I'm suggesting that the word 'survive' is more of a hindrance
> than a help.
>
> (in summary: Yes and No).
>
> >
> >
> >     >
> >     > 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.
>
>
> And that's the problem. You're 'laying out' a completely abstract world
> that has very little to do with the real world we live in. The rules of
> your world may well be self-consistent, but don't intersect much with the
> real world that real people actually live in.
>

You haven't shown that. But if you can show my model does not correspond to
reality that would be a legitimate way to attack the validity of the
conclusion.

It seems that you are saying my argument is valid (the conclusions follow
from the premises) but not sound (the premises are not all true). See:
https://iep.utm.edu/val-snd/

If this is what you are saying, then which of my assumptions/premises do
you think are false, or not reflective of the reality we are in?


> >  You have managed to avoid the conclusion by giving inconsistent answers
> to questions which should have the same answer.
>
>
> That's on you, not me. You're viewing my answers in such a way as to make
> them inconsistent with your interpretations.


You said an upload, even to multiple locations at once, where each instance
diverges from all the others would all be you, and you would survive as
them all.

However, if any one of these instances happens to intersect the state of
another person, then that upload would cease to be you, you would die, and
the upload would then become an upload of this other person.

This to me seems inconsistent. It would make every other conscious state
that exists out there across reality into a land mine to be a avoided, as
striking it would result in death of the upload. But if this other
conscious state out there did not exist, the upload would have no problem
continuing to survive as a possible derivation of the original uploaded
person. The existence of non existence of other conscious states out there
should be of no consequences to what happens within the computer running
the mind upload.


> >
> >
> >     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.
>

That's why I defined it. My essay goes to great lengths to define it.
Perhaps you should read it and point out where it goes wrong.

>
> >
> > 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.
>
> You need to be more exact for that to be meaningful. (but at face value,
> these are two different things).
>
> For the last statement, though, I think it's false. For example, there
> must be experiences that the human mind is incapable of experiencing.
> Of course, this depends on your definition of 'experience'!
>

(I'll follow up on this the next email)

Jason

>
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