<div dir="auto"><div dir="ltr"><div dir="ltr"><br></div><br><div class="gmail_quote"><div dir="ltr" class="gmail_attr">On Mon, Jan 8, 2024 at 10:22 AM Ben Zaiboc via extropy-chat <<a href="mailto:extropy-chat@lists.extropy.org" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer">extropy-chat@lists.extropy.org</a>> wrote:<br></div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex"><u></u>
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On 07/01/2024 00:21, Jason Resch wrote:<font size="4"><br>
<br>
</font> >>> If you step into a star trek style
transporter, but some error causes<br>
>>> 5 identical copies of yourself to beam down, which
one do you become?<br>
>>><br>
>>> A) none of them<br>
>>> B) one of them<br>
>>> C) all of them<br>
<br>
>>"Which one do you become?" is not a sensible or
meaningful question. <br>
<br>
...<br>
<br>
> Let's say someone comes to your door with the following
proposition:<br>
<br>
> He will pay you $1,000,000 to scan you, destroy you (kill you,
painlessly), then create a perfect replica of you to take over your
life from that point forward. Do you take him up on his offer?<br>
<br>
No.<br></div></blockquote><div><br></div><div>This suggests to me that you believe you will not survive the procedure. Is that right?</div><div><br></div><div> </div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex"><div>
<br>
> Here, you need a theory of personal identity to decide whether
or not you are killed, or whether or not you are paid a million
dollars to be a test subject in using the first teletransporter.<br>
<br>
> Faced with this proposition, you can't avoid the issue by
saying it's a meaningless question.<br>
<br>
That's right. but it's not the same question. In the original
question, you get into a transporter, which disassembles your body
and recreates it somewhere else (and accidentally creates more than
one). In your second question, you are non-destructively duplicated,
leaving your original body intact, which is then murdered.</div></blockquote><div><br></div><div>In my example you are destroyed first, then re-created.</div><div><br></div><div>But you raise an interesting question: does the time-sequence of events matter? Consider what happens inside your house a black box. You take the man up on his offer, enter your house and then your copy emerges. But no one knows, was the duplicate created before or after the original was destroyed. Let's call the two possibly resulting versions of you A-copy, and B-copy. A-copy is a version created after you are destroyed, and B-copy was created before you were destroyed. Everything physically about A-copy and B-copy are the same: all the atoms of the are the same, etc., so there is no physical difference between them. The only version is the history of what happened to the original and how the time lines up with the creation of the copy.</div><div><br></div><div>If you believe you become your duplicate if he is created after the original is destroyed, but not if created before the duplicate is destroyed, what basis is there to say A-copy is you, but B-copy isn't, when they are physically the same?</div><div><br></div><div>Then consider when we throw relativity of simultaneity from relativity into the mix. Then there could be two external observers, both of which witnesses the order of events, but they disagree on whether the copy was created before or after the destruction of the original. Then it is relative whether a copy is an A-copy or a B-copy!</div><div> </div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex"><div> I know
there are people who regard destructive duplication as the same
thing, but I don't. Maybe you can translate that into a 'theory of
identity'. I won't try to. I'll just say that the crucial thing is
the timing. Destructive scanning instantaneously (subjectively,
anyway) translates the subject into the new form/s. Non-destructive
scanning leaves the subject intact, with their own ongoing
experiences. So non-destructive scanning plus subsequent destruction
of the subject equals murder, destructive scanning does not (which
raises the interesting question of what about if the subject is
rendered unconscious before the procedure?).<br></div></blockquote><div><br></div><div>Based on this it seems you place importance on continuity of the body/material organization, which is in line with the usual view of personal identity. But then I ask, when there is no physical difference between the A-copy and the B-copy, what is the difference? Particles don't care about, or act differently based on their (or something else's) past history. So if you think there is a difference between A-copy and B-copy, and it is not physical, it seems to me it must be metaphysical. (some unseen "youness" which can either attach itself, or not, to some group of atoms). </div><div> </div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex"><div>
<br>
...<br>
<br>
> Do you consider any questions that asks: "What do you expect to
experience in the next moment?" to be meaningless?<br>
<br>
No. I consider questions that refer to a singular 'you' in the
context of multiple duplication to be meaningless. A bit like
sending an interactive novel to 5 different people, then asking
"what happens next?", and expecting just one answer.<br></div></blockquote><div><br></div><div>You cannot answer a question about your own subjectivity from the standpoint of a third-person view-from-nowhere. When I ask what do you expect to experience, I mean from the inside, first-person view, not what an objective observer sitting outside and watching it all unfold would say about the situation.</div><div><br></div><div>I believe from the internal view, the observers would feel as if they randomly become one of them. If they iterated this experiment many times, they would tend to each write down a random sequence of numbers between 1-5 noting the position they found themselves in each time they step into this transporter.</div><div> </div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex"><div>
<br>
<br>
>> The same thing applies to someone who is duplicated
multiple times. Each<br>
resultant person is the same in the sense that they can
correctly claim<br>
to have been the original in the past, and they are all
different from<br>
each other because they are now separate minds that have
different<br>
experiences since the duplication. They will probably retain the
same<br>
basic personality traits, and will probably express them in
different<br>
ways, depending on their individual circumstances. They will
each be an<br>
independent person, with the same past as all the others, up to
the<br>
point of divergence.<br>
<br>
<br>
> But does your consciousness survive? That's what people are
concerned with.<br>
<br>
I don't see why that question occurs to you. Of course it survives,
in multiple instances. How could it not? If it didn't, there would
have been no duplication. </div></blockquote><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex"><div>
If you sent a story to 20 different people, you don't ask yourself
"does that story still exist?", even if you had deleted the copy on
your own computer, you wouldn't doubt that the story still exists.<br></div></blockquote><div><br></div><div>Is this answer consistent with your rejection of the $1M to be destructively duplicated? Presumably you said "No" to the offer because you believed your consciousness would not survive the process. But here you say it does survive. Could you clarify your position, as I am no longer sure what it is.</div><div> </div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex"><div>
<br>
<br>
>> If you insist on the wording "which one do you become?",
I'd have to<br>
answer A and C. Which kind of illustrates that it's a silly
question.<br>
<br>
<br>
> I think your answer shows the silliness of the conventional
view of personal identity. Your answer indicates a preference for
either empty individualism or open individualism, which are both
logically more tenable, but empty individualism is non workable as a
decision theory since it allows no expectations and makes behaviors
like saving for retirement (or any future planning) pointless.<br>
<br>
I think my answer shows the silliness of the question. Or perhaps,
the fact that we're not used to thinking in terms of multiple
selves. I normally use the example of an amoeba dividing to
illustrate this. When an amoeba divides into two daughter amoebas,
by replicating all its organelles and splitting into two, which one
is the original amoeba? The question doesn't mean anything, does it?
The original becomes two. The question "Which one do you become?" is
the same. Conventional experience doesn't apply, because people have
never done this before.</div></blockquote><div><br></div><div>Well if you believe in many-worlds, it happens all the time. What does it feel like to be copied? It feels like something random just occurred.</div><div><br></div><div>"It gradually hit me that this illusion of randomness business really wasn't specific to quantum mechanics at all. Suppose that some future technology allows you to be cloned while you're sleeping, and that your two copies are placed in rooms numbered 0 and 1. When they wake up, they'll both feel that the room number they read is completely unpredictable and random. [...] In other words, causal physics will produce the illusion of randomness from your subjective viewpoint in any circumstance where you're being cloned. The fundamental reason that quantum mechanics appears random even though the wavefunction evolves deterministically is that the Schrödinger equation can evolve a wavefunction with a single you into one with clones of you in parallel universes."<br></div><div>-- Max Tegmark in "<a href="https://archive.org/details/ourmathematicalu0000tegm/page/194/mode/2up?q=cloned" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer">Our Mathematical Universe</a>" (2014)</div><div><br></div><div>"The many-universes theory gives a new perspective to this fundamental indeterminacy. The information which would have led to complete predictability is, crudely speaking, hidden from us in the other worlds to which we have no access. Thus, superspace as a whole is completely deterministic; the random element comes from our sampling just a minute portion of the whole. Regarding the real universe as the whole of superspace, one sees that God does not, after all, play dice. The game of chance comes not from nature, but our perception of it. Our consciousness weaves a route at random along the ever-branching evolutionary pathways of the cosmos, so it is we, rather than God, who are playing dice."</div><div>-- Paul Davies in "<a href="https://archive.org/details/otherworldsspace00davi/page/138/mode/2up?q=%22consciousness+weaves+a+route%22" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer">Other Worlds: Space, Superspace, and the Quantum Universe</a>" (1980)</div><div><br></div><div><br></div><div> </div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex"><div> When (as I hope will happen) it becomes
possible, we'll have to change the way we think about personal
identity, and it will cause many people considerable problems.
Doubtless it will spawn new 'Theories of Identity'!<br></div></blockquote><div><br></div><div>I think we can already use thought experiments to reason about the implications of these future technologies, and work out what the correct theory of personal identity is.</div><div> </div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex"><div>
<br>
Ask yourself this question: If you are duplicated, creating two new
people, and only one of them is 'you', then who the hell is the
other one???<br></div></blockquote><div><br></div><div>I believe I become both.</div><div> </div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex"><div>
<br>
<br>
>>> The "2024-you" is also different in many ways
(different place,<br>
different atoms, different experience), from the "2023-you".<br>
<br>
>>> But we also, as a matter of general practice,
believe/assume that<br>
despite these difference, they are experienced by the same
person.<br>
<br>
>> I'd agree with both these things: Different, and also
the same,<br>
depending on which factors you're considering.<br>
<br>
<br>
> That's good. I would then add that person identity theories
attempt to specify which factors ought to be considered.<br>
<br>
I assume here you mean 'in each case', as they are different.<br></div></blockquote><div><br></div><div>There are things about them that are different, but we also acknowledge (absent assuming something like empty individualism) that both experiences are had by the same person.</div><div> </div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex"><div>
<br>
<br>
>>> Personal identity theories attempt to answer the
question of what,<br>
and how much, can change while retaining the identity of a
person.<br>
<br>
>> The answer to that depends on what your definition of
'identity' is, so<br>
it's a circular question. You could create a philosophical field
called,<br>
say, Fish Identity Theory, that attempts to answer whether
Sardines are<br>
animals or fish. There is no definitive answer to a question
like this,<br>
without any other context (the most realistic answer, of course,
is<br>
"both"). Insisting on one or the other is really more of an
invitation<br>
to have a pointless argument than a genuine question.<br>
<br>
<br>
> What differentiates concerns of personal identity from taxonomy
is that there are definite hard answers to the questions or
concerns: i.e. will you, or will you not experience this particular
conscious experience?<br>
<br>
> It makes no difference to the fish what we call it, but it
surely makes a difference to you, whether the transporter kills you
(ends your consciousness permanently), or takes you to Paris.<br>
<br>
You are assuming that 'you' means the same thing before and after
the procedure. My point is that there is more than one 'you'
afterward, each fully entitled to be called 'you'.</div></blockquote><div><br></div><div>Yes. They all do. All have an equal claim.</div><div> </div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex"><div> We are not used
to thinking in these terms, which is what I think causes these
misunderstandings. This is why the question "what happens to you?"
doesn't work, because people tend to baulk at the answer "you are
duplicated". </div></blockquote><div><br></div><div>The answer (and question) becomes ambiguous from the third-person perspective, but it's still valid to ask about your future expectations as an experiencer, who is about to undergo such an operation. You might not have any definite answer, but you could say something like "I expect my consciousness to continue, and to find myself at one of the locations, but I cannot predict which."</div><div><br></div><div>It's the same as asking an AI within a computer simulation whose process calls the fork() system call, and sets the color of a ball within the environment, to "red" when the return bit is 1, and to "blue" when the return bit is 0. If you were in the simulation with the AI, and fork was to be called several times in succession, all you could predict is that you would see the ball start to change colors, being blue 50% of the time and red 50% of the time, on average.</div><div><br></div><div> </div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex"><div>People then ask "ok, but which one is REALLY you??",
which I hope you can see, is a silly question.<br></div></blockquote><div><br></div><div>Assuming there can only be one you is what creates the silliness. It presumes there is something special about one of the copies that isn't in the others (some dualistic, non-physical soul that follows only a single path).</div><div> </div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex"><div>
<br>
The key thing to wrap our heads around, I think, is that 'you'
doesn't have to be unique. </div></blockquote><div><br></div><div>Exactly!</div><div> </div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex"><div>And I do appreciate, this is hard.</div></blockquote><div><br></div><div>It is.</div><div> </div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex"><div> I
struggled with it for quite a while. But the conclusion I came to in
the end, is that assuming that there can only be one unique 'you' is
a form of dualism. And I reject dualism completely.</div></blockquote><div><br></div><div>Yes.</div><div><br></div><div>The feeling of being unique, can be entirely explained by the non-integration of experience. There is no need to add a further assumption of "you are unique". Occam would slice that away, since the non-integration is all that is required to explain the feeling of being unique.</div><div> </div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex"><div> If the same
mental pattern is duplicated, then by necessity, the same person
becomes two, or more people, in every way. This is the same as
copying a CD or a DVD. A pattern of information is duplicated. There
are now 500 spreadsheets, or 30,000 Beethoven's fifth Symphonies.
The question "Which one is the real one?" is meaningless. They are
all the real one, all identical duplicates of the original single
one.<br></div></blockquote><div><br></div><div>Yes! Now consider, if they all begin as one, what happens in something like many-worlds where that one evolves continuously into many? Or to use your example, if amoeba were conscious, would what began as a single conscious evolve to become them all? (Note, the consciousness remains non-integrated, so they all still feel unique, I am not suggesting anything like a group or collective consciousness, only the absence of a metaphysical/dualistic soul that singles out one line as special or privileged).</div><div> </div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex"><div>
<br>
<br>
>>> Empty individualism says any change at all, no
matter how small,<br>
constitutes a new person. Closed individualism, says you can
only change<br>
so much while being the same person. Open individualism says
there's no<br>
limit to how much can change and yet still remain the same
person --<br>
that all variations of material composition of the body or
psychological<br>
content of the experience, are mere contingencies.<br>
<br>
>> Ok, so there you have three different views on the
matter. That's all<br>
you can say. You certainly can't say if one is 'righter' than
the<br>
others, without further qualifying context.<br>
<br>
> Only one of these theories can be correct.<br>
<br>
I disagree. Each different theory is looking at a different aspect,
which is why I used the taxonomy examples.<br></div></blockquote><div><br></div><div>Would you agree though, that it is either true or false that your consciousness survives some event? Surely from the outside/third-person/impartial observer, it's just a matter of taxonomy, but this field requires answering questions that deal with the subjective. It is close to the field of consciousness in that respect.</div><div> </div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex"><div>
<br>
<br>
> Your last two answers are consistent, in that they recognize
time/space interchangeability. That is, there's no fundamental
difference between the same person existing in two times, vs. the
same person existing in two places.<br>
<br>
There is a considerable difference. the first is commonplace, the
second has never yet happened.<br></div></blockquote><div><br></div><div>The second may be commonplace, if many-worlds is true, or if space is infinite.</div><div> </div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex"><div>
<br>
<br>
>>And I'm still no closer to understanding what 'Open
Individualism'<br>
actually means. "One numerically identical subject, who is
everyone at<br>
all times, in the past, present and future" is a sentence that
makes no<br>
sense. What does 'One numerically identical...' mean?
'Identical' is a<br>
comparison, so you have to have at least two things, for them to
be<br>
identical to one another in any respect. 'One identical thing'
is<br>
meaningless. Can we replace that with "one person", for clarity,
or<br>
doesn't that work?. The rest just reads as gobbledigook. Can it
be<br>
boiled down to "one person, who is all people"? At least that
sentence<br>
is coherent. As for what it means...<br>
<br>
<br>
> Boiled down to one sentence, it is the idea that: "There is
only one person."<br>
<br>
Ok, well that is demonstrably not true. There are at least two
people, you and me (ok, I know about me, but... (and that's a
different discussion!))<br></div></blockquote><div><br></div><div>Can you use the fact that you are only presently aware of "now" to refute eternalism?</div><div><br></div><div>Can you use the fact that you are only presently aware of "this branch" to refute many-worlds?</div><div><br></div><div>If not, then I would argue that neither can you use the fact that you are only presently aware of "Ben Zaiboc's POV" to refute open individualism.</div><div> </div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex"><div>
<br>
>>Your definition above is different, though. You refer to
how much<br>
someone can change and still be thought of as the same. The Wiki<br>
definition talks about everyone already being the same.<br>
<br>
> When I was talking about change, I was referring to changing
the material composition of the body and the content of experience,
while remaining the same person.<br>
<br>
The only thing left then is memory. If that remains the same, then
I'd say, yes, same person. If not, then there is no basis for
considering them to be the same person.<br></div></blockquote><div><br></div><div>But we gain and lose memories all the time. Your consciousness survives the fact it forgot what you ate a few weeks back, does it not?</div><div> </div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex"><div>
<br>
> If anything about the body or experience is free to be changed
while not destroying the person, then there is only one person.<br>
<br>
Fine, but what has that got to do with the Wiki definition, which
encompasses all people, not just one?<br></div></blockquote><div><br></div><div>The Wiki definition is admittedly quite terrible.</div><div dir="auto"><br></div><div dir="auto">But what my point has to do with it is that it makes the particular body, and particular content of experience, into mere contingencies, like what color shirt you happen to be wearing. You would still be you even if your shirt were another color.</div><div dir="auto"><br></div><div dir="auto">Open individualism just extends this to the other contingencies of your place, material composition, content of experience, etc. Thus all beings, even those you look very different from, are you too.</div><div> </div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex"><div>
<br>
Someone in New Zealand, born 200 years ago, has a different body,
experiences and memories to me. We are definitely not 'the same
person'. As far as I can see, this idea of 'Open Individualism'
seems to be claiming that we are. Or have I got that wrong?<br></div></blockquote><div><br></div><div dir="auto">You can experience great pain and you can experience great joy. Those two experiences couldn't be more different from one another, but they are both experiences you are capable of having. I would argue then that your experience of eating an apple is not so different from the experience of that New Zealander eating an apple 200 years ago, at least the two experiences are more similar than the two extremes of consciousness experience you are capable of having. All conscious experiences have in common, the feeling of immediacy, and that is all that is required for it to feel like it is your experience.</div><div dir="auto"><br></div><div dir="auto">Jason </div><div> </div></div></div></div>