From: Michael Clark (mike.michaeljc@gmail.com)
Date: Fri Jan 27 2006 - 18:38:36 MST
I question wether significant personal survival is possible (to the
present us), the thread view has the problem of sleep, and the pattern
view has the problem of change. Self awareness may just be an illusion, an
evolved mechanism for conventional situations. I wonder how our sense of
self awareness would have evolved if duplication, merging, transfer etc
were in our environment.
Yes a loop where you change is what I meant, since we're vectors, not
points. If change is bad, I would think we should take it to it's logical
extreme (perhaps from birth to now looped, or a day).
> "Perfect" and "utopia" are rather vague concepts, I think I'd need to
> see a
> more detailed proposal for one before I could really comment on it.
A niven scenario, that would be fun! That is a fairly static society.
On Sat, 28 Jan 2006 12:46:05 +1300, Russell Wallace
<russell.wallace@gmail.com> wrote:
> On 1/27/06, Michael <mike.michaeljc@gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> It could be seen as that, since our most important works are ourselves.
>
>
> Well, "since you determined how it would be, you had power over it, and
> it
> is you" would seem to imply that if you write a book for example, and it
> survives indefinitely, this is a form of immortality? (I'm not saying
> this
> view is right or wrong, just checking whether it is your view.)
>
> A better way of explaing it is; suppose we discard the idea of a broad
>> self. Then we have a phase-space of entitys lasting for mere instants
>> (possibly longer if it is static).
>> Then the real question becomes; why should one entity be loyal towards
>> any
>> particular future entity?
>
>
> Some people want personal survival for its own sake (myself included,
> though
> it isn't my highest value).
>
> A more general idea would be that you should be loyal to those future
> entities which share or contribute to your values; that would seem to be
> consistent with your thinking.
>
> Pragmaticism, the entitys which it has power over, are those through
> which
>> it can acheive it's goals(this is where I stretch it a bit).
>
>
> This would seem consistent with the "entities which share or contribute
> to
> your values" idea above.
>
>> I wouldn't view a static utopia as desirable. Whether a continuous loop
>>
>> Well I could use the word perfect or eternal utopia instead, if a
>> pattern
>> is you, and surviving is good, then it follows that preserving the
>> pattern
>> is desirable.
>
>
> "Perfect" and "utopia" are rather vague concepts, I think I'd need to
> see a
> more detailed proposal for one before I could really comment on it.
>
>> could reasonably be called "static" depends on the length of the loop
>> > (consider for example a loop of length 2^N where N is the number of
>> bits
>> > describing a particular mind state within some broad category).
>> >
>> > - Russell
>>
>> I don't understand the maths, do you mean; the loop is larger than just
>> the mind, or that it grows as the mind grows.
>
>
> Well, let's suppose you go into a loop, but the loop is, say, 10^30
> subjective years long before you start repeating yourself, and the total
> number of thoughts and experiences you have during those 10^30 years are
> much larger than could fit into your mind at any one time; I suppose that
> would count as "the loop is larger than just the mind".
>
> - Russell
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