Re: Separate Copies Contribute Separately to One's Runtime

From: Mikko Rauhala (mjrauhal@cc.helsinki.fi)
Date: Sat Mar 08 2008 - 16:19:50 MST


la, 2008-03-08 kello 14:07 -0800, Lee Corbin kirjoitti:
> Mikko writes
> > You're using faulty terminology to gain psychological advantage
> > for your faulty assertion. ("One of them is going to shortly die"
> > implies death of a self in this context, which really isn't the case
> > here; see further down.)
>
> Surely we agree that there is a death of an instance at stake
> in my scenario, and by that I mean that the normal idea of
> one of the two physically running processes being destroyed.
> That wording should have been clear, I claim.

I took "death" to imply that something dramatic happens, a person, a
viewpoint, a self is destroyed. But sure, if we use "death" in the
cavalier way that me going kill -9 18975 results in a death of a
particular task on my computer, there is death involved here.

> We quite agree there, though perhaps for different reasons.
> My reason is that more "total benefit" per hour of life accrues
> to the person I am, the more places and oftener I get to run.

Can't argue with value judgements, but I find this extremely silly,
bordering on metaphysical (considering it's just not observable to the
subject how many times it's run in an identical manner). But hey, I'm
sure even putting oneself into a Permutation Cityesque loop (IIRC it was
an infinite climbing scenario) will prove popular with some folk, if at
all feasible.

> > An sich [As such] I see no reason to fret over one instance terminating.
>
> Didn't you just say "certainly it matters in that there'd be one less
> instance of me"?

But not _as such_; merely because it affects potentials, such as my
survival _in the case_ that the others fail as well. If there's zero
instances of me around in our shared reality I quite likely die, or at
the very least lose contact with it.

> Doesn't it have to be entirely a matter of degree, a slow change?

Possibly.

> Myself, I would claim that given enough time they'll probably become
> separate people, just as you and a copy of you living in different
> cities would eventually over perhaps many decades become
> different people.

Yes.

Oh, by the way, since Heartland's post really doesn't warrant a reply of
its own, I'll stick a short retort here, in the spirit of the quality of
his argumentation: "Yo momma was fat in the past and will be so in the
future."

To be a bit more constructive though, it should strike one as odd that
people hold on to philosophies of the self that are what you'd expect
from an evolved ape but break down into huge irreconciliable
complications with the tiniest bit of nudging, while complaining that
better thought out and more robust philosophies are merely "convenient"
because they happen to not have the same problems as theirs. Hope this
helps.

-- 
Mikko Rauhala   - mjr@iki.fi     - <URL:http://www.iki.fi/mjr/>
Transhumanist   - WTA member     - <URL:http://www.transhumanism.org/>
Singularitarian - SIAI supporter - <URL:http://www.intelligence.org/>


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