= 27d567bc2d48d9f40e9ccc20ea370b15)
Warrigal comments on What makes you YOU? For non-deists only. - Less Wrong
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
= 783df68a0f980790206b9ea87794c5b6)
Loading…= b715d02e85f7b3b4ae65ca3d3e450868)
Subscribe to RSS Feed
Powered by Reddit
= f037147d6e6c911a85753b9abdedda8d)
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
Comments (92)
Operant conditioning. If I pull a lever and someone in Antarctica gets struck by lightning, nothing happens to my brain. If I pull a lever and I get struck by lightning, I instantly receive a strong desire not to let that happen again. The fact that nobody but me is conditioned by my experiences is what makes me me. If I suddenly began having the experiences of another person as well as my own, that person and I would both become me; if I accidentally wandered into a giant helium balloon and died, nobody would be me. If I for some reason developed anterograde amnesia, me would have a very short lifespan; there would be no reason to care about my long-future self any more than any other person.
Unless you are a scientist!
Exception to be made for professional scientists.
Operant conditioning is an excellent answer as to why you do care more about your future self than a random future person. But the original post asks why should you care more.
Of course, it's open to you to argue that there's less room in between "should care" and "do care" than most people think. Perhaps when it comes to both whom and when we care about, there isn't much room at all.
Even going by what people do care about, however, I doubt that anterograde amnesia generally leads to disregard of one's next-day fate. Should it?
Even if we have anterograde amnesia, we certainly shouldn't disregard our future selves more than we disregard other people.
I think that we should care about ourselves over other people for whatever is the simplest reason consistent with when we do care more. It seems like the simplest reason to care about ourselves is operant conditioning.