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grouchymusicologist comments on Open Thread: March 2010, part 2 - Less Wrong
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If I have no memory of some period in my past, then should I be pleased to discover that was happy during that period? Or is it that past experiences are valuable only through the pleasure their memories give us in the present?
If you are a utilitarian, I think you should be pleased.
Imagine you happened to find out that a person on the other side of the world, whose life has never and will never affect yours in any way, is happy right now. You'd be pleased about that, right? Now imagine you knew instead that that person was happy last week. Since this affects you not at all, there's no real difference between these: you're just pleased about the fact of someone's happiness at some point in time.
If you buy my argument up to this point, then you may as well be pleased if that mystery person from the past was actually your own past self. And that's not even to mention Kevin's argument which does take into account the ways in which your past self influences your future self.