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RichardW comments on Abnormal Cryonics - Less Wrong
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I don't mean to insult you (I'm trying to respect your intelligence enough to speak directly rather than delicately) but this kind of talk is why cryonics seems like a pretty useful indicator of whether or not a person is rational. You're admitting to false beliefs that you hold "because you evolved that way" rather than using reason to reconcile two intuitions that you "sort of follow" but which contradict each other.
Then you completely discounted the suffering or happiness of a human being who is not able to be helped by anyone other than your present self in this matter. You certainly can't be forced to seek medical treatment against your will for this, so other people are pretty much barred by law from forcing you to not be dumb with respect to the fate of future-Richard. He is in no one's hands but your own.
Hume was right about a huge amount of stuff in the context of initial epistemic conditions of the sort that Descartes proposed when he extracted "I think therefore I am" as one basis for a stable starting point.
But starting from that idea and a handful of others like "trust of our own memories as a sound basis for induction" we have countless terabytes of sense data from which we can develop a model of the universe that includes physical objects with continuity over time - one class of which are human brains that appear to be capable of physically computing the same thoughts with which we started out in our "initial epistemic conditions". The circle closes here. There might be some new evidence somewhere if some kind of Cartesian pineal gland is discovered someday which functions as the joystick by which souls manipulate bodies, but barring some pretty spectacular evidence, materialist views of the soul are the best theory standing.
Your brain has physical continuity in exactly the same way that chairs have physical continuity, and your brain tomorrow (after sleeping tonight while engaging in physical self repair and re-indexing of data structures) will be very similar to your brain today in most but not all respects. To the degree that you make good use of your time now, your brain then is actually likely to implement someone more like your ideal self than even you yourself are right now... unless you have no actualized desire for self improvement. The only deep change between now and then is that you will have momentarily lost "continuity of awareness" in the middle because your brain will go into a repair and update mode that's not capable of sensing your environment or continuing to compute "continuity of awareness".
If your formal theory of reality started with Hume and broke down before reaching these conclusions then you are, from the perspective of pragmatic philosophy, still learning to crawl. This is basically the same thing as babies learning about object permanence except in a more abstract context.
Barring legitimate pragmatic issues like discount rates, your future self should be more important to you than your present self, unless you're mostly focused on your "contextual value" (the quality of your relationships and interactions with the broader world) and feel that your contextual value is high now and inevitably declining (or perhaps will be necessarily harmed by making plans for cryonics).
The real thing to which you should be paying attention (other than to make sure they don't stop working) is not the mechanisms by which mental content is stored, modified, and transmitted into the future. The thing you should be paying attention to is the quality of that content and how it functionally relates to the rest of the physical universe.
For the record, I don't have a cryonics policy either, but I regard this as a matter of a failure to conscientiously apply myself to executing on an issue that is obviously important. Once I realized the flaw in my character that lead to this state of affairs I began working to fix it, which is something that, for me, is still a work in progress.
Part of my work is analyzing the issue enough to have a strongly defensible, coherent, and pragmatic argument for cryonics which I'll consider to have been fully resolved either (1) once I have argument for not signing up that would be good enough for a person able to reason in a relatively universal manner or (2) I have a solid argument the other way which has lead me and everyone I care about including my family and close friends to have taken the necessary steps and signed ourselves up.
When I set up a "drake equation for cryonics" and filled in the probabilities under optimistic (inside view) calculations I determined the value to be trillions of dollars. Under pessimistic assumptions (roughly, the outside view) I found that the expected value was epsilon and realized that my model was flawed because it didn't even have terms for negative value outcomes like "loss of value in 'some other context' because of cryonics/simulationist interactions".
So, pretty much, I regard the value of information here as being enormously large, and once I refine my models some more I expect to have a good idea as to what I really should do as a selfish matter of securing adequate health care for me and my family and friends. Then I will do it.
Hi Jennifer. Perhaps I seem irrational because you haven't understood me. In fact I find it difficult to see much of your post as a response to anything I actually wrote.
No doubt I explained myself poorly on the subject of the continuity of the self. I won't dwell on that. The main question for me is whether I have a rational reason to be concerned about what tomorrow-Richard will experience. And I say there is no such rational reason. It is simply a matter of brute fact that I am concerned about what he will experience. (Vladimir and Byrnema are making similar points above.) If I have no rational reason to be concerned, then it cannot be irrational for me not to be concerned. If you think I have a rational reason to be concerned, please tell me what it is.
I don't understand why psychological continuity isn't enough of a rational reason. Your future self will have all your memories, thoughts, viewpoints, and values, and you will experience a continuous flow of perception from yourself now to your future self. (If you sleep or undergo general anesthesia in the interim, the flow may be interrupted slightly, but I don't see why that matters.)
Hi Blueberry. How is that a rational reason for me to care what I will experience tomorrow? If I don't care what I will experience tomorrow, then I have no reason to care that my future self will have my memories or that he will have experienced a continuous flow of perception up to that time.
We have to have some motivation (a goal, desire, care, etc) before we can have a rational reason to do anything. Our most basic motivations cannot themselves be rationally justified. They just are what they are.
Of course, they can be rationally explained. My care for my future welfare can be explained as an evolved adaptive trait. But that only tells me why I do care for my future welfare, not why I rationally should care for my future welfare.
Richard, you seem to have come to a quite logical conclusion about the difference between intrinsic values and instrumental values and what happens when an attempt is made to give a justification for intrinsic values at the level of values.
If a proposed intrinsic value is questioned and justified with another value statement, then the supposed "intrinsic value" is revealed to have really been instrumental. Alternatively, if no value is offered then the discussion will have necessarily moved out of the value domain into questions about the psychology or neurons or souls or evolutionary mechanisms or some other messy issue of "simple" fact. And you are quite right that these facts (by definition as "non value statements") will not be motivating.
We fundamentally like vanilla (if we do) "because we like vanilla" as a brute fact. De gustibus non est disputandum. Yay for the philosophy of values :-P
On the other hand... basically all humans, as a matter of fact, do share many preferences, not just for obvious things like foods that are sweet or salty or savory but also for really complicated high level things, like the respect of those with whom we regularly spend time, the ability to contribute to things larger than ourselves, listening to beautiful music, and enjoyment of situations that create "flow" where moderately challenging tasks with instantaneous feedback can be worked on without distraction, and so on.
As a matter of simple observation, you must have noticed that there exist some things which it gives you pleasure to experience. To say that "I don't care what I will experience tomorrow" can be interpreted as a prediction that "Tomorrow, despite being conscious, I will not experience anything which affects my emotions, preferences, feelings, or inclinations in either positive or negative directions". This statement is either bluntly false (my favored hypothesis), or else you are experiencing a shocking level of anhedonia for which you should seek professional help if you want to live very much longer (which of course you might not if you're really experiencing anhedonia), or else you are a non human intelligence and I have to start from scratch trying to figure you out.
Taking it as granted that you and I can both safely predict that you will continue to enjoy life tomorrow... then an inductive proof can be developed that "unless something important changes from one day to the next" you will continue to have a stake in the day after that, and the day after that, and so on. When people normally discuss cryonics and long term values it is the "something important changing" issue that they bring up.
For example, many people think that they only care about their children... until they start seeing their grandchildren as real human beings whose happiness they have a stake in, and in whose lives they might be productively involved.
Other people can't (yet) imagine not falling prey to senescence, and legitimately think that death might be preferable to a life filled with pain which imposes costs (and no real benefits) on their loved ones who would care for them. In this case the critical insight is that not just death but also physical decline can be thought of as a potentially treatable condition and so we can stipulate not just vastly extended life but vastly extended youth.
But you are not making any of these points so that they can even be objected to by myself or others... You're deploying the kind of arguments I would expect from an undergrad philosophy major engaged in motivated cognition because you have not yet "learned how to lose an argument gracefully and become smarter by doing so".
And it is for this reason that I stand by the conclusion that in some cases beliefs about cryonics say very much about the level of pragmatic philosophical sophistication (or "rationality") that a person has cultivated up to the point when they stake out one of the more "normal" anti-cryonics positions. In your case, you are failing in a way I find particularly tragic, because normal people raise much better objections than you are raising - issues that really address the meat of the matter. You, on the other hand, are raising little more than philosophical confusion in defense of your position :-(
Again, I intend these statements only in the hope that they help you and/or audiences who may be silently identifying with your position. Most people make bad arguments sometimes and that doesn't make them bad people - in fact, it helps them get stronger and learn more. You are a good and valuable person even if you have made comments here that reveal less depth of thinking than might be hypothetically possible.
That you are persisting in your position is a good sign, because you're clearly already pretty deep into the cultivation of rationality (your arguments clearly borrow a lot from previous study) to the point that you may harm yourself if you don't push through to the point where your rationality starts paying dividends. Continued discussion is good practice for this.
On the other hand, I have limited time and limited resources and I can't afford to spend any more on this line of conversation. I wish you good luck on your journey, perhaps one day in the very far future we will meet again for conversation, and memory of this interaction will provide a bit of amusement at how hopelessly naive we both were in our misspent "childhood" :-)
Why is psychological continuity important? (I can see that it's very important for an identity to have psychological continuity, but I don't see the intrinsic value of an identity existing if it is promised to have psychological continuity.)
In our lives, we are trained to worry about our future self because eventually our plans for our future self will affect our immediate self. We also might care about our future self altruistically: we want that person to be happy just as we would want any person to be happy whose happiness we are responsible for. However, I don't sense any responsibility to care about a future self that needn't exist. On the contrary, if this person has no effect on anything that matters to me, I'd rather be free of being responsible for this future self.
In the case of cryogenics, you may or may not decide that your future self has an effect on things that matter to you. If your descendants matter to you, or propagating a certain set of goals matters to you, then cryonics makes sense. I don't have any goals that project further than the lifespan of my children. This might be somewhat unique, and it is the result of recent changes in philosophy. As a theist, I had broad-stroke hopes for the universe that are now gone.
Less unique, I think, though perhaps not generally realized, is the fact that I don't feel any special attachment to my memories, thoughts, viewpoints and values. What if a person woke up to discover that the last days were a dream and they actually had a different identity? I think they wouldn't be depressed about the loss of their previous identity. They might be depressed about the loss of certain attachments if the attachments remained (hopefully not too strongly, as that would be sad). They salient thing here is that all identities feel the same.
I've just read this article by Ben Best (President of CI): http://www.benbest.com/philo/doubles.html
He admits that the possibility of duplicating a person raises a serious question about the nature of personal identity, that continuity is no solution to this problem, and that he can find no other solution. But he doesn't seem to consider that the absence of any solution points to his concept of personal identity being fundamentally flawed.
Interesting. However, I don't see any problems with the nature of personal identity. My hunch is that I'm actually not confused about it.
In a lifetime, there is continuity of memories and continuity of values and goals even as they slowly change over time. I can trust that the person who wakes up tomorrow will be 'me' in this sense. She may be more refreshed and have more information, but I trust her her to act as "I" would. On the other hand, she might be excessively grouchy or suffer a brain injury, in which case this trust is misplaced. However, she is not me personal-identity wise for a variety of reasons:
[In both cases, the reason is because her thoughts and actions take place in the future. Eventually, I will have access to her thoughts and control of her body and then she becomes "me".]
Suppose I was duplicated overnight, and two byrnemas woke up in the morning. Both byrnemas would have continuity with the previous byrnema with respect to memories, values and goals. However, neither of them are the personal identity of byrnema of the night before just as whenever I wake up I'm not the personal identity of the night before, exactly for the reasons I bulleted.
With the two duplicates, there would be two distinct personal identities. You simply count the number of independent accesses to thoughts and motor control of bodies and arrive at two. Both byrnema have a subjective experience of personal identity, of course, and consider the other byrnema an "other". However, this "other" is similar to oneself in a way that is unprecedented, a twin sister that also has your memories, goals and values.
I think duplicates would be most problematic for loved ones. They would find themselves in a position of loving both duplicates, and being able to empathize with both, but not really caring so much if one was deleted, but being very distraught if both were deleted. That would be strange, because we haven't had any experience with that, but I'm sure we would adjust well enough.
People would take risks with their person, but only after checking and double-checking that their backup was recent and well. People wouldn't care if their person died -- they would understand (now through experience rather than introspection) that what makes them them is their memories, values, goals and a moment. And the moment is transient anyway. The illusion of self existing for more than a moment would be broken.
The post you linked to by Ben Best mentioned the impossibility of a personal identity in two different physical locations. Actually, interestingly, it would be possible to have an identity in two physical locations. To do this, you would need to stream the sensory data of two bodies into a single brain, located anywhere. As long as the brain had access to both bodies' sensory data, and could operate both bodies, and there was a single shared stream of consciousness, then that person would be physically located in two places at once. (But this is completely different from just duplicating a person.)
If you care about a person, then while you might not care as much if a recent duplicate or a recently duplicated person were lost, you would still care about as much if either of them suffers..
As is implied by my 'recently', the two will diverge, and you might end up with loyalty to both as distinct individuals, or with a preference for one of them.
Also, I don't think parents value each of newborn twins less because they have a spare.