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thomblake comments on On the Anthropic Trilemma - Less Wrong
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I realize that this seems to be a common view, but I can't even begin to imagine how intelligent rational people who have given the matter some thought can possibly think that they are going to be one and only one particular future self even when other future selves exist. If your future selves A and B will both exist, what could possibly be the difference between being only future self A and being only future self B? No one seems to imagine a silver thread or a magical pixie dust trail connecting their present self and a particular future self. Is this supposed to be one of those mysterious "first person facts"? How? Your current self and all of your future selves have exactly the same experiences in either case, unless you expect something to break that symmetry. What would that be?
I know that I am me and you are not me, because (for example) when I want to pick up the pencil on the table between us my arm moves and yours doesn't.
Future self A can perform that experiment to determine that he is not also future self B. B can also do that with respect to A.
Thus, the anticipation of being both future self A and future self B does not correlate to any particular experience anyone is going to have.
I think you misunderstand me. Future you A is future you A, and not future you B, and likewise future you B is not future you A. No particular you will ever experience being A and B at the same time. Future you A and B both remember being current you, but not being each other. I completely agree with all that. What I don't understand is how either A or B is supposed to be you in the sense of being the same person as current you while the other is not?
I'm not claiming that A and B have to consider each other to be the same person. That would be a possibility, but they/you could also treat being the same person as non-transitive so each is the same person as current you (C), but they aren't the same person to each other, or A, B and C could consider themselves three different persons. The only thing that doesn't make sense to me is C going on to be either A or B, as determined by random chance (??? where would that randomness be happening?) or ... something? I don't even sufficiently understand how this is supposed to work to properly describe it.
A will probably call A the real you, and B will probably call B the real you. Other people might find them both the same as the current you, but might take sides on the labeling issue later if A or B does something they like or don't like. It'd surely be most useful to call both A and B "the same person as current you" in the beginning, at least, because they'd both be extremely similar to the current you. A might change more than B as time goes on, leading some to prefer identifying B as the "real" you (possibly right away, to dissipate the weirdness of it all), but it's all a matter of preference in labels. After all, even now the you that is reading this post is not the same as the you of 5 minutes ago. English simply isn't well-equipped to deal with the situation where a person can have multiple future selves (at least, not yet).
Good point. Fictional example:
William T. Riker was copied and his copy (hereafter "Thomas Riker") was abandoned all alone on a planet. Will Riker had friends and a career history since the copy, so for convenience Thomas Riker took the name "Thomas" and continued his old career where he left off.