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TheOtherDave comments on Cryonics without freezers: resurrection possibilities in a Big World - Less Wrong
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Well, in practical terms, the anticipations matter. I expect decisions I make now to affect the state of me-in-twenty-seconds; if I jump off a tall building, for example, I expect me-in-twenty-seconds to be a smear on the pavement, so if I value me-in-twenty-seconds not being a smear on the pavement, that inclines me not to jump off a tall building.
But no such relationship exists between me and me-twenty-seconds-ago; I don't expect decisions I make to affect the state of that entity.
You are of course correct, though, that my anticipations are facts about my minds and not facts about reality-other-than-my-mind, which might have all kinds of properties that make my anticipations (and recollections, and current perceptions and beliefs) simply false.
Yeah, it was your last paragraph that I was meaning. In a given moment, I don't value something about me 20 seconds from now. I value the current experience of thoughts that involve simulations about an idealization of me extrapolated in time. The thing I am valuing are immediate thoughts though. Much like altruistic values being rooted in your own immediate value of anticipations. My meat computer will act on observations to induce an anticipation of X in my brain. If I want to anticipate Y then I should do Z to bring about the actions that lead to the anticipation of Y. Once I am at the precise instant that I'm experiencing Y, I'm not valuing Y because my mind is valuing anticipations post-Y.
It is very interesting given things like closed-timelike curves and so on that there is no anticipation of past selves. It would be great to see a write up of why the perceived flow of entropy causes me to only future-value an anticipation like being proud of my former actions or accomplishments. I'm sure that the right level of articulation is evolutionary biology. I don't see how having visceral cognitive anticipations of the past could be adaptive. But it's still interesting. And even more interesting to think that there is some most-like-me entity within the subspace of entities that do have past-looking anticipations, probably wondering why people don't have future-looking anticipations right now (in a Big Universe, anyway)