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Epiphany comments on Open Thread, October 1-15, 2012 - Less Wrong
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There's one really important detail here. If you get uploaded, even if the copy is put into a body exactly like yours and your genes are fully preserved and everything goes right, you still stop experiencing as soon as you die.
Is that acceptable to you?
Okay, I was pretty sure that was your real point, so I just wanted to confirm that and separate away everything else.
But to be honest, I don't have a real answer. It's definitely not obvious to me that I will stop experiencing in any real way, but I have a hard time dismissing this as well. One traditional answer is that "you will stop experiencing" is incoherent, and that continuity of experience is an illusion based on being aware of what you were thinking about a split second ago, among other things.
The continuation of experience argument is compelling if you consider my transporter malfunction scenario.
That is one situation that would definitely result in a discontinuation of experience.
Others which I have discussed with Saturn and TheOtherDave (a wonderfully ironic handle for this discussion) have resulted in my considering other possibilities like being re-assembled with the exact same particles in the same or different locations and being transformed over time via neuron replacement or similar.
I decided that being transformed would probably maintain continuity of experience, and being re-assembled out of the same particles in the exact same locations would probably result in continuity of experience (because I can't see that as a second instance), but I am not sure about it (because the same particles in different locations might not qualify as the same instance, which brings into question whether same instance guarantees continuous experience) and I'm having a hard time thinking of a clarifying question or hypothetical scenario to use for working it out. (It's all in the link right there).
What's not incoherent, though, is looking forward to experiencing something in the future, yet knowing you're going to be disassembled by a transporter and a copy of you will experience it instead. That, in no uncertain terms, is death. We can tell ourselves all day that having a continuous experience relies on you being able to connect your current thought and previous thought, but the real question we need to ask is "Will I have any thoughts at all?" so the connected thoughts question is a red herring (as it relates only to your second instance, not your first one) and is a poor clarifying question for telling whether you (the original) survived.
In coherent terms, what we should avoid is this:
Either way, only a copy of you will experience it, because the non-copy of you is trapped in the present and has no way to experience the future. The copy can be made artificially, using a transporter, or naturally as time passes. Why is there a difference?
Why do you think that time copies you?
Well, it doesn't even perfectly preserve the original, so I fail to see what else it could be but a copy.
You might argue that for some reason the time-derived copy is more important than an artificial copy, of course, but why?
Why is the time-copy even a copy though? If we call some A a copy of some original B, then we have to have reason to associate A with B (if A and B are paintings, the one is a copy of the other if it closely resembles it, say). What association does EpiphanyA at t0 have with EpiphanyB at t1?
You... don't see a reason to associate future-you with present-you?
Well, I think I persist through time. But you're saying that time makes copies of me, and I'm curious to know why you think those things are copies and not just new (very short lived) people.
I don't think the distinction is meaningful. Possibly we just mean different things by the word "copy"?
Wait, wait, wait. I'm still confused as to why you think that time is copying me. By what mechanism does time create new instances of me and destroy the old ones? At what interval does this happen? Has anyone actually observed this phenomenon or is it just a theory?
I could reverse the question. Why do you think you're the same person at different times, as opposed to being a copy? By what mechanism is a single person carried forward through time? Has anyone actually observed this phenomenon, or is it just a theory?
It's not clear to me that those are fair questions, but then it's not clear to me that their reversals are fair, either.
Occam's razor. The theory that I'm being copied and destroyed over and over again doesn't explain anything additional that I can think of, so it's more likely the simpler idea (that I am not being copied and destroyed over and over) is true.
Also, not believing that I am being copied does not qualify as a belief. That's just lack of belief in a theory.
If you guys believe I'm being copied over and over again, that IS a belief though, and if you want me to agree with it, the burden of proof lies on you.
I think both of you are sorta failing to address (or not addressing clearly enough) the point that objects being "copied" "destroyed" or "persisted" is not really meaningful at the level of physics at all -- like envisioning electrons as billiard balls, it's mapping a concept that's intuitive in one's mind onto the physical world where it does not apply.
At the bottommost level of quantum physics that we know of, electrons have no identity. From what I gather to "destroy" an electron from here and "copy" it there is indistinguishable physically (even in principle) from "moving" it from here to there. Those are concepts which are differentiatable in our adapted-via-evolution minds, not in reality.
That having been said I don't dismiss your concerns about uploading altogether because we still aren't unconfused enough about consciousness to be able to clarify to ourselves what the fuck it's supposed to do... I would really like to be unconfused about qualia and the nature of existence before I do any uploading of myself.
Yup. Which is why I say it's not clear to me those are fair questions.
That said... if in the future two entities exist that are physically and behaviorally indistinguishable from one another, and one of them is me, it follows that either both of them are me, or one and only one of them is me. In the latter case, it seems "me-ness" depends some physically and behaviorally undetectable attribute which only one of them has.
Occam's razor also seems to suggest that both of them are me, since the alternative posits an additional unnecessary entity in the system.