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Epiphany comments on Open Thread, October 1-15, 2012 - Less Wrong
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"The essence of self" seems like the wrong question to me. That sounds too much like "What is the essence of your personality?" and that's irrelevant here.
What I'm talking about is my ability to experience. We all have an ability to experience (I assume) that, although it may be shaped by our personalities, it is not our personalities. Example:
A Christian sees a Satanic ritual. A Satanist sees the same ritual.
The Christian is horrified. The Satanist thinks it's great.
The reason one was horrified and the other thought it was great is because they have different beliefs, possibly different personality types, different life experiences and possibly even different neurological wiring.
What did they have in common?
They both saw a Satanic ritual.
THAT is the part I am trying to point out here. The part that experiences. It's not one's personality, or beliefs, or experiences or neurological traits.
I am saying essentially "Even if personality, beliefs, experiences and neurological differences are copied, this does nothing to guarantee that the part of you that experiences is going to survive." Asking to define the essence of self is not relevant since I'm saying to you "Even if self is copied, this thing that I am talking about may not survive".
Here is a clarifying example:
Transporter Malfunction Scenario
Note to self: Thinking about motion might be the key to this.
How would you convince someone who thinks instants of experience are real and memories that give instants of experience historical context are real, but doesn't believe in any meaningful process of forward continuity from one instant of experience to another beyond the similarity of memories, to believe otherwise? There's no difference between blinking, taking a nap and being destructively teleported in this stance. It's all just someone experiencing something now, and someone else with very similar memories that include the present experience moment experiencing something else in the future.
Well, that makes the second time you ignored my questions, so I will tap out.
I've noted to self that this seems like a pattern with us, as you have complained about a question being ignored a few times now. Not sure what I should be doing about it when I don't see a question as relevant but maybe I should just be like "I don't see how this is relevant."
Don't know how I got the habit of ignoring things that seem irrelevant and moving on to whatever seems relevant but I can see why it would be annoying so I will be thinking about that. Thanks for getting me to see the pattern.