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Mark_Friedenbach comments on I Will Pay $500 To Anyone Who Can Convince Me To Cancel My Cryonics Subscription - Less Wrong
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It's not any different, and that's precisely the point. Do you get to experience what your MWI copies are doing? Does their existence in any way benefit you, the copy which is reading this sentence? No? Why should you care if they even exist at all? So it goes with uploading. That person created by uploading will not be you any more than some alternate dimension copy is you. From the outside I wouldn't be able to tell the difference, but for you it would be very real: you, the person I am talking to right now, will die, and some other sentient being with your implanted memories will take over your life. Personally I don't see the benefit of that, especially when it is plausible that other choices (e.g. revival) might lead to continuation of my existence in the way that uploading does not.
Uh, the present me is experiencing none of the future. I will "get to experience" the future, only via all the future copies of me that have a remembered history that leads back to the present me.
If none of the future mes exist, then that means I'm dead. So of course I care because I don't want to die?
I think we're suffering from a misunderstanding here. The MWI future copy versions of me are not something that exist in addition to the ordinary future me, they are the ordinary future me. All of them are, though each of them has only one remembered timeline.
Or "that person created by uploading will be as much me as any future version of me is me".
I'm a physicist, I understand perfectly well MWI. Each time we decohere we end up on one branch and not the others. Do you care at all what happens on the others? If you do, fine, that's very altruistic of you.
Let me try again.
First example: Let's say that tomorrow I'll decohere into 2 versions of me, version A and version B, with equal measure. Can you tell me whether now I should only care to what happens to version A or only to version B?
No, you can't. Because you don't know which branch I'll "end up on" (in fact I don't consider that statement meaningful, but even if it was meaningful, we wouldn't know which branch I'd end up on). So now I have to care about those two future branches equally. Until I know which one of these I'll "end up on", I have no way to judge between them.
Second example. Let's say that tomorrow instead of decohering via MWI physics, I'll split into 2 versions of me, version U via uploading, and version P via ordinary physics. Can you tell me in advance why now I should only be caring about version (P) and not about version (U)?
Seems to me that like in the first example I can't know which of the two branches "I'll end up on". So now I must care about the two future versions equally.
Yes, you'd care about P and not U, because there's a chance you'd end up on P. There's zero chance you'd end up as U.
Now tomorrow has come, and you ended up as one of the branches. How much do you care about the others you did not end up on?
In the case of MWI physics, I don't care about the other copies at all, because they cannot interact with me or my universe in any way whatsoever. That is not true for other copies of myself I may make by uploading or other mechanisms. An upload will do the same things that I would do, will have the same goals I have, and will in all probability do things that I would approve of, things which affect the universe in a way that I would probably approve of. None of that is true for an MWI copy.
This statement requires evidence or at least a coherent argument.
Actually, I think the burden of proof lies in the other direction. By what mechanism might you think that your subjective experience would carry over into the upload, rather than stay with your biological brain while the upload diverges as a separate individual? That's the more extraordinary belief.
I think this is at least partially a bogus question/description. Let me break it up into pieces:
This postulates an 'either/or' scenario, which in my mind isn't valid. A subjective experience carries over into the upload, and a subjective experience also stays in the biological brain. There isn't a need for the subjective experience to have a 'home'. It's ok for there to be two subjective experiences, one in each location.
Of course the upload diverges from the biological. Or rather, the biological diverges from the upload. This was never a question. Of course the two subjective experiences diverge over time.
And lastly:
By the sampling theorem, which separates the content from the substrate.
You are talking about something completely different. Can you describe to me what it feels like for someone to be nondestructively scanned for upload? What should someone walking into the clinic expect?
Sample scenario 1: I go to an upload clinic. They give me a coma inducing drug and tell me that it will wear off in approximately 8 hours, after the scan is complete. As I drift off, I expect a 50% chance that I will awake to find myself an upload, and a 50% chance that I will awake to find myself still stuck in a meat body.
Sample scenario 2: I go to an upload clinic. They tell me the machine is instantaneous and I will be conscious for the scan, and that the uploaded copy will be fully tested and operational in virtual form in about an hour. I step into the machine. I expect with 50% probability that I will step out of the machine after the scan, not feeling particularly different, and that an hour later I'll be able to talk to my virtual upload in the machine. I also expect with 50% probability that I will find myself spontaneously in virtual form the instant after the scan completes, and that when I check the block, an hour or more of real time will have passed even though it felt instantaneous to me.
(Waking up as an upload in scenario 2 doesn't seem much different from being put under for surgery to me, at least based on my experiences. You're talking, then suddenly everything is in a different place and the anaestheseologist is asking 'can you tell me your name', interrupting your train of thought and half an hour has passed and the doctor has totally lost track of the conversation right when it was getting interesting.)
Why are you saying that? If you don't answer this question, of why you believe there's no chance of ending up as the upload, what's the point of writing a single other word in response?
I see no meaningful difference between first and second example. Tell me what the difference is that makes you believe that there's no chance I'll end up as version U.