how do you italicize in comments?
Asterisks around your *italic text* like that. There should be a "Show help" button below the comment field which will pop up a table that explains this stuff.
Isn't this why death is a fundamental problem for people?
I actually think so. I mean, I used to think of death as this horrible thing, but I realized that I will never experience being dead, so it doesn't bother me so much anymore. Not being alive bothers me, because I like being alive, but that's another story. However, I'm dying all the time, in a sense. For example, most of the daily thoughts of 10-year old me are thoughts I will never have again; particularly, because I live somewhere else now, I won't even have the same patterns being burned into my visual cortex.
I think the crux of the issue is that you believe generic "Chris H consciousness" is all that matters, no matter what platform is running it.
That's a good way of putting it. The main thing that bothers me about focusing on a "particular" person is that I (in your sense of the word) have no way of knowing whether I'm a copy (in your sense of the word) or not. But I do know that my experiences are real. So I would prefer to say not that there is a copy but that there are two originals. There is, as a matter of fact, a copy in your sense of the word, but I don't think that attribute should factor into a person's decision-making (or moral weighting of individuals). The copy has the same thoughts as the original for the same reason the original has his own thoughts! So I don't see why you consider one as being privileged, because I don't see location as being that which truly confers consciousness on someone.
I (in your sense of the word) have no way of knowing whether I'm a copy (in your sense of the word) or not. But I do >know that my experiences are real.
I see what you mean about not knowing whether you are a copy. I think this is almost part of the intuition I'm having--you in particular know that your experiences are real, and that you value them. So even if the copy doesn't know it's a copy, I feel that the original will still lose out. I don't think people experience death, as you noted above, but not being alive sucks, and that's what I think ...
Background:
On the most recent LessWrong readership survey, I assigned a probability of 0.30 on the cryonics question. I had previously been persuaded to sign up for cryonics by reading the sequences, but this thread and particularly this comment lowered my estimate of the chances of cryonics working considerably. Also relevant from the same thread was ciphergoth's comment:
Based on this, I think there's a substantial chance that there's information out there that would convince me that the folks who dismiss cryonics as pseudoscience are essentially correct, that the right answer to the survey question was epsilon. I've seen what seem like convincing objections to cryonics, and it seems possible that an expanded version of those arguments, with full references and replies to pro-cryonics arguments, would convince me. Or someone could just go to the trouble of showing that a large majority of cryobiologists really do think cryopreserved people are information-theoretically dead.
However, it's not clear to me how well worth my time it is to seek out such information. It seems coming up with decisive information would be hard, especially since e.g. ciphergoth has put a lot of energy into trying to figure out what the experts think about cryonics and come away without a clear answer. And part of the reason I signed up for cryonics in the first place is because it doesn't cost me much: the largest component is the life insurance for funding, only $50 / month.
So I've decided to put a bounty on being persuaded to cancel my cryonics subscription. If no one succeeds in convincing me, it costs me nothing, and if someone does succeed in convincing me the cost is less than the cost of being signed up for cryonics for a year. And yes, I'm aware that providing one-sided financial incentives like this requires me to take the fact that I've done this into account when evaluating anti-cryonics arguments, and apply extra scrutiny to them.
Note that there are several issues that ultimately go in to whether you should sign up for cryonics (the neuroscience / evaluation of current technology, estimate of the probability of a "good" future, various philosophical issues), I anticipate the greatest chance of being persuaded from scientific arguments. In particular, I find questions about personal identity and consciousness of uploads made from preserved brains confusing, but think there are very few people in the world, if any, who are likely to have much chance of getting me un-confused about those issues. The offer is blind to the exact nature of the arguments given, but I mostly foresee being persuaded by the neuroscience arguments.
And of course, I'm happy to listen to people tell me why the anti-cryonics arguments are wrong and I should stay signed up for cryonics. There's just no prize for doing so.