You are just a random one of the observer-moments.
I don't think the word "you" is doing any work in that sentence.
Personal identity may not exist as an ontological feature on the low level of physical reality, but it does exist in the high-level of our experience and I think it's meaningful to talk about identities (lines of observer-moments) which may die (the line ends).
If you did buy into that theory, that would result in a warped form of average utilitarianism, where you want to maximize the average value of the total utility of a given person.
I'm not sure I understand what you mean (I don't endorse average utilitarianism in any case). Do you mean that I might want to maximize the average of the utilities of my possible time-lines (due to imperfect knowledge), weighted by the probability of those time-lines? Isn't that just maximizing expected utility?
Personal identity may not exist as an ontological feature on the low level of physical reality, but it does exist in the high-level of our experience and I think it's meaningful to talk about identities (lines of observer-moments) which may die (the line ends).
I don't think that's relevant in this context. You are a random observer. You live.
I suppose if you consider it intrinsically important to be part of a long line of observers, then that matters. But if you just think that you're not going to have as much total happiness because you don't live as l...
Haven't had one of these for awhile. This thread is for questions or comments that you've felt silly about not knowing/understanding. Let's try to exchange info that seems obvious, knowing that due to the illusion of transparency it really isn't so obvious!