why care?
Your measure may be tiny in absolute terms, but it will always seem like 1 to you.Let's say that Dust Theory is not true. Every time you fall asleep, a demon comes to your bed and creates a trillion copies of you. These copies are wiped of memory and given new ones, then are thrust into universes where those memories make sense. They wake up as if they have always lived there. Are you OK with that? Because I'm not.
In what sense is dust theory going to be false? How can I care about what may or may not be self, without knowing what it' is?
And why should my being asleep be relevant? Can't I credit a demon with the ability to clone me while I am awake.?
(Dust theory strongly supports that it could, because it means my consciousness could be suspended for any amount of time , and then restarted without my being aware)
Dust theory can guarantee that "you" .. a mental state containing your memories up until now...would not suddenly start experiencing a weird world, ..... that is the essence of Egans argument against it....but doesn't suggest that remaining conscious would make any difference. You seem to think that consciousness exerts some force that "keeps things together", somehow, but dust theory is nowhere near so causal.
Why?
Dust theory says what it says.
It might be helpful at this point to set down what you think the premises of dust theory are , since there seems to be some major miscommunication going on here,
And if I'm not actively aware of my memories, they don't really exist for me, do they?
A memory that you are not consciously aware of, but could retrieve at any time, is as existent as an object you could look .at, but are not currently looking at. In any case, if you think your identity is only defined by current conscious content, then your identity is nearly as unstable as your nightmare scenario.
How can I care about what may or may not be self, without knowing what it' is?
I can't. I don't care about the various unconscious beings who may have merged into my waking self this morning. That's not much comfort to me as I stand.
And why should my being asleep be relevant? Can't I credit a demon with the ability to clone me while I am awake.?
Certainly, but there is a much lower measure of that.
...(Dust theory strongly supports that it could, because it means my consciousness could be suspended for any amount of time , and then restarted without my
Dust theory implies that everything outside of my perception is in flux. Your experiences have to find themselves in a world in which they could have conceivably formed. Of course, you exist in every possible world which would produce that mindstate, but some are 'vaster' than others, leading you down the most probable courses.
Suppose that going to sleep or losing grasp of your surroundings opens a wider space of worlds you could exist in, which jumps you into another reality along with consistent memories of it. I can't figure out if this would be the case, or if my consciousness would most likely just dissolve, with only those beating trillion-to-one odds waking up in the morning. Or maybe my pool of 'experience' stays active when I sleep, even if I'm not aware of it. Either way (though I think Dust Theory is probably false) I'm afraid to go to sleep anymore.
I also do not understand the argument being made here: http://lesswrong.com/lw/1jm/getting_over_dust_theory/. Can someone explain to me please?
I posted these questions on other threads but I didn't get many answers. Sorry.
EDIT: Look, the first question boils down to: does my unconscious mind affect my measure? If so, than it isn't much different from being awake. If not, then all my problems seem to apply.
It occurs to me that not only would signing up for cryonics and then killing yourself before you could sleep is rational under these circumstances, but that the death of the universe can be escaped by simply rearranging your mind to believe it is in a universe where eternal life is possible, then ceasing its activity.