Darklight comments on I need a protocol for dangerous or disconcerting ideas. - Less Wrong

3 Post author: Eitan_Zohar 12 July 2015 01:58AM

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Comment author: Eitan_Zohar 13 July 2015 02:04:12AM *  -1 points [-]

For instance, with Dust Theory, you say that you gave it at most a 10% chance of being true, and it was paralyzing to you. This shouldn't be. First, you need to consider your priors and the evidence.

No, I rated the death outcome as having a 10% chance of being true. But now I rate it much lower.

How often in the past have you had the actual experience that Dust Theory suggests is possible and which you fear? What actual experiential evidence do you have to suggest that Dust Theory is true?

This:

It will be some kind of natural selection in dust world lines, which will result in more stable ones, and most likely I am already in such line. In this line dreaming is built such that it will not result in important shifts of reality. And it is true: dreaming is not unconsciousness state. I start to have dreams immediately than I fall asleep. So dreaming is built to be not interupting some level of consciousness.

Basically, the fact that we do it only a little bit accounts for our observations in ways that other cosmological theories can't.

For that matter, one of the common threads of your fears seems to be that "you" cease to exist and are replaced by a different "you" or that "you" die. But the truth is already the case that people are constantly changing. The "you" from 10 years ago will be made up of different atoms than the "you" 10 years from now by virtue of the fact that our cells are constantly dying and being replaced. The thoughts we have also change from moment to moment, and our brains adjust the strengths of the connections between neurons in order to learn, such that our past and future brains gradually diverge.

Er, you don't understand the problem. I was worried about my subjective self dying.

Comment author: Darklight 13 July 2015 05:26:50PM 1 point [-]

I guess I don't understand then? Care to explain what your "subjective self" actually is?