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TheOtherDave comments on Timeless Identity - Less Wrong
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Ah, hopefully I'm slowly getting what you mean. So, there was the original you, Mark 2013, whose algorithm was terminated soon after it processed the inputs “HONK Screeeech, bam”, and the new you, Mark 2063, whose experience is “HONK Screeeech, bam” then "wake up in a computer". You are concerned with... I'm having trouble articulated what exactly... something about the lack of experiences of Mark 2013? But, say, if Mark 2013 was restored to life in mostly the same physical body after a 50-year "oblivion", you wouldn't be?
Pretty much correct. To be specific, if computational continuity is what matters, then Mark!2063 has my memories, but was in fact “born” the moment the simulation started, 50 years in the future. That's when his identity began, whereas mine ended when I died in 2013.
This seems a little more intuitive when you consider switching on 100 different emulations of me at the same time. Did I somehow split into 100 different persons? Or was there in fact 101 separate subjective identities, 1 of which terminated in 2013 and 100 new ones created for the simulations? The latter is a more straight forward explanation, IMHO.
No, that would make little difference as it's pretty clear that physical continuity is an illusion. If pattern or causal continuity were correct, then it'd be fine, but both theories introduce other problems. If computational continuity is correct, then a reconstructed brain wouldn't be me any more than a simulation would. However it's possible that my cryogenically vitrified brain would preserve identity, if it were slowly brought back online without interruption.
I'd have to learn more about how general anesthesia works to decide if personal identity would be preserved across on the operating table (until then, it scares the crap out of me). Likewise, a AI or emulation running on a computer that is powered off and then later resumed would also break identity, but depending on the underlying nature of computation & subjective experience, task switching and online suspend/resume may or may not result in cycling identity.
I'll stop there because I'm trying to formulate all these thoughts into a longer post, or maybe a sequence of posts.
I would say that yes, at T1 there's one of me, and at T2 there's 100 of me.
I don't see what makes "there's 101 of me, one of which terminated at T1" more straightforward than that.
It's wrapped up in the question over what happened to that original copy that (maybe?) terminated at T1. Did that original version of you terminate completely and forever? Then I wouldn't count it among the 100 copies that were created later.
Sure, obviously if it terminated then it isn't around afterwards.
Equally obviously, if it's around afterwards, it didn't terminate.
You said your metric for determining which description is accurate was (among other things) simplicity, and you claimed that the "101 - 1" answer is more straightforward (simpler?) than the "100" answer.
You can't now turn around and say that the reason it's simpler is because the "101-1" answer is accurate.
Either it's accurate because it's simpler, or it's simpler because it's accurate, but to assert both at once is illegitimate.
I'll address this in my sequence, which hopefully I will have time to write. The short answer is that what matters isn't which explanation of this situation is simpler, requires fewer words, a smaller number, or whatever. What matters is: which general rule is simpler?
Pattern or causal continuity leads to all sorts of weird edge cases, some of which I've tried to explain in my examples here, and in other cases fails (mysterious answer) to provide a definitive prediction of subjective experience. There may be other solutions, but computational continuity at the very least provides a simpler model, even if it results in the more "complex" 101-1 answer.
It's sorta like wave collapse vs many-worlds. Wave collapse is simpler (single world), right? No. Many worlds is the simpler theory because it requires fewer rules, even though it results in a mind-bogglingly more complex and varied multiverse. In this case I think computational continuity in the way I formulated it reduces consciousness down to simple general explanation that dissolves the question with no residual problems.
Kinda like how freewill is what a decision algorithm feels like from the inside, consciousness / subjective experience is what any computational process feels like from the inside. And therefore, when the computational process terminates, so too does the subjective experience.