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TheOtherDave comments on Timeless Identity - Less Wrong
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"a strong subjective experience of moment-to-moment continuity" is an artifact of the algorithm your brain implements. It certainly exists in as much as the algorithm itself exists. So does your personal identity. If in the future it becomes possible to run the same algorithm on a different hardware, it will still produce this sense of personal identity and will feel like "you" from the inside.
Yes, I'm not questioning whether a future simulation / emulation of me would have an identical subjective experience. To reject that would be a retreat to epiphenomenalism.
Let me rephrase the question, so as to expose the problem: if I were to use advanced technology to have my brain scanned today, then got hit by a bus and cremated, and then 50 years from now that brain scan is used to emulate me, what would my subjective experience be today? Do I experience “HONK Screeeech, bam” then wake up in a computer, or is it “HONK Screeeech, bam” and oblivion?
Yes, I realize that in both cases result in a computer simulation of Mark in 2063 claiming to have just woken up in the brain scanner, with a subjective feeling of continuity. But is that belief true? In the two situations there's a very different outcome for the Mark of 2013. If you can't see that, then I think we are talking about different things, and maybe we should taboo the phrase “personal/subjective identity”.
Clearly, your subjective experience today is HONK-screech-bam-oblivion, since all the subjective experiences that come after that don't happen today in this example... they happen 50 years later.
It is not in the least bit clear to me that this means those subjective experiences aren't your subjective experiences. You aren't some epiphenomenal entity that dissipates in the course of those 50 years and therefore isn't around to experience those experiences when they happen... whatever is having those subjective experiences, whenever it is having them, that's you.
Sounds like a fine plan, albeit a difficult one. Want to take a shot at it?
EDIT: Ah, you did so elsethread. Cool. Replied there.