The non-painless upload

Prismattic

I have been trying to absorb the Lesswrong near-consensus on cryonics/quantum mechanics/uploading, and I confess to being unpersuaded by it. I'm not hostile to cryonics; just indifferent, and having a bit of trouble articulating why the insights on identity that I have been picking up from the quantum mechanics sequence aren't compelling to me. I offer the following thought experiment in hopes that others may be able to present the argument more effectively if they understand the objection here.

Suppose that Omega appears before you and says, “All life on Earth is going to be destroyed tomorrow by [insert cataclysmic event of your choice here]. I offer you the chance to push this button, which will upload your consciousness to a safe place out of reach of the cataclysmic event, preserving all of your memories, etc. up to the moment you pushed the button and optimizing you such that you will be effectively immortal. However, the uploading process is painful, and because it interferes with your normal perception of time, your original mind/body will subjectively experience the time after you pushed the button but before the process is complete as a thousand years of the most intense agony. Additionally, I can tell you that a sufficient number of other people will choose to push the button that your uploaded existence will not be lonely.”

Do you push the button?

My understanding of the Lesswrong consensus on this issue is that my uploaded consciousness is me, not just a copy of me. I'm hoping the above hypothetical illustrates why I'm having trouble accepting that.

Do you push the button?

Why do people feel the need to discuss "huge relative disutilities"? What's the difference between that and being obnoxiously hyperbolic?

In the current example, I'm not even sure what kind of point he's trying to make. It sounds like he's saying "Some people like bagels. But what if someone poisoned your bagel with a poison that made your blood turn into fire ants?"

Is this an autism thing? There were people doing this at the meetup I went to as well.

It seems like moral problems get a negative phrasing more often than not in general, not just when Yudkowsky is writing them. I mean, you have the Trolley problem, the violinist, pretty much all of these, the list goes on. Have you ever looked at the morality subsections of any philosophy forums? Everything is about rape, torture, murder etc. I just assumed that fear is a bigger motivator than potential pleasantness and is a common aspect of rhetoric in general. I think that at least on some level it's just the name of the game, moral dilemma -> reason... (read more)

1TheOtherDave15y

FWIW, I'm neurotypical and not exceptionally obnoxious. Can't speak for "people." I can speak a little bit to why I do it, when I do. One difficulty with comparing consequentialist from deontological ethical frameworks is the fact that in many plausible scenarios, they make the same predictions. I can talk about why it's a bad idea to rob a bank in terms of its consequences, but a deontologist will just shrug and say "Or, you can just acknowledge that it's wrong to rob banks, which is simpler," and it's not clear we've accomplished anything. So to disambiguate them, it's helpful to introduce cases where optimizing consequences requires violating deontological rules. And to turn up the contrast, it's often helpful to (a) choose really significant deontological rules, rather than peripheral ones, and (b) introduce very large differences between the value of the +rules and -rules conditions. Which leads to large relative disutilities. Now, one can certainly say "But why is comparing consequentialist from deontological ethical frameworks so important that you're willing to think about such awful things in order to do it? Can't you come up with nicer examples? Or, if not, think about something else altogether?" To which I won't have a response. As for the current example, I'm not exactly sure what point he's making either, but see my comment on the post for my best guess as to what point he's making, and my reaction to that point.

4wedrifid15y

I don't know if it's an autism thing... but I'm definitely going to have to include that in a hypothetical one of these days. :)

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The non-painless upload

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