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endoself comments on Lifeism, Anti-Deathism, and Some Other Terminal-Values Rambling - Less Wrong Discussion
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I'm not quite sure that I understand your post, but, if I do, it seems to contradict what you said earlier. If the concepts of personal identity and anticipated subjective experience are mere approximation to the truth, how do you determine what is and isn't a copy? Your earlier statement, "The important thing is that I fork myself knowing that I might become the unhappy one (or, more properly, that I will definitely become both), so that I only harm myself.", seems to be entirely grounded in these ideas.
Continuity of personal identity is an extraordinarily useful concept, especially from an ethical perspective. If Sam forks Monday night in his sleep, then on Tuesday we have two people:
Sam-X, with personal timeline as follows: Sam_sunday, Sam_monday, Sam_tuesday_x
Sam-Y, with personal timeline as follows: Sam_sunday, Sam_monday, Sam_tuesday_y
I consider it self-evident that Sam_sunday should be allowed to arrange for Sam_monday to be tortured without the ability to make it stop, and by the same token Sam_monday should be allowed to do the same thing to Sam_tuesday_x.
I reject the premise. Why should it be self-evident that Sam_sunday should be allowed to arrange for Sam_monday to be tortured? Doesn't this seem like something people only came up with because of the illusion of subjective anticipation?
EDIT: I just read what you wrote in a different comment on this post:
You statements make sense in light of this. My morality is much closer to classical utilitarianism (is that the term?) and may actually be classical utilitarianism upon reflection. I assumed that you did care about the avoidance of torture as a terminal value, since most LessWrongers do. Torture is often used as a stock example of something that causes disutility so, if you are presenting an argument, you will often need to mention this aspect of your value system in order to bridge inferential distance.
I think that difference accounts for my remaining confusion.