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trist comments on Continuity in Uploading - Less Wrong Discussion
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If you rewrite my nuerons such that I have all of Donald Trump's memories (or connections) and none of my own, yes. If you only rewrite my name, no, for I would still identify with the memories. There's lots of space between those where I'm partially me and partially him, and I would hazard to forward-identify with beings in proportion to how much of my current memories they retain, possibly diluted by their additional memories.
Ok, what if - like Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind - I slowly over a period of time eliminate your memories. Then maybe - like Dark City - I go in and insert new memories, maybe generic, maybe taken from someone else. This can be done either fast or slowly if it matters.
This future continuation of your current self will have nothing other than a causal & computational connection to your current identity. No common memories whatsoever. Would you expect to experience what this future person experiences?
Based on your other comments, I infer that you consider this question entirely different from the question "Are you willing to consider this future person you?" Confirm?
Correct.
Cool, thanks. Given that, and answering for my own part: I'm not sure what any person at any time would possibly ever observe differentially in one case or the other, so I honestly have no idea what I'd be expecting or not expecting in this case. That is, I don't know what the question means, and I'm not sure it means anything at all.
That's fair enough. You got the point with your first comment, which was to point out that issues of memory-identity and continuous-experience-identity are / could be separate.
Perhaps I understand more than I think I do, then.
It seems to me that what I'm saying here is precisely that those issues can't be separated, because they predict the same sets of observations. The world in which identity is a function of memory is in all observable ways indistinguishable from the world in which identity is a function of continuous experience. Or, for that matter, of cell lineages or geographical location or numerological equivalence.
And I'm saying that external observations are not all that matters. Indeed it feels odd to me to hold that view when the phenomenon under consideration is subjective experience itself.
I didn't say "external observations".
I said "observations."
If you engage with what I actually said, does it feel any less odd?
You said "predict the same set of observations" which I implicitly took to mean "tell me something I can witness to update my beliefs about which theory is correct," to which the answer is: there is nothing you - necessarily external - can witness to know whether my upload is death-and-creation or continuation. I alone am privy to that experience (continuation or oblivion), although the recorded memory is the same in either case so there's no way clone could tell you after.
You could use a model of consciousness and a record of events to infer which outcome occurred. And that's the root issue here, we have different models of consciousness and therefore make different inferences.