I don't think "choice" is a central concept to economics. It seems pretty easy to me to reimagine every major economic theory of which I'm aware without "choosing" occuring.

"perhaps eventually finding no compelling reason not to dissolve increasingly artificial barriers between individual identities."

No thanks, Ben. I've got to wonder, why isn't it enough just to solve aging and minimize existential risk? If I were the administrator of a turing test to see if you were a subjective conscious entity like me, this is the point where you'd fail.

I don't think you've proven what you claim to have proven in this post, but it might work as propaganda to increase cyronics enrollment, which should be good for both of us.
Specifically, I don't think it's clear that (1) current cryonics technology prevents information-theoretic death, (2) that if I'm "revived" from cryonics such that it fools discernment technology of that era, I'm actually having a subjective conscious experience of being alive and conscious. And perhaps discernment technology 30 years later will tragically demonstrate why, and what could've been done differently to preserve me as a subjective conscious entity, (3) future societies with the technology to revive us will choose to.

Separate from propaganda, I think 1-3 are important areas to focus on in terms of research and innovation. We don't want to be fooled by our own propaganda and thus fail to rationally maximize our persistence odds. We don't want to be prisoners of our own myths.

"Your future belief is fixed, but it is fixed by your current choice whether to think rationally, not by quarks zipping in from Pluto."

You sound sure about that (the belief that people have a choice whether to think rationally). I'm curious what you base your sureness on? I'm not sure that any person or entity has a "choice" in that matter, but I'm interested in the best evidence/arguments to the contrary.

a. y. mous, in my estimation you're on surest ground describing free will as an "experience". Given all the ways we've already discovered that the experience seems to be illusory, it seems to me to be quite likely that free will is in every way illusory. You also use the word "enjoying", which I like. I consider the enjoyment of a free will experience to be a luxury to indulge in to the the degree that it maximizes my persistence odds (given how unfriendly reality seems to be to my long-term persistence). Beyond that, scientific inquiry into the free-will experience does seem to be important to me, because it seems such a fundamental element of the general human subjective conscious experience. It would be wisely conservative, in my opinion, to place priority on preserving that part of the bundle of human subjective conscious experience as we seek various solutions to the mortality challenges we face.

Rosser,
Perhaps if some women didn't give it up so easy to famous Einstein we'd have GUT by now.

mtravern,
I'll have a response up to your post on my blog within 10 minutes.

http://www.hopeanon.typepad.com

Mtravern,
In my opinion you're preying on bias to achieve status advantage for yourself/posting name. But I don't think it will be as effective a social strategy in this overcomingbias medium as it would be in the general population.

"Carl Sagan (I think) said we should be open-minded, but not so open that our brains fall out. It's even more important when discussing issues as morally fraught as torture, that we don't open our minds so far that our souls fall out.

Well said.

Posted by: Eliezer Yudkowsky | September 16, 2007 at 06:07 PM"

What does that even mean? The quote and concept seem to distract from empirical inquiry and rational problem solving, rather than add to them. I'm not sure I see it as different in kind from "If it doesn't fit, then you must acquit."