every identity feels the same from the inside
What exactly it means to "feel the same" in this context? The same memories? No. The same plans? No. The same emotions? No.
Seems to me the "same" things are: (1) being a consciousness, and (2) having the traits that all humans have. In the latter sense we are the same to all humans, and in the former sense, we are the same to all conscious being.
But it seems like stretching the meaning of the word "same" extremely far, almost to its opposite.
What exactly it means to "feel the same" in this context? The same memories? No. The same plans? No. The same emotions? No.
Memories, plans, emotions and even qualities of what it feels like to be a general or specific human are all aspects I would bundle with an identity's 'situation'. For example, in philosophies that assert there is 'one shared consciousness', they don't mean we all think the same thoughts or have the same plans.
Rather, there would be something in common with specifically the ways it feels on the inside to be an 'I', to be an observer looking out through all the details of their situation. There seems to be some sort of intuition (possibly false) that there is something qualitatively identical about any computation that results in feeling like you are person. (For example, it would feel different, and 'identity' would be different, if you instead were part of a hive mind, maybe.)
Exploiting this particular intuition, it can't possibly matter if you're copied and destroyed. The situational details are the same for a copy, and then the elusive second part ("identity") is identical for everyone, including adjacent copies, and so they are the same.
...looking at it from the other way, if someone didn't think a copy was identical, what part would be different? This thing is what I'm suggesting is the same for all persons.
So why is our world so orderly? There's a mathematically possible continuation of the world that you seem to be living in, where purple pumpkins are about to start falling from the sky. Or the light we observe coming in from outside our galaxy is suddenly replaced by white noise. Why don't you remember ever seeing anything as obviously disorderly as that?
Who says all of this is mathematically possible? I've read this idea before, and I think it's wrong.
First of all, I think it's very difficult to guess what is mathematically possible. We experience the universe at a level which is already extremely evolved. For example, I imagine that mathematically possibility resulted in an incredibly complex structure that eventually mapped to the rules of physics (string theory maybe, but certainly eventually quantum mechanics and then atoms, etc). Then the universe we experience is just the manifestation of that physics.
Secondly, another way to look at it, is that counter factual 'possibility' is not the same thing as mathematical possibility. For example I could have chosen not to compose this comment (counter-factually) but it wasn't actually possible that I wouldn't because I'm computing a program which -- certainly at this scale -- is deterministic.
Oh, I see you already considered this:
But I'd say that there's a small chance that maybe yes, and that if we understood the right kind of math, it would seem very obvious that not all intuitively possible human experiences are actually mathematically possible.
I think this is very likely, and in fact we don't need to compute what is possible ... What we experience is exactly what is mathematically possible.
So why is our world so orderly? There's a mathematically possible continuation of the world that you seem to be living in, where purple pumpkins are about to start falling from the sky. Or the light we observe coming in from outside our galaxy is suddenly replaced by white noise. Why don't you remember ever seeing anything as obviously disorderly as that?
Who says all of this is mathematically possible? I've read this idea before, and I think it's wrong.
First of all, I think it's very difficult to guess what is mathematically possible. We experience the universe at a level which is already extremely evolved. For example, I imagine that mathematically possibility resulted in an incredibly complex structure that eventually mapped to the rules of physics (string theory maybe, but certainly eventually quantum mechanics and then atoms, etc). Then the universe we experience is just the manifestation of that physics.
Secondly, another way to look at it, is that counter factual 'possibility' is not the same thing as mathematical possibility. For example I could have chosen not to compose this comment (counter-factually) but it wasn't actually possible that I wouldn't because I'm computing a program which -- certainly at this scale -- is deterministic.
I think I used to experience something like this when I was a teenager. I'd reflexively assume whatever identity was needed for rapport, not necessarily always with skill, and this seemed like lying only afterwards when I realized I had gone too far and would probably get caught. This was annoying because I didn't really have control over my lying. At some point in my early 20s this spontaneously stopped happening. I wonder if this simply had something to with my brain maturing and whatever represents the relevant parts of my identity solidifying.
Do you think your family has anything to do with your curious cognition? In my paternal family, lying seems more like a sport than anything morally reprehensible and successful deception is considered something to be proud of. I don't agree with them but can't say I hate them either.
I also discovered I was like this as a teenager -- that I had an extremely malleable identity. I think it was related to being very empathetic -- I just accepted whichever world view the person I was speaking with came with, and I think in my case this might have been related to reading a lot growing up, so that it seemed that a large fraction of my total life experience were the different voices of the different authors that I had read. (Reading seems to require quickly assimilating the world view of whomever is first person.)
I also didn't make much distinction between something that could be true and something that was true. I don't know why this was. or if it is related to the first thing. But if I thought about a fact, and it didn't feel currently jarring with anything else readily in mind, it seemed just as true as anything else and I was likely to speak it. So a few times after a conversation, I would shake my head and wonder why I had just said something so absurdly untrue, as though I had believed it.
In my early twenties, I found I needed to create a fixed world view -- in fact, I felt like I was going crazy. Maybe I was, because different world views were colliding and I couldn't hold them separate when action was required (like choosing an actual job) rather than just idle conversation.
That's why I gravitated towards physical materialism. I needed something fixed, a territory behind all of these crazy maps. I think that the map that I have now is pretty good, and well-integrated with the territory, but it took 3-5 years. I'm still flexible with understanding other world views. For example, I was in a workshop a few days ago where we needed to defend different views, and I received one that was marginally morally reprehensible. I was the only one in my group able to defend it. (It wasn't such a useful skill there, I think most people just assumed I had that view, which is unfortunate, but I didn't mind -- if it was important to signal correctly at this workshop I would have lied and said I couldn't relate.)
it feels messy and discontinuous and inconvenient, to keep saving iterations of all my old junk.
When dealing with old data, what I find most stressful is deciding which things to keep. So as far as possible I don't. It's a wasted effort. I keep everything, or I delete everything. It doesn't matter that there's gigabytes of stuff on my machine that I'll never look at, as long as I never have to see it or think about it. Disc space is measured in terabytes these days.
So that's what I am going to do. I actually ordered an external hard drive, and every few weeks I'll back up my hard drive. The whole thing (no decisions).
I also understand that I don't need to worry about versions -- the external hard drive just saves the latest version.
I also talked to a friend today and found out they backed their data regularly. I was surprised; didn't know regular people did this regularly.
Yeah, I often get misinterpreted that way.
Relevant earlier exchange here.
Any suggestions you have about how I could have worded my question to make it clearer that I was actually interested in the answer are welcome.
I understood (and my perspective changed quite a bit) as soon as I read about Miller's Law in the exchange you linked. I really like having a handle for the concept (for my own sake, its usefulness is curbed by not being well-known).
I believe the default interpretation of the question you asked is the interpretation that I had (that you were using the Socratic method). The reason for this being the default interpretation is that there is an obvious, intuitive answer. (This question was a good counter-argument, which is why I think it was up-voted.)
... to deflect this interpretation, your question could be worded to be less obvious, and allow more nuance. Perhaps, "If you could remain healthy indefinitely, do you expect you would ever choose to die?", or, "If you could remain healthy indefinitely, for which conditions would you ever choose to die?"
Sure, I recognize that there are all kinds of feelings one can have about immortality and death that are not captured, or even necessarily relevant, to one's choices about living and dying.
I'm interested in the choices, and the factors that contribute to those choices, so I asked about them.
Others are of course welcome to investigate other things however they consider best.
I'm interested in the choices, and the factors that contribute to those choices, so I asked about them.
If you are specifically interested in the contexts of a person deciding that they do wish, or do not wish, to continue living in the current moment, then my comment wasn't relevant.
However, I interpreted your question as a Socratic challenge to realize that one values immortality because they do not wish to die in the present moment. (I think these are separate systems in some sense, perhaps far versus near).
If you could remain healthy indefinitely, when do you expect you would choose to die?
Why?
I don't think this question is a good way to investigate feelings about immortality and death.
This is somewhat related to Yvain's post post about liking versus wanting / The Neuroscience of Pleasure.
While we're alive, we want to keep on living. I recall moments -- locked away for the moment, unreachable --when the idea of death caused feelings of intense terror. But one can also recognize an immutable biological component to this (immutable unless one is depressed or in pain, etc). To circumnavigate this immediate biological feeling about death, it is better to try and perceive, counter-factually, if you were already dead, would you care? I think it is interesting that the answers are different if we're discussing tomorrow, or 100 years from now, or 100 years ago. (Tut recently shared this quote from Mark Twain.)
I take it you've got a Windows or Linux machine? Because if you have a Mac, there's a much easier solution. Edit: I mean easier than a continuous, ongoing chore of deciding what files to save, drag-and-dropping stuff, etc. You do still need to buy a device, though. For a $20 budget I recommend this 32 GB USB flash drive.
I have a Windows machine, but I know there are automatic back-up schedules that can be done. I just don't want to do it... I don't want to think about a complex automatic process or make decisions about scheduling. Trying to pinpoint why ... it feels messy and discontinuous and inconvenient, to keep saving iterations of all my old junk.
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So it's like the same algorithm operating on different data?
On some level of abstraction this is both trivial and meaningless: at the bottom we all are just "particles following the same laws of physics". The question is, can we make it more specific while it still remains true? How far?
That's a great way to put it!
To be clear, just the part about feeling like I'm "me". I think it would feel very different to be an alien, but I expect I would feel the same way about being myself.
I agree about the triviality. Especially for the thesis that we all share one consciousness -- that we are all a physical computation is both obvious and meaningless (everything is a physical computation) but it also means it doesn't matter if that particular computation is displaced in space or time or copied -- there's nothing unique that doesn't get carried over (if it's true that all our senses of self are essentially the same computation).