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If you don't know the argument it's irrational to call it wrong.
Your conclusion is wrong, therefore the argument must be wrong as well.
And you don't provide any arguments for your claim either..
Okay, here's one: Even with time-continuos self, humans value other people, even though they personally experience anything other peope do. There's some (moral) value in other persons. Maybe people value themselves more, but that's not even relevant to the argument. So, if time-continuos self doesn't exist, people will value their future selfs as much as any other persons, which is atleast more than nothing.
Of course, this assumes that such a person does value other people. May not apply to every single person.
Example of what? You didn't give your argument, only conclusion. I only guessed that this argument, whatever it is, will more visibly crumble in the case I suggested.
Eh. If you don't know the argument it's irrational to call it wrong. I didn't really argue anything, I just made an observation for those people who possibly believe that time-continuos self is required for morality.
Wrong. To see the error, try applying the argument to structures other than people.
Care to give an example then?
I'm gonna pull a Nesov on this one and say that belief in a time-continuous self can be thought of as a value/preference rather than belief. You care about your individual organism because evolution made you care about it, not because it is physically real (whatever that means).
Of course, similar reasoning can be used to show that observed particle physics is a Darwinian construct :-) Last I talked with Nesov about it, this was a big puzzle. Any news?
The lack of belief in a time-continuos self would give the same moral value to yourself as to other people, but wouldn't eliminate caring about yourself altogether.
In response to
Open Thread, August 2010
LW database download?
I was wondering if it would be a good idea to offer a download of LW or at least the sequences and Wiki. In the manner that Wikipedia is providing it.
The idea behind it is to have a redundant backup in case of some catastrophe, for example if the same happens to EY that happened to John C. Wright. It could also provide the option to read LW offline.
You can use the wget program like this: 'wget -m lesswrong.com'. A database download would be easier on the servers though.
In response to
David Pearce on Hedonic Moral realism
As you know, I'm sceptical that classical serial computers with a von Neumann architecture will ever be conscious, let alone have an empathetic appreciation of other conscious minds.
I don't think an article with statements like this belong to this site.
In response to
David Pearce on Hedonic Moral realism
By analogy, what would be "coherent extrapolated volition" of Neanderthals?
I actually want to know that. Does anyone know if there is any Neanderthal DNA remaining? I'd like to see an FAI go all 'Jurassic Park' on it and recreate one.
I think the answer is most likely that we can't. I'd be willing to have a discussion potentially leading us to that conclusion. I'll put it in my too-long queue of top-level posts to write...
The guy who wanted to start a polling firm might have a good idea, but I think if Nate Silver hasn't started his own polling firm yet we probably aren't going to.
Historically I've stayed away from political activism, but I got involved with a group trying to raise awareness about the police assaults on the University of Pittsburgh after the G20 summit. I thought it was a small enough issue that we could make a difference, but obviously we didn't. While I give the posters here a little more credit for being able to get things done than my leftist friends in Pittsburgh, I have no practical ideas for how we could actually accomplish something not at the meta-level.
Probably the best thing we could do is try to spread some of the memes raised in Politics is the Mind Killer.
Well, the mentioned Pirate Party is an example of succesfull political activism. Our party is already doing politics even before our first national elections, since the party often gives out statements on new legislation as requested by the justice ministry. Our neighbour parties in Sweden and Germany are even more succesful. And many of the lesswrong/transhumanist people are active in the Finnish Pirate Party.
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How about: consciousness is a sensory input that senses the brains own internal state and of which the brain makes use in the same way as it's other senses.
Consciousness actually means a number of different things, so any one definition will make discussion problematic. There really should be a number of different definitions for qualia/subjective consciousness, empirical consciousness etc.