“I still have trouble biting that bullet for some reason.… I don’t think that, if I were really selfish, I could jump off a cliff knowing smugly that a different person would experience the consequence of hitting the ground.”
Replace “jump off a cliff” with “heroin overdose.” Sure you could, and many do. Not caring about the future is actually very common in humans, and it’s harder for smart people to understand this attitude because many of us have very good impulse control. But I still find it strange that you seem to want continuity of self to be more than an illusion. Many more paradoxes occur when you insist on continuity of self than when you don’t; Occam’s Razor would tell you to throw away the concept.
“I still have trouble biting that bullet for some reason.… I don’t think that, if I were really selfish, I could jump off a cliff knowing smugly that a different person would experience the consequence of hitting the ground.”
Replace “jump off a cliff” with “heroin overdose.” Sure you could, and many do. Not caring about the future is actually very common in humans, and it’s harder for smart people to understand this attitude because many of us have very good impulse control. But I still find it strange that you seem to want continuity of self to be more than an illusion. Many more paradoxes occur when you insist on continuity of self than when you don’t; Occam’s Razor would tell you to throw away the concept.