My non-episodic memory contains the “facts” that Buffy the Vampire Slayer was one of the best television shows that was ever made, and the Pink Floyd aren’t an interesting band. My boyfriend’s non-episodic memory contains the facts that Buffy was boring, unoriginal, and repetetive (and that Pink Floyd’s music is trancendentally good).
Objectively, these are opinions, not facts. But we experience them as facts. If I want to preserve my sense of identity, then I would need to retain the facts that were in my non-episodic memory. More than that, I would also lose my sense of self if I gained contradictory memories. I would need to have my non-episodic memories and not have the facts from my boyfriend’s memory.
That’s the reason why “off the shelf” doesn’t sound suitable in this context.
So, on one level, my response to this is similar to the one I gave (a few years ago) [http://lesswrong.com/lw/qx/timeless_identity/9trc]… I agree that there’s a personal relationship with BtVS, just like there’s a personal relationship with my husband, that we’d want to preserve if we wanted to perfectly preserve me.
I was merely arguing that the bitlength of that personal information is much less than the actual information content of my brain, and there’s a great deal of compression leverage to be gained by taking the shared memories of BtVS out of both of your heads (and the other thousands of viewers) and replacing them with pointers to a common library representation of the show and then have your personal relationship refer to the common library representation rather than your private copy.
The personal relationship remains local and private, but it takes up way less space than your mind currently does.
That said… coming back to this conversation after three years, I’m finding I just care less and less about preserving whatever sense of self depends on these sorts of idiosyncratic judgments.
I mean, when you try to recall a BtVS episode, your memory is imperfect… if you watch it again, you’ll uncover all sorts of information you either forgot or remembered wrong. If I offered to give you perfect eideitic recall of BtVS—no distortion of your current facts about the goodness of it, except insofar as those facts turn out to be incompatible with an actual perception (e.g., you’d have changed your mind if you watched it again on TV, too) -- would you take it?
I would. I mean, ultimately, what does it matter if I replace my current vague memory of the soap opera Spike was obsessively watching with a more specific memory of its name and whatever else we learned about it? Yes, that vague memory is part of my unique identity, I guess, in that nobody else has quite exactly that vague memory… but so what? That’s not enough to make it worth preserving.
And for all I know, maybe you agree with me… maybe you don’t want to preserve your private “facts” about what kind of tie Giles was wearing when Angel tortured him, etc., but you draw the line at losing your private “facts” about how good the show was. Which is fine, you care about what you care about.
But if you told me right now that I’m actually an upload with reconstructed memories, and that there was a glitch such that my current “facts” about BTVS being a good show for its time is mis-reconstructed, and Dave before he died thought it was mediocre… well, so what?
I mean, before my stroke, I really disliked peppers. After my stroke, peppers tasted pretty good. This was startling, but it posed no sort of challenge to my sense of self.
Apparently (Me + likes peppers) ~= (Me + dislikes peppers) as far as I’m concerned.
I suspect there’s a million other things like that.
I think I’ve got a good response for this one.
My non-episodic memory contains the “facts” that Buffy the Vampire Slayer was one of the best television shows that was ever made, and the Pink Floyd aren’t an interesting band. My boyfriend’s non-episodic memory contains the facts that Buffy was boring, unoriginal, and repetetive (and that Pink Floyd’s music is trancendentally good).
Objectively, these are opinions, not facts. But we experience them as facts. If I want to preserve my sense of identity, then I would need to retain the facts that were in my non-episodic memory. More than that, I would also lose my sense of self if I gained contradictory memories. I would need to have my non-episodic memories and not have the facts from my boyfriend’s memory.
That’s the reason why “off the shelf” doesn’t sound suitable in this context.
So, on one level, my response to this is similar to the one I gave (a few years ago) [http://lesswrong.com/lw/qx/timeless_identity/9trc]… I agree that there’s a personal relationship with BtVS, just like there’s a personal relationship with my husband, that we’d want to preserve if we wanted to perfectly preserve me.
I was merely arguing that the bitlength of that personal information is much less than the actual information content of my brain, and there’s a great deal of compression leverage to be gained by taking the shared memories of BtVS out of both of your heads (and the other thousands of viewers) and replacing them with pointers to a common library representation of the show and then have your personal relationship refer to the common library representation rather than your private copy.
The personal relationship remains local and private, but it takes up way less space than your mind currently does.
That said… coming back to this conversation after three years, I’m finding I just care less and less about preserving whatever sense of self depends on these sorts of idiosyncratic judgments.
I mean, when you try to recall a BtVS episode, your memory is imperfect… if you watch it again, you’ll uncover all sorts of information you either forgot or remembered wrong. If I offered to give you perfect eideitic recall of BtVS—no distortion of your current facts about the goodness of it, except insofar as those facts turn out to be incompatible with an actual perception (e.g., you’d have changed your mind if you watched it again on TV, too) -- would you take it?
I would. I mean, ultimately, what does it matter if I replace my current vague memory of the soap opera Spike was obsessively watching with a more specific memory of its name and whatever else we learned about it? Yes, that vague memory is part of my unique identity, I guess, in that nobody else has quite exactly that vague memory… but so what? That’s not enough to make it worth preserving.
And for all I know, maybe you agree with me… maybe you don’t want to preserve your private “facts” about what kind of tie Giles was wearing when Angel tortured him, etc., but you draw the line at losing your private “facts” about how good the show was. Which is fine, you care about what you care about.
But if you told me right now that I’m actually an upload with reconstructed memories, and that there was a glitch such that my current “facts” about BTVS being a good show for its time is mis-reconstructed, and Dave before he died thought it was mediocre… well, so what?
I mean, before my stroke, I really disliked peppers. After my stroke, peppers tasted pretty good. This was startling, but it posed no sort of challenge to my sense of self.
Apparently (Me + likes peppers) ~= (Me + dislikes peppers) as far as I’m concerned.
I suspect there’s a million other things like that.