Lets remove unnecessary complications and consider the more essential question. You are knocked out. While unconscious, a particle-for-particle copy of you is made with all identical energy levels, momenta, spins, colors, flavors, and any other quantum states associated with any of the particles in your body. The only differences are all the particles in the new copy are 3 m to the east of the particles in the original. The unconscious copies are placed someplace nice and revived approximately simultaneously.
Pretty obviously, neither copy feels like it is the other copy. Pretty obviously, each copy presumes it is the original, or presumes it has a 50:50 chance of being the original, but each copy thinks the same as the other, at least initially.
Further, if this process was done to you without your knowledge, and while still unconscious, the original you was destroyed, when the copy came to, it would have no inkling that it was not you and that you were dead. It would think it was you and that you are not dead.
Is there really any important difference between your existence now, and one in which your physical body was replaced by a particle-for-particle copy every so often? To WHOM or WHAT is that difference experienced?
My own conclusion is that the continuity of my life is something of an illusion. And that my distaste for dying is primarily something bred into me by evolution, it is not hard to imagine how it would provide a significant survival advantage over humans without that trait.
I don’t know much what to do with this point of view, but one thing I don’t do is pay money now to have my severed head frozen after I legally die. It is enough that I carry through on the more straightforward survival instinct type things that evolution has stuck me with.
Is there really any important difference between your existence now, and one in which your physical body was replaced by a particle-for-particle copy every so often? To WHOM or WHAT is that difference experienced?
Yes, it is of importance to the me right here, right now, in the present. Under one interpretation I wake up in the other room. In the other I do not—it is some other doppelgänger which shares my memories but whose experiences I do not get to have.
If I somehow find myself in the room with my clone, it’s true that there’s no way short of checking external evidence like security footage or somesuch to determine which is the real me. That is true. But that is a statement about my knowledge, not the world as it exists. The map is not the territory.
If I were to wake up in the other room with the clone nearby, it no longer matters which one of us is the original or not. He isn’t me. He is a separate person that just happens to share all of the same memories and motivations that I have. I want to say that I wouldn’t even give this copy of me the time of day, but that would be rhetorical. In some ventures he would be my greatest friend, in others my worst enemy. (Interestingly I could accuratly tell which right now by application of decision theory to the variants of the prisoner’s delima.) But even when I choose to interfere in his affairs, it is not for directly self-serving reasons—I help him for the same reason I’d help a really close friend, I hurt him for the same reason I’d hinder a competitor.
The truth has real implications for the me that does exist, in the here and now. Do I spend not-insignificant sums of money on life insurance to cover cryonic preservation for me and my family, thereby foregoing other opportunities? Do I consider assisted suicide and cryonic preservation when I am diagnosed with a terminal or dibilitating disese of the brain? Do I stipulate revival instead of uploading in my cryonics contract, knowing that it might mean never being revived if the technology can not be developed before my brain deteriorates too much? Do I continue to spend time debating this philosophical point with other people on the Internet, in the hope that they too choose revival and there is safety in numbers?
Under one interpretation I wake up in the other room. In the other I do not—it is some other doppelgänger which shares my memories but whose experiences I do not get to have.
I don’t understand how to distinguish “the clone is you” from “the clone is a copy of you”. Those seem like identical statements, in that the worlds where yon continue living and the world where the clone replaces you are identical, atom for atom. Do you disagree? Or do you think there can be a distinction between identical worlds? If so, what is it?
He isn’t me. He is a separate person that just happens to share all of the same memories and motivations that I have.
In the same sense, future-you isn’t you either. But you are willing to expend resources for future-you. What is the distinction?
Is there really any important difference between your existence now, and one in which your physical body was replaced by a particle-for-particle copy every so often? To WHOM or WHAT is that difference experienced?
Yes, to the universe as witnessed by an outside observer, and to the law. The important difference is haecceity, which to an naive inside view is currently meaningless, but to any intuitive observer or reflective agent becomes relevant. Objective history exists, it’s just that we humans-within-universe simply cannot access it.
There are countless unknowns about the universe that we know about. There are also almost certainly unknown unknowns. Haecceity currently lies essential to sense of self, but in a more broadly aware context perhaps its value could be concretized and rationalized.
Upload shmupload.
Lets remove unnecessary complications and consider the more essential question. You are knocked out. While unconscious, a particle-for-particle copy of you is made with all identical energy levels, momenta, spins, colors, flavors, and any other quantum states associated with any of the particles in your body. The only differences are all the particles in the new copy are 3 m to the east of the particles in the original. The unconscious copies are placed someplace nice and revived approximately simultaneously.
Pretty obviously, neither copy feels like it is the other copy. Pretty obviously, each copy presumes it is the original, or presumes it has a 50:50 chance of being the original, but each copy thinks the same as the other, at least initially.
Further, if this process was done to you without your knowledge, and while still unconscious, the original you was destroyed, when the copy came to, it would have no inkling that it was not you and that you were dead. It would think it was you and that you are not dead.
Is there really any important difference between your existence now, and one in which your physical body was replaced by a particle-for-particle copy every so often? To WHOM or WHAT is that difference experienced?
My own conclusion is that the continuity of my life is something of an illusion. And that my distaste for dying is primarily something bred into me by evolution, it is not hard to imagine how it would provide a significant survival advantage over humans without that trait.
I don’t know much what to do with this point of view, but one thing I don’t do is pay money now to have my severed head frozen after I legally die. It is enough that I carry through on the more straightforward survival instinct type things that evolution has stuck me with.
Yes, it is of importance to the me right here, right now, in the present. Under one interpretation I wake up in the other room. In the other I do not—it is some other doppelgänger which shares my memories but whose experiences I do not get to have.
If I somehow find myself in the room with my clone, it’s true that there’s no way short of checking external evidence like security footage or somesuch to determine which is the real me. That is true. But that is a statement about my knowledge, not the world as it exists. The map is not the territory.
If I were to wake up in the other room with the clone nearby, it no longer matters which one of us is the original or not. He isn’t me. He is a separate person that just happens to share all of the same memories and motivations that I have. I want to say that I wouldn’t even give this copy of me the time of day, but that would be rhetorical. In some ventures he would be my greatest friend, in others my worst enemy. (Interestingly I could accuratly tell which right now by application of decision theory to the variants of the prisoner’s delima.) But even when I choose to interfere in his affairs, it is not for directly self-serving reasons—I help him for the same reason I’d help a really close friend, I hurt him for the same reason I’d hinder a competitor.
The truth has real implications for the me that does exist, in the here and now. Do I spend not-insignificant sums of money on life insurance to cover cryonic preservation for me and my family, thereby foregoing other opportunities? Do I consider assisted suicide and cryonic preservation when I am diagnosed with a terminal or dibilitating disese of the brain? Do I stipulate revival instead of uploading in my cryonics contract, knowing that it might mean never being revived if the technology can not be developed before my brain deteriorates too much? Do I continue to spend time debating this philosophical point with other people on the Internet, in the hope that they too choose revival and there is safety in numbers?
I don’t understand how to distinguish “the clone is you” from “the clone is a copy of you”. Those seem like identical statements, in that the worlds where yon continue living and the world where the clone replaces you are identical, atom for atom. Do you disagree? Or do you think there can be a distinction between identical worlds? If so, what is it?
In the same sense, future-you isn’t you either. But you are willing to expend resources for future-you. What is the distinction?
Yes, to the universe as witnessed by an outside observer, and to the law. The important difference is haecceity, which to an naive inside view is currently meaningless, but to any intuitive observer or reflective agent becomes relevant. Objective history exists, it’s just that we humans-within-universe simply cannot access it.
There are countless unknowns about the universe that we know about. There are also almost certainly unknown unknowns. Haecceity currently lies essential to sense of self, but in a more broadly aware context perhaps its value could be concretized and rationalized.