Why do you have your position on destructive uploads? It could be that when you go to sleep, you die, and a new person who thinks they’re you wakes up. The world is inhabited by day-old people who are deluded by their memories and believe they’ve lived decades-old lives. Everyone will cease to exist as a person the next time they go to sleep.
If you believe that, I can’t prove you wrong. But it’s not a productive worldview.
In a world where everyone is uploaded or Star Trek transported each day, you could believe that the world is inhabited by day-old people who will cease to exist on their next transport. I couldn’t prove you wrong. But it wouldn’t be a productive worldview.
Why do you have your position on destructive uploads
Mostly by comparison to non-destructive uploads. Copy my mind to a machine non-destructively, and I still identify with meat-me. You could let machine-me run for a day, and only then kill off meat-me. I don’t like that option and would be confused by someone who did. Destructive uploads feel like the limit of that case where the time interval approaches zero. As with the case outlined in the post, I don’t see a crossed line where it stops being death and starts being transition.
Now that I’ve written that, I wish I’d thought of it before you asked; the two are really mirror images. Approach destructive uploads from the copy-then-kill side, and it feels like death. Approach them from the expand-then-contract side, and it feels like continuous identity. Yet at the midpoint between them they turn into the same operation.
In a world where everyone is uploaded or Star Trek transported each day, you could believe that the world is inhabited by day-old people who will cease to exist on their next transport. I couldn’t prove you wrong. But it wouldn’t be a productive worldview.
Who cares? Don’t appeal to social norms. For the person about to step into teleporter, there’s a true difference, even if it not observable from the outside.
For the person about to step into teleporter, there’s a true difference, even if it not observable from the outside.
Sure. For every person about to go to bed, there’s also a true difference between the way they are as they go to bed, and the way they are as they wake up.
That there is a true difference doesn’t really matter much; a more useful question is whether we value the difference… which is a psychological and social question. When you insist on ignoring social norms, the effect is simply to insist that a particular set of social norms (the ones having to do with continuous existence in a single body being important) be given unexamined primacy.
Which is fine for you, since you embrace that set. For those of us who reject it, it just seems like a goofy thing to insist on.
I can’t justify believing that I will continue to exist 5 seconds from now—that I am more than this thought, right now—without appealing to social norms and practicality.
Why do you have your position on destructive uploads? It could be that when you go to sleep, you die, and a new person who thinks they’re you wakes up. The world is inhabited by day-old people who are deluded by their memories and believe they’ve lived decades-old lives. Everyone will cease to exist as a person the next time they go to sleep.
If you believe that, I can’t prove you wrong. But it’s not a productive worldview.
In a world where everyone is uploaded or Star Trek transported each day, you could believe that the world is inhabited by day-old people who will cease to exist on their next transport. I couldn’t prove you wrong. But it wouldn’t be a productive worldview.
Mostly by comparison to non-destructive uploads. Copy my mind to a machine non-destructively, and I still identify with meat-me. You could let machine-me run for a day, and only then kill off meat-me. I don’t like that option and would be confused by someone who did. Destructive uploads feel like the limit of that case where the time interval approaches zero. As with the case outlined in the post, I don’t see a crossed line where it stops being death and starts being transition.
Now that I’ve written that, I wish I’d thought of it before you asked; the two are really mirror images. Approach destructive uploads from the copy-then-kill side, and it feels like death. Approach them from the expand-then-contract side, and it feels like continuous identity. Yet at the midpoint between them they turn into the same operation.
Who cares? Don’t appeal to social norms. For the person about to step into teleporter, there’s a true difference, even if it not observable from the outside.
Sure. For every person about to go to bed, there’s also a true difference between the way they are as they go to bed, and the way they are as they wake up.
That there is a true difference doesn’t really matter much; a more useful question is whether we value the difference… which is a psychological and social question. When you insist on ignoring social norms, the effect is simply to insist that a particular set of social norms (the ones having to do with continuous existence in a single body being important) be given unexamined primacy.
Which is fine for you, since you embrace that set. For those of us who reject it, it just seems like a goofy thing to insist on.
I can’t justify believing that I will continue to exist 5 seconds from now—that I am more than this thought, right now—without appealing to social norms and practicality.