While I like your approach in general as it promise to provide simple test for copy problem, I have some objections
In fact the term “copy” is misleading, and we should broke it on several terms. One of the is “my future state”. Future state is not copy by definition, as it different, but it could remember my past.
As “future state” is different from me, it opens all the hell of questions about not exact copies. Future state of me is not-exact copy of me which is different from me by the fact that it remembers me now as its past. It may be also different in other things. In fact you said that “not-exact copy of me which remember me in my past—is me anyway”. So you suggested a principle how prove identity of non-exact-copyes.
I will not remember most of my life moments. So they are dead ends in my life story. If we agree with your definition of identity it would mean that I die thousand times a day. Not pleasant and not productive model.
There will be false positives too. An impostor who claims to be Napoleon and has some knowledge of Napoleon’s life and last days, will be Napoleon by this definition of identity.
It will fail if we will try to connect early childhood of a person and his old state. Being 60 years old he has no any memory of being 3 years old, and not much similar personal traits. The definition of identity as “moving average continuity” (not in the map yet) could easily overcome this non natural situation.
We could reformulate many experiment in the way that copies exist in the past. For example, each day of the weak a copy of me appear in a cell, and he doesn’t know which day it is. (Something like Sleeping beauty experiment) In this case some of his copies are in the past from his point in timeline, and some may be in the future, but he should reason as if they all exist actually and simultaneously.
But I also like your intuition about the problem of actuality, that is if only moment now is real, no copies exist at all. Only “me now” exist. It closes the copy problem, but not closes the problem of “future state”.
In fact, I have bad news for any reader who happens to be here: the “copy problems” is not about copies. It is about next state of my mind, which is by definition not my copy.
3. I will not remember most of my life moments. So they are dead ends in my life story. If we agree with your definition of identity it would mean that I die thousand times a day. Not pleasant and not productive model.
It’s possible that we are all dying every Plank time, and that our CEV’s would judge this as an existential holocaust. I think that’s unlikely, but possible.
I don’t think it is true, I just said that it follows from the definition of identity based on ability to remember past moments.
In real life we use more complex understanding of identity, where it is constantly verified by multiple independent channels (I am overstraching here). if i don’t remember what I did yesterday, there still my non changing attributes like name, and also causal continuity of experiences.
While I like your approach in general as it promise to provide simple test for copy problem, I have some objections
In fact the term “copy” is misleading, and we should broke it on several terms. One of the is “my future state”. Future state is not copy by definition, as it different, but it could remember my past.
As “future state” is different from me, it opens all the hell of questions about not exact copies. Future state of me is not-exact copy of me which is different from me by the fact that it remembers me now as its past. It may be also different in other things. In fact you said that “not-exact copy of me which remember me in my past—is me anyway”. So you suggested a principle how prove identity of non-exact-copyes.
I will not remember most of my life moments. So they are dead ends in my life story. If we agree with your definition of identity it would mean that I die thousand times a day. Not pleasant and not productive model.
There will be false positives too. An impostor who claims to be Napoleon and has some knowledge of Napoleon’s life and last days, will be Napoleon by this definition of identity.
It will fail if we will try to connect early childhood of a person and his old state. Being 60 years old he has no any memory of being 3 years old, and not much similar personal traits. The definition of identity as “moving average continuity” (not in the map yet) could easily overcome this non natural situation.
We could reformulate many experiment in the way that copies exist in the past. For example, each day of the weak a copy of me appear in a cell, and he doesn’t know which day it is. (Something like Sleeping beauty experiment) In this case some of his copies are in the past from his point in timeline, and some may be in the future, but he should reason as if they all exist actually and simultaneously.
But I also like your intuition about the problem of actuality, that is if only moment now is real, no copies exist at all. Only “me now” exist. It closes the copy problem, but not closes the problem of “future state”.
In fact, I have bad news for any reader who happens to be here: the “copy problems” is not about copies. It is about next state of my mind, which is by definition not my copy.
I’m not sure if you’ve made this mistake or not, but I know I have in the past. Just because something is unimaginably horrible doesn’t mean it isn’t also true.
It’s possible that we are all dying every Plank time, and that our CEV’s would judge this as an existential holocaust. I think that’s unlikely, but possible.
I don’t think it is true, I just said that it follows from the definition of identity based on ability to remember past moments.
In real life we use more complex understanding of identity, where it is constantly verified by multiple independent channels (I am overstraching here). if i don’t remember what I did yesterday, there still my non changing attributes like name, and also causal continuity of experiences.
Ah, thanks for the clarification. I interpreted it as a reductio ad absurdum.