Not equivalent. Now, I’m not saying that I, personally wouldn’t want to live (for reasons that are no different from any other animal’s reasons), but it’s really not equivalent. I have people who depend on me now, I have a good chance of making the world a better place because of my existence. I have people who will immediately suffer if I die.
In the future, what would be the value of this primitive mind? Taken completely out of my current context like that, would I really be the same person? Sure, I might enjoy myself, but what more would I contribute? I’d just be redundant, or worse, completely obsolete...it would be kind of like making 2 copies of yourself and sending them around, and imagining that this means you’ve lived twice as much. Nope...each version of you lives one, slightly more redundant life.
Again, I’m not saying that I wouldn’t want to live in the future. I’m saying that when you go to bed and wake up each night, you lose ~1% of yourself. When you move to a new city or get a new job, you lose 2% of yourself as all your old habits change and are rewritten by new ones. When someone you love and spend all your time with dies, you lose 5% of yourself, and then it gets rewritten with a new relationships or lifestyle. If you lose your job and everyone you knew in life, you lose 10% of yourself as your lifestyle completely and radically alters.
If you actually die, you lose 100% of yourself, of course, and then there is no “you” to speak of.
And if you wake up one day 1000 years from now with your entire society fundamentally altered, you lose at least 20% of yourself.
It’ll grow back of course, possibly better than before. Some might even welcome the changes...I think I probably would. But I can totally understand how this might go under someone’s threshold for “continuity”.
Not equivalent. Now, I’m not saying that I, personally wouldn’t want to live (for reasons that are no different from any other animal’s reasons), but it’s really not equivalent. I have people who depend on me now, I have a good chance of making the world a better place because of my existence. I have people who will immediately suffer if I die.
In the future, what would be the value of this primitive mind? Taken completely out of my current context like that, would I really be the same person? Sure, I might enjoy myself, but what more would I contribute? I’d just be redundant, or worse, completely obsolete...it would be kind of like making 2 copies of yourself and sending them around, and imagining that this means you’ve lived twice as much. Nope...each version of you lives one, slightly more redundant life.
Again, I’m not saying that I wouldn’t want to live in the future. I’m saying that when you go to bed and wake up each night, you lose ~1% of yourself. When you move to a new city or get a new job, you lose 2% of yourself as all your old habits change and are rewritten by new ones. When someone you love and spend all your time with dies, you lose 5% of yourself, and then it gets rewritten with a new relationships or lifestyle. If you lose your job and everyone you knew in life, you lose 10% of yourself as your lifestyle completely and radically alters.
If you actually die, you lose 100% of yourself, of course, and then there is no “you” to speak of.
And if you wake up one day 1000 years from now with your entire society fundamentally altered, you lose at least 20% of yourself.
It’ll grow back of course, possibly better than before. Some might even welcome the changes...I think I probably would. But I can totally understand how this might go under someone’s threshold for “continuity”.