If faced with the knowledge that physical continuity doesn’t exist in the real world at the level of fundamental physics, one might conclude that it’s crazy to continue to value it, and this is what Eliezer’s post argued. But if we apply this reasoning in a non-selective fashion, wouldn’t we also conclude that we should stop valuing things like “pain” and “happiness” which also do not seem to exist at the level of fundamental physics?
The relevant distinction isn’t between whether something “exists at the level of fundamental physics” or not. The distinction is between whether something reduces to fundamental physics or not.
Perhaps some talk about macroscopic physical continuity can be reduced to fundamental physics. (What you say about widespread agreement on typical cases points to this.) But some talk about physical continuity makes no sense at all within the theoretical framework of quantum mechanics. It’s not just that the physical continuity isn’t fundamental. It’s not just that it doesn’t “have a simple definition in terms of fundamental physics”. Rather, it can’t be given any sense at all. That, at any rate, is the claim in posts like Can You Prove Two Particles Are Identical?. It makes more sense to say that a concept is morally irrelevant if it can’t be referred to anything in reality at all.
Pain and happiness might reduce to fundamental physics, while physical continuity (in some cases) doesn’t reduce to anything. There would then be no inconsistency in selectively discarding physical continuity but not pain and happiness.
It’s not just that it doesn’t “have a simple definition in terms of fundamental physics”. Rather, it can’t be given any sense at all.
The thing is, Eliezer jumped directly from “physical continuity can’t be given sense in terms of persistent identity of fundamental particles” to “we should stop caring about physical continuity” while skipping the step of “physical continuity can’t be given any other sense”. How did he do this, except by relying implicitly on the assumption that it should “have a simple definition in terms of fundamental physics” or something similar, even as he would surely deny this assumption when considering it explicitly?
I would say that what I did is more like continuing to care about continuity, but trying to put it into causal continuity or pattern continuity after the particular hypothesis of ‘particle identity continuity’ turned out to be nonsense. Also, I regard this as a problem not strictly of utility functions because it controls what I expect to see happen after being cryonically revived or stepping into a Star Trek transporter—I either see the next moment, or see what happens after dying in a car crash i.e. NULL.
The relevant distinction isn’t between whether something “exists at the level of fundamental physics” or not. The distinction is between whether something reduces to fundamental physics or not.
Perhaps some talk about macroscopic physical continuity can be reduced to fundamental physics. (What you say about widespread agreement on typical cases points to this.) But some talk about physical continuity makes no sense at all within the theoretical framework of quantum mechanics. It’s not just that the physical continuity isn’t fundamental. It’s not just that it doesn’t “have a simple definition in terms of fundamental physics”. Rather, it can’t be given any sense at all. That, at any rate, is the claim in posts like Can You Prove Two Particles Are Identical?. It makes more sense to say that a concept is morally irrelevant if it can’t be referred to anything in reality at all.
Pain and happiness might reduce to fundamental physics, while physical continuity (in some cases) doesn’t reduce to anything. There would then be no inconsistency in selectively discarding physical continuity but not pain and happiness.
The thing is, Eliezer jumped directly from “physical continuity can’t be given sense in terms of persistent identity of fundamental particles” to “we should stop caring about physical continuity” while skipping the step of “physical continuity can’t be given any other sense”. How did he do this, except by relying implicitly on the assumption that it should “have a simple definition in terms of fundamental physics” or something similar, even as he would surely deny this assumption when considering it explicitly?
I would say that what I did is more like continuing to care about continuity, but trying to put it into causal continuity or pattern continuity after the particular hypothesis of ‘particle identity continuity’ turned out to be nonsense. Also, I regard this as a problem not strictly of utility functions because it controls what I expect to see happen after being cryonically revived or stepping into a Star Trek transporter—I either see the next moment, or see what happens after dying in a car crash i.e. NULL.