Jason R

Karma: −16

Jason R 8 Jan 2026 13:50 UTC
1 point
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in reply to: Yair Halberstadt’s comment on: A Brief Proof That You Are Every Conscious Thing
It seems to me that one must use the SIA to justify your position for the Awakening Game, since sleepers are possible rather than actual observers.
Don’t you agree?
Note that in reality there are no actual paradoxes, only results that challenge our intuitions or assumptions. The awakening game and its implication of universalism is an example of such a challenge.

Jason R 7 Jan 2026 18:06 UTC
1 point
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in reply to: Yair Halberstadt’s comment on: A Brief Proof That You Are Every Conscious Thing
Thank you Yair,
As to #1: I am glad we agree regarding the awakening game.
As to #2: I think you may be operating under a differing understanding/definition of universalism than the one Zuboff is using in his brief proof. As far as I understand it here, universalism is not trying to answer the question of why out of all the consciousness that exists you are conscious of this part, but rather, why out of all the (far more numerous) potential people (most of whom were never born) you should be so fortunate to count yourself among those who were born.
Consider this slight variation of the Awakening Game (which Zuboff calls the Hotel of Countless Rooms). In this version, countless (let’s say 2^1000) people are put to sleep in the Hotel of Countless Rooms. Then 1000 fair coins are tossed to yield a 1000 digit binary number. Then one of two games is played:
Hard version: The occupant of that hotel room matching that number is awakened.
Easy version: All sleepers in every of the 2^1000 rooms is awakened.
Since you agree with the logic of the more basic Awakening Game, I would assume you would also reason that if you participated in this Hotel of Countless Rooms Awakening Game, and if you found yourself awakened, then you could correctly reason that it is far more likely the Easy Game was played, rather than you being the one lucky person out of the 2^1000 people, to have had the sequence of coins match their room number.
In this version, the parallel to universalism is much clearer. Consider all the other 2^1000-1 people who were left behind in the hard version, these are like all the possible people (all the possible genetic combinations of sperm cells and eggs) which are never realized on earth. That you now find yourself to be among the very few (among all the possible) people to have been born should be shocking, under the Usual View. It is like being the lone person awakened under the hard version of the Hotel of Countless Rooms.
Given the improbability of finding ourselves to be among those few, are we not then equally justified in reasoning that the “Usual View” is not the “game that was played”, but rather, Universalism, which says it doesn’t matter with what genes you happened to be born with, any consciousness that appears anywhere, is consciousness you will find yourself to be within?

Jason R 7 Jan 2026 17:49 UTC
1 point
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in reply to: Dagon’s comment on: A Brief Proof That You Are Every Conscious Thing
There is no outside view for my experience of myself. I am a singleton in the multiverse—literally there is exactly one set of experiences that I have access to.
Acknowledged, and I agree. But that has no bearing on the argument as far as I can see.
One cannot apply probabilities to a singleton. One cannot generalize from a single datum.
If I am to understand you correctly, you are saying that if you see a box of 1,000 spilled coins, all of which landed “heads” you could not reason (from this singleton event) that it is more probable the box of coins contained double-headed, rather than fair coins? This seems obviously false to me, but I am open to hearing your arguments for why we could not draw this conclusion.
Well, no. it was stupendously improbable before I saw it, but once observed, I assign it p(1).
Consider if you won the national lottery 5 times in a row. While everyone else is increasingly shocked at your luck, you dismiss your win each time saying “don’t worry, it was P(1), nothing strange is going on.”
Should the lottery commission take your claim that it was P(1) at face value and not investigate to see if something fishy is going on? If they are justified in an investigation, what do you see that justification being?
Reminder: probability is subjective—it’s my estimate of what I might experience in the future.
I think this is a needless limitation of probability. When we observe something we didn’t expect, that can serve as a basis to revise one’s original assumptions. If you see a box of coins spill and all land heads up, you can revise your original assumption that all the coins were fair, as it would be stupendously improbable to observe what you just observed had they been fair coins. If the lottery commission observes you win 5 times in a row, they too are justified in revising their opinion that the game is fair, and are thereby justified to investigate further and question the legitimacy of your winning streak. And finally, the observation that you have been born (despite it being much less likely than winning the lottery 5 times in a row) can serve as a justification to question the legitimacy of the “Usual View.”
I would need further observations to determine whether the box had fair-seeming coins or double-headed coins, but I’d assign much higher probability before that observation to the double-headed expectation.
I agree you would need to check the coins to be 100% sure, but would you agree that you would not need to make any further observations to be >99.99999999% sure the coins are not fair (for reference the odds of seeing this happen when the coins are fair are ~1 in 10^301).

Jason R 6 Jan 2026 19:44 UTC
1 point
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in reply to: Yair Halberstadt’s comment on: A Brief Proof That You Are Every Conscious Thing
Would you care to answer my two questions? I think I could formulate a better reply to you if I knew where you stand on those matters.

Jason R 5 Jan 2026 17:47 UTC
2 points
−1
in reply to: FlorianH’s comment on: A Brief Proof That You Are Every Conscious Thing
Hi FlorianH,
I appreciate your detailed reply. Let me begin with a small clarification. I would say Universalism is better conceived of as there being simply a universal property (the immediacy of experience) that defines me, rather than any kind of “unified consciousness.”
I think that your original calculation failed to deliver a result, because it began with the assumption that human #7029501952 (Joe) already existed. Then of course, when Joe asks himself, what is the probability that I, human #7029501952 exist, this cannot count as evidence favoring either hypothesis.
It is equivalent to altering the Awakening Game above, where the pattern of coin flips is a priori stipulated to be the specific pattern matching the sleeper, which of course would not help the awakener decide which game was played.
Given that, let me explain how I see the Bayesian reasoning apply to deciding between these two hypotheses in personal identity:
A—Universalism (I exist in every conscious perspective, regardless of conditions/configurations)
B—The Usual View (I exist only because an absolutely specific pattern of begettings occurred)
O—The observation that “I exist”
Again let’s set both priors to 0.5.
P(A) = 0.5
P(B) = 0.5

And P(O) = 1 (the starting basis of our assumption, I exist, or I have awakened)
Note that the difference between A and B is that B requires a specific pattern of antecedent begettings, or else, “I would not exist”, “I would never have been born”, etc. If we go back to consider just 3 human begettings each of which requires winning a “sperm cell lottery” having odds of 1 in 200,000,000, then those 3 begettings have a probability of 1 in 8 septillion.
Let’s call this probability of winning the ancestral sperm cell lottery:
P(O | B) = (1/200,000,000)^3 = 1.25 × 10^-25 = 0.0000000000000000000000125%
But note that the above improbability only applies to the Usual View, for only the Usual View introduced the assumption that being born required a specific pattern of begettings. But one doesn’t have to win any lotteries in the case of universalism, so:
P(O | A) = 100%.
Now let us update our priors given the evidence/observation “I exist” (O):
P(A | O) = (P(O | A) × P(A)) / P(O) = (1 × 0.5) / 1 = 0.5
P(B | O) = (P(O | B) × P(B)) / P(O) = (0.0000000000000000000000125% × 0.5 / 1 = 6.25 × 10^-26
Note that the sharp reduction in probability for P(B | O) is entirely due to B’s additional constraint that stipulates your existence on the existence a very particular being, brought about by a very particular set of circumstances. Universalism doesn’t do this, and so survives the improbability of the sperm cell lotteries unscathed.
Now as to what you say in part (ii) of your reply, I agree. I think thought experiments involving duplication, cloning, teletransporters, etc. show that “being me” is not a matter of inheriting any particular physical body. And likewise, thought experiments involving partial or total amnesia, memory implantation, psychological changes induced by brain injury, drugs, or aging, etc. undermine the notion that bundles of memories or personality traits are what “makes me me.” Universalism then, is the natural conclusion that follows from abandoning both bodily, and psychological continuity theories when it comes to personal identity. But then, what is left that makes an experience mine? As Zuboff writes on page 26: https://www.pdcnet.org/wp/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/Zuboff_MSP-Supplement_2025.pdf
“It would be a very weird view that something as obviously incidental as wearing a blue shirt was essential to my existence as an individual subject of experience. Nobody would think that my putting on a different coloured shirt would replace me with someone else whose experience and self-interest would no longer be mine.
The usual view is that something far more substantive-seeming, like the identity of my body (or soul) or the continuing of my memories (which might in some strange hypothetical case be redirected into a different body or soul) is what is essentially involved in my continuing existence as a particular centre of experience and self-interest. Replace the body (or soul) or replace the mental continuity by a different mental stream and then I’d no longer be there but rather someone else.
Universalism says that what’s essential is just the much more general property of the experience being immediate—the experience being had in first-person style. As we’ve seen in answering the riddle of finding myself, the experience being immediate, being fist-person in style, is the only way I identify which being I am; and, as I am also saying, that is all that’s really involved in making something be me.”
Given what you write in “Relativity Theory for What the Future ‘You’ Is and Isn’t.” I think you would much enjoy the rest of Zuboff’s book.

Jason R 5 Jan 2026 16:18 UTC
1 point
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in reply to: Dagon’s comment on: A Brief Proof That You Are Every Conscious Thing
Hi Dagon,
I agree that any correct theory of personal identity must take into account the fact that one individual is only ever consciously aware of one particular individual’s point of view.
This observation “I exist” is in fact the starting point of the Brief Proof. Note that the Brief Proof would not work from the perspective of someone who did not exist, just as the evidence for the Easy Game does not exist for those who are never awakened.
The fact that a single individual is only ever aware of a single perspective can be explained without appeals to theories of personal identity, but rather, a much simpler answer from neurology. Any conscious brain state only has the reach of one particular organism’s nervous system, senses, and memories. This fact applies equally well to both the usual view, and universalism.
The non-integration of nervous systems alone, is enough to explain the limited scope of any particular being’s conscious perspective. As evidence, consider that patients who undergoe the Wada Test (akin to a temporary hemispherectomy) reintegrate the consciousness of both hemispheres when the anesthetic wears off, regaining conscious functions, etc. We do not have to hypothesize a separate left-hemisphere-soul, and right-hemisphere-soul to track their separate identities. The split between hemispheres can be accounted for simply by non-integration.
So the postulate, that some additional factor (beyond neural non-integration) has to be added to explain our experience becomes unnecessary and redundant, and should be dropped according to Ockham.
Finally, you may object that one’s existence, or one’s having been born, is something that has already happened, and therefore cannot be improbable. Sometimes people say that it is P(1). But consider: if I spill a box of 1,000 fair coins (an event which has already happened) and then look and find every one of those 1,000 fair coins has landed heads, is it not still stupendously improbable an occurrence? Consider too, if I check them one at a time, and find each one I check is heads. The fact that this is the result of a past event is no cause to dismiss the improbability of such an occurrence. And for the same reason, we cannot dismiss the improbability of having been born on account of it having already happened.
Now consider if there were two possibilities for what we just observed:
1. The box contained 1,000 fair coins, or
2. The box did not contain fair coins, but 1,000 double-headed coins
Would you agree it would be valid to reason that it is overwhelming more likely that the box contained double-headed coins, rather than fair coins? In other words, we can infer hypothesis #2. If so, can you explain why we cannot use a similar reasoning, to justify Universalism—which just as with the case of double-headed coins, obviates the improbability.

Jason R 5 Jan 2026 15:57 UTC
1 point
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in reply to: Yair Halberstadt’s comment on: A Brief Proof That You Are Every Conscious Thing
Hi Yair. What makes any event improbable is the presence of an improbable co-incidence.
You are correct that possessing a particular deck of cards, in any particular order, is not improbable. The reason it is not improbable is because there is no coincidence involved.
On the other hand, let’s say I have my own deck of cards, randomly shuffled, and when I check the order of the cards they exactly match the order of the cards in your deck. Now that would be improbable, because there is a low probability of observing such a co-incidence.
This is how the Hard Game is arranged in the above Awakening Game. You awaken only if there is a particular co-incidence between your pattern of heads and tails, and the result of 1000 fair coin flips.
1. Do you agree that if you find yourself awakened in the Awakening Game that you can infer it is overwhelmingly more likely that the Easy Game was played?
2. What is the important difference you can point to between the Hard Game and the Easy Game, and the Usual View and Universalism, when it comes to selecting which theory of personal identity is overwhelming more likely?

A Brief Proof That You Are Every Conscious Thing

Jason R27 Dec 2025 17:16 UTC

−16 points

15 comments3 min readLW link

Jason R

A Brief Proof That You Are Every Con­scious Thing

A Brief Proof That You Are Every Conscious Thing