In any case, you don’t lose continuity of consciousness when asleep; your brain keeps ticking away in the background as it does its maintenance routines. Never heard of timeless physics or Tegmark’s multiverses; looking at the links, though, I don’t really see the relevance of them. I do in fact believe in the many-worlds theory of quantum physics; that there are a nigh-infinite copies of me does not mean that this particular instance of me is unimportant to me (and, of course, the a good chunk of those other mes likely feel the same).
If someone built a teleporter that created a copy of me, said copy of me would be an instance of the class of persons who refer to themselves as “nick012000” on the internet; however, creating another instance of said class does not mean that it is the same as another instance of said class. To use a programming metaphor, it’d be like saying that “Nick012000 nick1 = new Nick012000; Nick012000 nick2 = (Nick012000) nick1.clone();” produces one variable. It doesn’t; it produces two.
To continue the programming metaphor, I also wouldn’t join into a hivemind, since that would turn that particular instance of the Nick012000 class into just a data field in that instance of the Hivemind class, but I would be okay with creating a hivemind with multiple blank bodies with my mind written onto them, since that would just be like running “Nick012000 nick1 = new Nick012000; Nick012000 nick2=nick1;”, and both variable names refer to the same object.
And, yes, it would matter to my utility function, since my utility function gives a strong positive weight to the continued existence of both the class of persons who refer to themselves as “nick012000” on the Internet, and to the particular instance of said class that is evaluating and executing said utility function.
I refuse to tell you! Just kidding. You preface a line or block of text with the ‘>’ symbol followed by a space. You can click the little green help button on the bottom right of the comment window to see other kinds of formatting (it should really be called something else, I know).
Never heard of timeless physics or Tegmark’s multiverses; looking at the links, though, I don’t really see the relevance of them.
I highly recommend reading Tegmark’s popular science paper on multiverses, it’s an excellent example of clear and concise science writing.
I think I understand your position better now, thanks for clarifying.
I refuse to tell you! Just kidding. You preface a line or block of text with the ‘>’ symbol followed by a space. You can click the little green help button on the bottom right of the comment window to see other kinds of formatting (it should really be called something else, I know).
Thanks.
I highly recommend reading Tegmark’s popular science paper on multiverses, it’s an excellent example of clear and concise science writing.
I’ll probably do so, once I have the time. I’m procrastinating from doing university stuff at the moment.
I think I understand your position better now, thanks for clarifying.
No worries! I think I might have editted it after you posted, though.
How do you do that quote thing, anyway?
In any case, you don’t lose continuity of consciousness when asleep; your brain keeps ticking away in the background as it does its maintenance routines. Never heard of timeless physics or Tegmark’s multiverses; looking at the links, though, I don’t really see the relevance of them. I do in fact believe in the many-worlds theory of quantum physics; that there are a nigh-infinite copies of me does not mean that this particular instance of me is unimportant to me (and, of course, the a good chunk of those other mes likely feel the same).
If someone built a teleporter that created a copy of me, said copy of me would be an instance of the class of persons who refer to themselves as “nick012000” on the internet; however, creating another instance of said class does not mean that it is the same as another instance of said class. To use a programming metaphor, it’d be like saying that “Nick012000 nick1 = new Nick012000; Nick012000 nick2 = (Nick012000) nick1.clone();” produces one variable. It doesn’t; it produces two.
To continue the programming metaphor, I also wouldn’t join into a hivemind, since that would turn that particular instance of the Nick012000 class into just a data field in that instance of the Hivemind class, but I would be okay with creating a hivemind with multiple blank bodies with my mind written onto them, since that would just be like running “Nick012000 nick1 = new Nick012000; Nick012000 nick2=nick1;”, and both variable names refer to the same object.
And, yes, it would matter to my utility function, since my utility function gives a strong positive weight to the continued existence of both the class of persons who refer to themselves as “nick012000” on the Internet, and to the particular instance of said class that is evaluating and executing said utility function.
I refuse to tell you! Just kidding. You preface a line or block of text with the ‘>’ symbol followed by a space. You can click the little green help button on the bottom right of the comment window to see other kinds of formatting (it should really be called something else, I know).
I highly recommend reading Tegmark’s popular science paper on multiverses, it’s an excellent example of clear and concise science writing.
I think I understand your position better now, thanks for clarifying.
Thanks.
I’ll probably do so, once I have the time. I’m procrastinating from doing university stuff at the moment.
No worries! I think I might have editted it after you posted, though.