We’re in a Pascal’s mugging situation, but from a negative point of view, where the trade-off is between potential infinite years of suffering and suicide in order to avoid them for sure.
In the past I’ve struggled deeply with this thought process and I have reasoned my way out of that conclusion. It’s not necessarily a more hopeful conclusion but it takes away the idea that I need to make a decision, which I find very comforting.
Ultimately it comes down to the illusory nature of identity.
A super powerful entity would have the power to create bespoke conscious entities for the purpose of inducing suffering.
The suffering of “Future you” is no more or less real than the suffering of future entities in general. The only difference is that your present mind projects a sense of identity and continuity which causes you to believe there’s a difference.
The illusory sense that there is continuity of consciousness and identity is evolutionarily advantageous but it fully loses coherence and relevance in the domain you’re talking about.
I’m happy to go into more detail if that isn’t convincing.
You could think of identity in this case as a special type of sympathetic empathy for a version of yourself in the future which you wouldn’t grant to future entities which aren’t “yourself”. This is just a feeling that present you is feeling, and has no actual meaningful connection to the entity you’d classify as your future self.
I don’t totally understand, could you go into more detail? I don’t see why my future self should be any different from my current self. Even if the sensation of individuality is produced by the brain, I still feel it’s real.
In the past I’ve struggled deeply with this thought process and I have reasoned my way out of that conclusion. It’s not necessarily a more hopeful conclusion but it takes away the idea that I need to make a decision, which I find very comforting.
Ultimately it comes down to the illusory nature of identity.
A super powerful entity would have the power to create bespoke conscious entities for the purpose of inducing suffering.
The suffering of “Future you” is no more or less real than the suffering of future entities in general. The only difference is that your present mind projects a sense of identity and continuity which causes you to believe there’s a difference.
The illusory sense that there is continuity of consciousness and identity is evolutionarily advantageous but it fully loses coherence and relevance in the domain you’re talking about.
I’m happy to go into more detail if that isn’t convincing.
You could think of identity in this case as a special type of sympathetic empathy for a version of yourself in the future which you wouldn’t grant to future entities which aren’t “yourself”. This is just a feeling that present you is feeling, and has no actual meaningful connection to the entity you’d classify as your future self.
I don’t totally understand, could you go into more detail? I don’t see why my future self should be any different from my current self. Even if the sensation of individuality is produced by the brain, I still feel it’s real.
I think that this post by Rob Bensinger should help you understand various ideas around self-identity.