I have a feeling that I’m missing something and that this is going to be downvoted, but I still have to ask. In the event that a big universe exists, there are numerous people almost exactly like me going about their business. My problem is that what i would call my consciousness doesn’t seem to experience their actions. This would seem to me like there is some factor in my existence that is not present in theirs. If a perfect clone was sitting next to me, I wouldn’t be able to see my computer through his eyes. I would continue to see it through mine. This chain of experience is the thing I care most to preserve. I have interest in the continued existence of people like me, but for separate reasons.
I know the idea of an “inner listener” is false, but the sensation of such a thing and a continuous stream of experience do exist. I am emotionally tied to those perceptions. I don’t know how enthusiastically I can look forward to the future if I won’t be able to experience it any more than I can the nearest parallel universe.
This chain of experience is the thing I care most to preserve.
Okay, think of it this way.
You go to sleep tonight, your “chain of experience” is briefly broken. You wake up tomorrow morning, chain of experience is back, you’re happy.
But what makes you say “chain of experience is back”? Only that a human being wakes up, notices it has the memories of being pleeppleep, and says “Hey, my chain of experience is back! Good!”
Suppose Omega killed you in your sleep, then created a perfect clone of you. The perfect clone would wake up, notice it has the memories of being pleeppleep, and say “Hey, my chain of experience is back! Good!” Then it would continue living your life.
Right now you have zero evidence that Omega hasn’t actually done this to you every single night of your life. So the idea of a “chain of experience”, except as another word for your memories, is pretty tenuous.
And if I told you today that Omega had really been doing this to you your whole life, then you would be really scared before going to sleep tonight, but eventually you’d have to do it. And then the next day, your clone would still be pretty scared before going to sleep, but he’d do it too. And by the thousandth day, you’d probably have forgotten all about it except when someone reminds you.
(what if it were every time you blinked, instead of every time you slept?)
Since this would be totally indistinguishable from the way we are right now, and since there’s no logical basis for me-ness, at some point you just have to think, “screw it, there’s no continuity of experience or identity and I don’t really care”, at least as regards blinking and sleeping.
Cryonicists say we can extend this indifference to freezing and thawing. I’m saying that as long as we’re extending it, might as well extend it all the way.
I suppose you’re right. If A clone of me appeared next to me he would also think it curious that he could not experience exactly the same sensations as the identical person next to him. Still, I don’t think that a “me” from another world coming into existence and living through an apparently identical series of events to me life would count as a resurrection, as the events he lives through are not the same events that I live. In order for it to be a resurrection, I would have to return with the specific set of memories I have from this section of causality. It would be more like reincarnation than anything.
Also I have evidence that I have not been intentionally deleted every night because I have zero evidence that this has occurred.
What if there is a perfect clone of you not sitting next to you, but sitting in another part of the universe that is atom-by-atom identical to this one throughout the span of a 46 billion light-year diameter sphere (the size of our observable universe) whose history has been identical to ours since the big bang.
Every thought you have had over the course of your entire life this clone has had too. And what’s more, they’ve had them for the exact same reasons. The chain of events leading up to each of their thoughts is identical to the chain for yours.
Suppose in fact that there are billions such clones (or even infinitely many) spread (unimaginable far apart) all across our giant universe. A moment from now due to quantum events the copies’ experiences will diverge. Some will experience one sensation, and some another, so at that point only a fraction of them continue to have histories identical to yours. But can you say which one of them you will be?
If there is no way to distinguish one copy from another, then perhaps it makes sense to say that they are all the same thing—so that all of the clones with identical histories to you are together ‘you’ right now, but as their experiences diverge going forward, they split into different possible future versions of you.
That’s all true, but I think the fact that I can’t see more than one of their points of view is enough to distinguish between them. The only difference I can think of that pertains to a reductionist universe is location. I know the “inner listener” to be an illusion, but still can’t shake the fact that if I died in this universe, but not in another one, then I wouldn’t experience “waking up”. Its possible that I’m being irrational and misinterpreting the way the brain works, but I think it is clearly observable that I don’t feel that I’m experiencing more than one universe, and this feeling is the thing that I care most to preserve.
I think you’re missing the part where “their points of view” are exactly the same. What would it mean to see more than one of them when they’re exactly the same. Are you picturing them lined up next to each other in your field of view so you can count them?
Similarly there is no “I just definitely died” feeling that we know of. (How would we know?) You shouldn’t picture “dying and then waking up in another universe.” You should picture “I experience passing out knowing I may die, but that there is a least one of me that probably doesn’t. So when I wake up it will turn out that I was one of them.”
Does this make more sense? I think the barrier to intuition is in just how indistinguishable,” indistinguishable” is. You can be a billion exact copies and you’ll never notice, because they’re exact.
I meant that the “me” in a different universe is different from me in this one. The distance between universes is not trivial. I might never notice the difference between a million “me”s and a billion, but the overall number of “me”s is significant. If multiple versions of myself live side by side, and one dies, then that one does not really continue living, unless it i replaced. Does that make sense? Its not very easy to word ideas regarding this topic.
I suppose you mean they have different positions. But if indistinguishable particles in quantum mechanics can freely switch places with each other whenever, and which is which has no meaning, then what argument do you have that the universe can even keep different versions of you apart itself?
Not very formal, but I’m trying to convey the idea that certain facts that seem important have no actual meaning in the ontology of quantum physics.
I have a feeling that I’m missing something and that this is going to be downvoted, but I still have to ask. In the event that a big universe exists, there are numerous people almost exactly like me going about their business. My problem is that what i would call my consciousness doesn’t seem to experience their actions. This would seem to me like there is some factor in my existence that is not present in theirs. If a perfect clone was sitting next to me, I wouldn’t be able to see my computer through his eyes. I would continue to see it through mine. This chain of experience is the thing I care most to preserve. I have interest in the continued existence of people like me, but for separate reasons.
I know the idea of an “inner listener” is false, but the sensation of such a thing and a continuous stream of experience do exist. I am emotionally tied to those perceptions. I don’t know how enthusiastically I can look forward to the future if I won’t be able to experience it any more than I can the nearest parallel universe.
Okay, think of it this way.
You go to sleep tonight, your “chain of experience” is briefly broken. You wake up tomorrow morning, chain of experience is back, you’re happy.
But what makes you say “chain of experience is back”? Only that a human being wakes up, notices it has the memories of being pleeppleep, and says “Hey, my chain of experience is back! Good!”
Suppose Omega killed you in your sleep, then created a perfect clone of you. The perfect clone would wake up, notice it has the memories of being pleeppleep, and say “Hey, my chain of experience is back! Good!” Then it would continue living your life.
Right now you have zero evidence that Omega hasn’t actually done this to you every single night of your life. So the idea of a “chain of experience”, except as another word for your memories, is pretty tenuous.
And if I told you today that Omega had really been doing this to you your whole life, then you would be really scared before going to sleep tonight, but eventually you’d have to do it. And then the next day, your clone would still be pretty scared before going to sleep, but he’d do it too. And by the thousandth day, you’d probably have forgotten all about it except when someone reminds you.
(what if it were every time you blinked, instead of every time you slept?)
Since this would be totally indistinguishable from the way we are right now, and since there’s no logical basis for me-ness, at some point you just have to think, “screw it, there’s no continuity of experience or identity and I don’t really care”, at least as regards blinking and sleeping.
Cryonicists say we can extend this indifference to freezing and thawing. I’m saying that as long as we’re extending it, might as well extend it all the way.
I suppose you’re right. If A clone of me appeared next to me he would also think it curious that he could not experience exactly the same sensations as the identical person next to him. Still, I don’t think that a “me” from another world coming into existence and living through an apparently identical series of events to me life would count as a resurrection, as the events he lives through are not the same events that I live. In order for it to be a resurrection, I would have to return with the specific set of memories I have from this section of causality. It would be more like reincarnation than anything. Also I have evidence that I have not been intentionally deleted every night because I have zero evidence that this has occurred.
What if there is a perfect clone of you not sitting next to you, but sitting in another part of the universe that is atom-by-atom identical to this one throughout the span of a 46 billion light-year diameter sphere (the size of our observable universe) whose history has been identical to ours since the big bang.
Every thought you have had over the course of your entire life this clone has had too. And what’s more, they’ve had them for the exact same reasons. The chain of events leading up to each of their thoughts is identical to the chain for yours.
Suppose in fact that there are billions such clones (or even infinitely many) spread (unimaginable far apart) all across our giant universe. A moment from now due to quantum events the copies’ experiences will diverge. Some will experience one sensation, and some another, so at that point only a fraction of them continue to have histories identical to yours. But can you say which one of them you will be?
If there is no way to distinguish one copy from another, then perhaps it makes sense to say that they are all the same thing—so that all of the clones with identical histories to you are together ‘you’ right now, but as their experiences diverge going forward, they split into different possible future versions of you.
What do you think?
That’s all true, but I think the fact that I can’t see more than one of their points of view is enough to distinguish between them. The only difference I can think of that pertains to a reductionist universe is location. I know the “inner listener” to be an illusion, but still can’t shake the fact that if I died in this universe, but not in another one, then I wouldn’t experience “waking up”. Its possible that I’m being irrational and misinterpreting the way the brain works, but I think it is clearly observable that I don’t feel that I’m experiencing more than one universe, and this feeling is the thing that I care most to preserve.
I think you’re missing the part where “their points of view” are exactly the same. What would it mean to see more than one of them when they’re exactly the same. Are you picturing them lined up next to each other in your field of view so you can count them?
Similarly there is no “I just definitely died” feeling that we know of. (How would we know?) You shouldn’t picture “dying and then waking up in another universe.” You should picture “I experience passing out knowing I may die, but that there is a least one of me that probably doesn’t. So when I wake up it will turn out that I was one of them.”
Does this make more sense? I think the barrier to intuition is in just how indistinguishable,” indistinguishable” is. You can be a billion exact copies and you’ll never notice, because they’re exact.
I meant that the “me” in a different universe is different from me in this one. The distance between universes is not trivial. I might never notice the difference between a million “me”s and a billion, but the overall number of “me”s is significant. If multiple versions of myself live side by side, and one dies, then that one does not really continue living, unless it i replaced. Does that make sense? Its not very easy to word ideas regarding this topic.
I suppose you mean they have different positions. But if indistinguishable particles in quantum mechanics can freely switch places with each other whenever, and which is which has no meaning, then what argument do you have that the universe can even keep different versions of you apart itself?
Not very formal, but I’m trying to convey the idea that certain facts that seem important have no actual meaning in the ontology of quantum physics.