It’s really hard to describe anticipation of subjective experience in these scenarios
True! These scenarios don’t actually happen (yet) to humans, and you’re trying to extrapolate from a fairly poorly defined base case (individual experiential continuity). However, I think most of them dissolve if you believe (as I do) that consciousness is a purely physical reductive phenomenon.
Take the analogy of a light bulb, where you duplicate everything including the current (pun intended) state of electrical potential in the wires and element, but then after duplication allow that the future electrical inputs may vary. You can easily answer all of these questions about anticipated light output levels. It’s identical at time of duplication, and diverges afterward.
I think my main point in most of this is:
True! These scenarios don’t actually happen (yet) to humans, and you’re trying to extrapolate from a fairly poorly defined base case (individual experiential continuity). However, I think most of them dissolve if you believe (as I do) that consciousness is a purely physical reductive phenomenon.
Take the analogy of a light bulb, where you duplicate everything including the current (pun intended) state of electrical potential in the wires and element, but then after duplication allow that the future electrical inputs may vary. You can easily answer all of these questions about anticipated light output levels. It’s identical at time of duplication, and diverges afterward.
Every level but the last one is supposed to be wrong.
The point is they’re supposed to be wrong in a specifically crafted way.