In a world where everyone is uploaded or Star Trek transported each day, you could believe that the world is inhabited by day-old people who will cease to exist on their next transport. I couldn’t prove you wrong. But it wouldn’t be a productive worldview.
Who cares? Don’t appeal to social norms. For the person about to step into teleporter, there’s a true difference, even if it not observable from the outside.
For the person about to step into teleporter, there’s a true difference, even if it not observable from the outside.
Sure. For every person about to go to bed, there’s also a true difference between the way they are as they go to bed, and the way they are as they wake up.
That there is a true difference doesn’t really matter much; a more useful question is whether we value the difference… which is a psychological and social question. When you insist on ignoring social norms, the effect is simply to insist that a particular set of social norms (the ones having to do with continuous existence in a single body being important) be given unexamined primacy.
Which is fine for you, since you embrace that set. For those of us who reject it, it just seems like a goofy thing to insist on.
I can’t justify believing that I will continue to exist 5 seconds from now—that I am more than this thought, right now—without appealing to social norms and practicality.
Who cares? Don’t appeal to social norms. For the person about to step into teleporter, there’s a true difference, even if it not observable from the outside.
Sure. For every person about to go to bed, there’s also a true difference between the way they are as they go to bed, and the way they are as they wake up.
That there is a true difference doesn’t really matter much; a more useful question is whether we value the difference… which is a psychological and social question. When you insist on ignoring social norms, the effect is simply to insist that a particular set of social norms (the ones having to do with continuous existence in a single body being important) be given unexamined primacy.
Which is fine for you, since you embrace that set. For those of us who reject it, it just seems like a goofy thing to insist on.
I can’t justify believing that I will continue to exist 5 seconds from now—that I am more than this thought, right now—without appealing to social norms and practicality.