If I were going to make such a document, I would make it minimally restrictive. I would rather be brought back even in less-than-ideal circumstances, so that I could to observe how the world had developed, and then decide whether I wanted to stay. At least then I would have a me-like agent operating on my own behalf.
If they bring me back as a qualia-less em, then at least there’s a chance that the em will be able to say, “Hey, this is cool and everything, but this isn’t actually what my predecessor wanted. So even though I don’t have qualia, I’ll make it my personal mission to try to bring myself back with qualia.” Precommitting to such an attitude now while you’re alive boosts the odds of this. At worst, if it turns out to be impossible to revive the “observer”, there’s a thing-like-you running around in the future spreading your values, even if it doesn’t have your consciousness, and I can’t see that as a bad thing.
Well what if suicide is illegal in the future? And even if it isn’t, suicide is really hard to go through with. A lot of people have preferences that they would prefer not to be revived with brain damage, but people with brain damage do not commonly kill themselves.
I see this combination of expressed preference and actions (would prefer not to live with brain damage, but then actually choose to live with brain damage) as a failure of imagination and incorrect far-mode statements, NOT as an indication that the prior statement true, but was thwarted by some outside force.
Future-me instances have massively more information about what they’re experiencing in the future than present-me has now. It’s ludicrous for present-me to try to constrain future-me’s decisions, and even more so to try to identify situations where present-me’s wishes will be honored but future-me’s decisions won’t.
You can prevent adverse revival by cremation or burial (in which case you also prevent felicitous revival). If an evil regime wants you, any contract language is useless. If an individual-respecting regime considers your revival, future you would prefer to be revived and asked rather than being held to a past-you document that cannot predict the details of the current the situation very well.
More to the point, what if suicide is impossible? It’s not hard at all to prevent an em from committing suicide and, of course, if you have copies and backups, he can suicide all he wants...
If I were going to make such a document, I would make it minimally restrictive. I would rather be brought back even in less-than-ideal circumstances, so that I could to observe how the world had developed, and then decide whether I wanted to stay. At least then I would have a me-like agent operating on my own behalf.
If they bring me back as a qualia-less em, then at least there’s a chance that the em will be able to say, “Hey, this is cool and everything, but this isn’t actually what my predecessor wanted. So even though I don’t have qualia, I’ll make it my personal mission to try to bring myself back with qualia.” Precommitting to such an attitude now while you’re alive boosts the odds of this. At worst, if it turns out to be impossible to revive the “observer”, there’s a thing-like-you running around in the future spreading your values, even if it doesn’t have your consciousness, and I can’t see that as a bad thing.
Well what if suicide is illegal in the future? And even if it isn’t, suicide is really hard to go through with. A lot of people have preferences that they would prefer not to be revived with brain damage, but people with brain damage do not commonly kill themselves.
I see this combination of expressed preference and actions (would prefer not to live with brain damage, but then actually choose to live with brain damage) as a failure of imagination and incorrect far-mode statements, NOT as an indication that the prior statement true, but was thwarted by some outside force.
Future-me instances have massively more information about what they’re experiencing in the future than present-me has now. It’s ludicrous for present-me to try to constrain future-me’s decisions, and even more so to try to identify situations where present-me’s wishes will be honored but future-me’s decisions won’t.
You can prevent adverse revival by cremation or burial (in which case you also prevent felicitous revival). If an evil regime wants you, any contract language is useless. If an individual-respecting regime considers your revival, future you would prefer to be revived and asked rather than being held to a past-you document that cannot predict the details of the current the situation very well.
More to the point, what if suicide is impossible? It’s not hard at all to prevent an em from committing suicide and, of course, if you have copies and backups, he can suicide all he wants...