I’m OK with the deletion of very-short-lived copies of myself if there are good reasons to do it.
There’s a very nice thought experiment that helps demonstrate this (I think it’s from Nozick). Imagine a sleeping pill that makes you fall asleep in thirty minutes, but you won’t remember the last fifteen minutes of being awake. From the point of view of your future self, the fifteen minutes you don’t remember is exactly like a short-lived copy that got deleted after fifteen minutes. It’s unlikely that anyone would claim taking the pill is unethical, or that you’re killing a version of yourself by doing so.
It’s unlikely that anyone would claim taking the pill is unethical, or that you’re killing a version of yourself by doing so.
Armchair reasoning: I can imagine the mental clone and the original existing at the same time, side-by-side. I cannot imagine myself with the memory loss and myself without the memory loss as existing at the same time. Also, whatever actions my past self does actually affects my future self regardless of what I remember. As such, my instinct is to think of the copy as a separate identity and my past self as the same identity.
Imagine a scenario where I cut off my arm. I am responsible. If my copy cuts off my arm, he would be responsible, not “me.”
This is all playing semantics with personal identity. I am not trying to espouse any particular belief; I am only offering one possible difference between the idea of forgetting your past and copying yourself.
Yeah, okay. You are illustrating my point exactly. Not everyone thinks the way you do about identity and not everyone thinks the way I mentioned about identity. I don’t hold hard and fast about it one way or the other.
But the original example of someone who loses 15 minutes being similar to killing off a copy who only lived for 15 minutes implies a whole ton of things about identity. The word “copy” is too ambiguous to say, “Your copy is you.”
If I switched in, “X’s copy is X” and then started talking about various cultural examples of copying we quickly run into trouble. Why does “X’s copy is X” work for people? Unless I missed a definition of terms comment or post somewhere, I don’t see how we can just assume that is true.
The first use of “copy” I found in this thread is:
Probably the “friendly” action would be to create an un-drunk copy of them, and ask the copy to decide.
It was followed by:
And what do you do with the copy? Kill it?
As best as I can tell, you take the sentence, “Your copy is you” to be a tautology or definition or something along those veins. (I could obviously be wrong; please correct me if I am.) What would you call a functionally identical version of X with a separate, distinct Identity? Is it even possible? If it is, use that instead of “copy” when reading my comment:
Imagine a scenario where I cut off my arm. I am responsible. If my copy cuts off my arm, he would be responsible, not “me.”
When I read the original comment I responded to:
From the point of view of your future self, the fifteen minutes you don’t remember is exactly like a short-lived copy that got deleted after fifteen minutes.
I was not assuming your definition of copy. Which could entirely be my fault, but I find it hard to believe that you didn’t understand my point enough to predict this response. If you did, it would have been much faster to simply say, “When people at LessWrong talk about copies they mean blah.” In which case I would have responded, “Oh, okay, that makes sense. Ignore my comment.”
The semantics get easier if you think of both as being copies, so you have past-self, copy-1, and copy-2. Then you can ask which copy is you, or if they’re both you. (If past-self is drunk, copy-1 is drunk, and copy-2 is sober, which copy is really more “you”?)
I’d actually be kinda hesitant of such pills and would need to think it out. The version of me that is in those 15 minutes might be a bit unhappy about the situation, for one thing.
And it basically results in 15 minutes of experience that simply “go away”? no gradual transition/merging into the mainline experience, simply 15 minutes that get completely wiped?
There’s a very nice thought experiment that helps demonstrate this (I think it’s from Nozick). Imagine a sleeping pill that makes you fall asleep in thirty minutes, but you won’t remember the last fifteen minutes of being awake. From the point of view of your future self, the fifteen minutes you don’t remember is exactly like a short-lived copy that got deleted after fifteen minutes. It’s unlikely that anyone would claim taking the pill is unethical, or that you’re killing a version of yourself by doing so.
Armchair reasoning: I can imagine the mental clone and the original existing at the same time, side-by-side. I cannot imagine myself with the memory loss and myself without the memory loss as existing at the same time. Also, whatever actions my past self does actually affects my future self regardless of what I remember. As such, my instinct is to think of the copy as a separate identity and my past self as the same identity.
Your copy would also take actions that affects your future self. What is the difference here?
Imagine a scenario where I cut off my arm. I am responsible. If my copy cuts off my arm, he would be responsible, not “me.”
This is all playing semantics with personal identity. I am not trying to espouse any particular belief; I am only offering one possible difference between the idea of forgetting your past and copying yourself.
That doesn’t make any sense. Your copy is you.
Yeah, okay. You are illustrating my point exactly. Not everyone thinks the way you do about identity and not everyone thinks the way I mentioned about identity. I don’t hold hard and fast about it one way or the other.
But the original example of someone who loses 15 minutes being similar to killing off a copy who only lived for 15 minutes implies a whole ton of things about identity. The word “copy” is too ambiguous to say, “Your copy is you.”
If I switched in, “X’s copy is X” and then started talking about various cultural examples of copying we quickly run into trouble. Why does “X’s copy is X” work for people? Unless I missed a definition of terms comment or post somewhere, I don’t see how we can just assume that is true.
The first use of “copy” I found in this thread is:
It was followed by:
As best as I can tell, you take the sentence, “Your copy is you” to be a tautology or definition or something along those veins. (I could obviously be wrong; please correct me if I am.) What would you call a functionally identical version of X with a separate, distinct Identity? Is it even possible? If it is, use that instead of “copy” when reading my comment:
When I read the original comment I responded to:
I was not assuming your definition of copy. Which could entirely be my fault, but I find it hard to believe that you didn’t understand my point enough to predict this response. If you did, it would have been much faster to simply say, “When people at LessWrong talk about copies they mean blah.” In which case I would have responded, “Oh, okay, that makes sense. Ignore my comment.”
The semantics get easier if you think of both as being copies, so you have past-self, copy-1, and copy-2. Then you can ask which copy is you, or if they’re both you. (If past-self is drunk, copy-1 is drunk, and copy-2 is sober, which copy is really more “you”?)
Yeah, actually, that helps a lot. Using that language most of the followup questions I have obvious enough to skip bringing up. Thanks.
I’d actually be kinda hesitant of such pills and would need to think it out. The version of me that is in those 15 minutes might be a bit unhappy about the situation, for one thing.
Such pills do exist in the real world: a lot of sleeping pills have similar effects, as does consuming significant amounts of alcohol.
And it basically results in 15 minutes of experience that simply “go away”? no gradual transition/merging into the mainline experience, simply 15 minutes that get completely wiped?
eeew.
For that matter, so does falling asleep in the normal way.