Is my corpse an atomically precise copy of myself? I wouldn’t care much about that.
If you mean the classic sci-fi picture of an exact and recent clone of myself, I would certainly prefer that a copy of myself be used at a gun range than that a copy of my daughters or a few of my relatives be used. And certainly prefer that a copy of myself be used than that the single original of any of my relatives be used.
It is an ironic thing that a rationalist discussion of values comes down to questions like “how do you feel about...” Personally, much of my rational effort around values is to make choices that go against some or even many of my feelings, presumably to get at values that I think are more important. I highly value not being fooled by appearances, I highly value minimizing the extent to which I succumb to “cargo cult” reasoning. I’m not sure how much identifying myself with a copy of myself is valid (whatever that means in this context) and how much is cargo cult. But I’m pretty sure identifying myself with my corpse or a caricature of myself is cargo cult.
If you undergo dementia or some other neuro-degenerative condition for a few years, it will turn you into a very different person. A “rough” copy made from information mined from the internet could perhaps be much closer than this to the healthy version of the person than the version kept alive in a nursing home in their later years. Because of this argument, I don’t see how you can come to the conclusion that identifying with a “caricature” is cargo-cult by definition.
Your corpse is definitely not an atomically precise copy of yourself. Corpses are the subject of extensive structural damage which makes their state of unconsciousness irreversible. If this were not the case, we would neither call them corpses nor consider it unreasonable to identify with them.
A more interesting grey area would be if you were subjected to cryonics or plastination, copied while in a completely ametabolic and unconscious state, and then reanimated. You could look across at a plastic-embedded or frozen copy of yourself and not even know if they are the original. In fact, there could be many of them, implying that you are probably not the original unless you can obtain information otherwise.
If you value your original self sufficiently, that seems to imply that if say you wake up in a room with 99 other versions of you still in stasis and have a choice to a) destroy them all and live or b) suicide and reanimate them all, you should pick suicide in advance so that it becomes 99% likely your copy will pick that option.
On the other hand if you don’t care whether you are the original or a copy you can destroy all those nonsentient copies (99% chance of including the original) without worrying about it.
Is my corpse an atomically precise copy of myself? I wouldn’t care much about that.
If you mean the classic sci-fi picture of an exact and recent clone of myself, I would certainly prefer that a copy of myself be used at a gun range than that a copy of my daughters or a few of my relatives be used. And certainly prefer that a copy of myself be used than that the single original of any of my relatives be used.
It is an ironic thing that a rationalist discussion of values comes down to questions like “how do you feel about...” Personally, much of my rational effort around values is to make choices that go against some or even many of my feelings, presumably to get at values that I think are more important. I highly value not being fooled by appearances, I highly value minimizing the extent to which I succumb to “cargo cult” reasoning. I’m not sure how much identifying myself with a copy of myself is valid (whatever that means in this context) and how much is cargo cult. But I’m pretty sure identifying myself with my corpse or a caricature of myself is cargo cult.
If you undergo dementia or some other neuro-degenerative condition for a few years, it will turn you into a very different person. A “rough” copy made from information mined from the internet could perhaps be much closer than this to the healthy version of the person than the version kept alive in a nursing home in their later years. Because of this argument, I don’t see how you can come to the conclusion that identifying with a “caricature” is cargo-cult by definition.
Your corpse is definitely not an atomically precise copy of yourself. Corpses are the subject of extensive structural damage which makes their state of unconsciousness irreversible. If this were not the case, we would neither call them corpses nor consider it unreasonable to identify with them.
A more interesting grey area would be if you were subjected to cryonics or plastination, copied while in a completely ametabolic and unconscious state, and then reanimated. You could look across at a plastic-embedded or frozen copy of yourself and not even know if they are the original. In fact, there could be many of them, implying that you are probably not the original unless you can obtain information otherwise.
If you value your original self sufficiently, that seems to imply that if say you wake up in a room with 99 other versions of you still in stasis and have a choice to a) destroy them all and live or b) suicide and reanimate them all, you should pick suicide in advance so that it becomes 99% likely your copy will pick that option.
On the other hand if you don’t care whether you are the original or a copy you can destroy all those nonsentient copies (99% chance of including the original) without worrying about it.