Not sure what you mean about Durham’s copy (I’ve only read summaries of Egan), but the situation seems pretty isomorphic to your sleep issue if I read in correctly. The question is whether having a bunch of measure added to your life and then taken away should be seen as a chance of death.
I guess if you’re utility function values death avoidance rather than life lived, then for some definitions of death your conclusions follow? But a “death” event that does not cause you to be in any way less alive and does not have any of the secondary effects of death (i.e. grief) maybe doesn’t deserve the name “death”.
Not sure what you mean about Durham’s copy (I’ve only read summaries of Egan)
When a conscious mind is halted all at once, without any destruction, it simply keeps going, finding itself in a universe where those observations are explicable. Your hypothetical death machine wouldn’t have an effect on me; I would just keep subjectively beating the odds.
(So even if we are in a simulation and the simulators decide to end it, we don’t notice a thing.)
The question is whether having a bunch of measure added to your life and then taken away should be seen as a chance of death.
No, no, that’s not what I’m saying. I’m saying that since my conscious mind is longer functioning at full capacity, I will find myself in other universes where that is proper. And then I just keep degrading. It’s death in the fullest sense of the word- the one who wakes up has beaten vast odds. And that isn’t evidence for the unlikelihood of the scenario, since each type of observer is infinitely common.
However, I don’t think it is simply consciousness that propels our observations. If Dust Theory were true than consciousness is emergent, and the rest of my mind must also play some part in generating the observations. Even a sleeping one is distinctly human enough to keep my reality stable. So I’m no longer worried about dying.
I still don’t know about reality changing. Certainly it becomes fuzzier, but do my memories count if I’m not consciously aware of them? They are a part of my psyche, after all. And my dreams, while capable of tricking me into believing outlandish things, still contain almost complete fragments of real memory.
I don’t think it makes sense to treat a simulation where you rapidly change into an unrecognizable mind differently from a simulation that halts, except insofar as the transition might be unpleasant. In either case, the experiences you value have a certain measure up to a certain point in time and then they don’t.
I agree that dreams are still highly ordered despite being a bit less so than waking life. I think the experience of a human dreaming in an orderly universe is still most likely caused by a human dreaming in an orderly universe. But I don’t think it would make sense to be scared of sleep even if it were otherwise.
The way I’m looking at this is that your goal should be to take actions that will increase the measure of experiences you value and decrease the measure of those you do not. This adds up to normality: Sleeping increases the measure of ‘dreaming’ experiences and the measure of ‘waking up with enough sleep’ experiences, and decreases the measure of ‘being awake at night’ and ‘being unrested in the morning’ experiences. That’s the only effect it has on the measure flows of the multiverse.
I think the way you’re trying to look at it in terms of a thread of experience is at best extremely difficult to follow and at worst flat-out wrong, and you’ll be better served to decide which measure flows you want to cause (of those you can cause).
But I don’t think it would make sense to be scared of sleep even if it were otherwise.
Well, I can’t follow your reasoning. It seems to be ‘just go ahead because that’s the way things are.’ If you accept my claim that according to Dust Theory “everything outside your awareness is in flux” then my arguments should follow naturally.
Also, I would like to point out that humans may be somewhat aware of the physical world during sleep.
Not sure what you mean about Durham’s copy (I’ve only read summaries of Egan), but the situation seems pretty isomorphic to your sleep issue if I read in correctly. The question is whether having a bunch of measure added to your life and then taken away should be seen as a chance of death.
I guess if you’re utility function values death avoidance rather than life lived, then for some definitions of death your conclusions follow? But a “death” event that does not cause you to be in any way less alive and does not have any of the secondary effects of death (i.e. grief) maybe doesn’t deserve the name “death”.
When a conscious mind is halted all at once, without any destruction, it simply keeps going, finding itself in a universe where those observations are explicable. Your hypothetical death machine wouldn’t have an effect on me; I would just keep subjectively beating the odds.
(So even if we are in a simulation and the simulators decide to end it, we don’t notice a thing.)
No, no, that’s not what I’m saying. I’m saying that since my conscious mind is longer functioning at full capacity, I will find myself in other universes where that is proper. And then I just keep degrading. It’s death in the fullest sense of the word- the one who wakes up has beaten vast odds. And that isn’t evidence for the unlikelihood of the scenario, since each type of observer is infinitely common.
However, I don’t think it is simply consciousness that propels our observations. If Dust Theory were true than consciousness is emergent, and the rest of my mind must also play some part in generating the observations. Even a sleeping one is distinctly human enough to keep my reality stable. So I’m no longer worried about dying.
I still don’t know about reality changing. Certainly it becomes fuzzier, but do my memories count if I’m not consciously aware of them? They are a part of my psyche, after all. And my dreams, while capable of tricking me into believing outlandish things, still contain almost complete fragments of real memory.
Things like this are also encouraging.
I don’t think it makes sense to treat a simulation where you rapidly change into an unrecognizable mind differently from a simulation that halts, except insofar as the transition might be unpleasant. In either case, the experiences you value have a certain measure up to a certain point in time and then they don’t.
I agree that dreams are still highly ordered despite being a bit less so than waking life. I think the experience of a human dreaming in an orderly universe is still most likely caused by a human dreaming in an orderly universe. But I don’t think it would make sense to be scared of sleep even if it were otherwise.
The way I’m looking at this is that your goal should be to take actions that will increase the measure of experiences you value and decrease the measure of those you do not. This adds up to normality: Sleeping increases the measure of ‘dreaming’ experiences and the measure of ‘waking up with enough sleep’ experiences, and decreases the measure of ‘being awake at night’ and ‘being unrested in the morning’ experiences. That’s the only effect it has on the measure flows of the multiverse.
I think the way you’re trying to look at it in terms of a thread of experience is at best extremely difficult to follow and at worst flat-out wrong, and you’ll be better served to decide which measure flows you want to cause (of those you can cause).
Well, I can’t follow your reasoning. It seems to be ‘just go ahead because that’s the way things are.’ If you accept my claim that according to Dust Theory “everything outside your awareness is in flux” then my arguments should follow naturally.
Also, I would like to point out that humans may be somewhat aware of the physical world during sleep.