Okay, so I guess what you’re saying here is that what you value about being alive is NOT the experience of life.
Nope, that’s not what I’m saying at all. All of the Daves have the experience of life, and I absolutely do value it, which is why I press the button that I expect to create more of it.
YOU won’t experience the event whatsoever. A copy of you will be there instead. Is this acceptable?
No, that simply isn’t true. I will in fact experience the event (assuming I can get back from my work assignment in time, or assuming that my employer uses a nondestructive teleporter such that I can both experience the event and do my job).
Okay, so (just ignoring for a moment the fact that the transporter itself has just been vaporized, I guess I’ll assume it’s intact)
No, sorry, I was unclear. The engine is going to overload in ten minutes, say, and the captain has the choice of transporting us off the ship before it explodes. Which, on your account, is not worth bothering with, since we’re going to be just as dead whether she does or not.
This [teleoperating remote bodies] would be more efficient and less risky, don’t you think?
Sure. Given the choice of telecommuting this way, rather than teleporting my body back and forth, I would probably choose tele-operating a remote body, assuming the experience was comparable.
Do you see a way to reason that out, or do you have a clarifying question we could ask?
No, not really, especially since you’re in the habit of not answering the questions I do ask. Either way, though, no: I think you’ve created a confusion here that is unresolvable as long as you hold on to your belief that there is some essence of selfness (continuous experience, identity, real-me-ness, whatever) that is undetectable and unduplicatable but somehow still important.
Your model creates the possibility that I am not the person I was a moment ago and there’s simply no fact about the world that would resolve the question of whether that possibility is actual or not. This seems absurd to me: if nothing depends on it, I simply don’t care whether it’s true or not; if we insist that that is what it means to be “really me”, then I must accept that maybe I’m not “really me” and I’m OK with that.
Nope, that’s not what I’m saying at all. All of the Daves have the experience of life, and I absolutely do value it, which is why I press the button that I expect to create more of it.
No, that simply isn’t true. I will in fact experience the event (assuming I can get back from my work assignment in time, or assuming that my employer uses a nondestructive teleporter such that I can both experience the event and do my job).
No, sorry, I was unclear. The engine is going to overload in ten minutes, say, and the captain has the choice of transporting us off the ship before it explodes. Which, on your account, is not worth bothering with, since we’re going to be just as dead whether she does or not.
Sure. Given the choice of telecommuting this way, rather than teleporting my body back and forth, I would probably choose tele-operating a remote body, assuming the experience was comparable.
No, not really, especially since you’re in the habit of not answering the questions I do ask. Either way, though, no: I think you’ve created a confusion here that is unresolvable as long as you hold on to your belief that there is some essence of selfness (continuous experience, identity, real-me-ness, whatever) that is undetectable and unduplicatable but somehow still important.
Your model creates the possibility that I am not the person I was a moment ago and there’s simply no fact about the world that would resolve the question of whether that possibility is actual or not. This seems absurd to me: if nothing depends on it, I simply don’t care whether it’s true or not; if we insist that that is what it means to be “really me”, then I must accept that maybe I’m not “really me” and I’m OK with that.