You are a pattern, instantiated in the neurons of your brain.
The pattern instantiated in the set of neurons that is currently typing this did not exist ten years ago, at least not if the pattern is specified to a certain level of precision (1). So if I am that pattern, I did not exist ten years ago. Nor will I exist in ten years. Nor do I wish to exist in ten years, except in the sense that I would not mind continuing to exist indefinitely as a backup, though I would very much prefer not to experience that kind of existence.
To my way of thinking, I am a nonrecurring pattern of interactions instantiated in a constantly changing system, some of which is in my brain, some of which is in other people’s brains, and some of which is in the physical world around me, including but not limited to my body. “Preserving me” is consequently not a well-defined operation; it’s very hard to say what it means to “preserve” a nonrecurring pattern.
That said, some things definitely seem to qualify as “preserving me” better than others. Preserving the information content of my brain and using it to reconstruct a dynamic entity which has the same memories and habits of thoughts that my brain does now, and embedding that entity in an environment with which it can interact in ways that it experiences as importantly similar to the ways in which my brain currently experiences its interactions with its environment, is a pretty good approximation of “preserving me”.
To my mind, if I value “preserving me” (which I often do), I do best to evaluate various things that might hypothetically exist in the future in terms of how closely they approximate “me”, then do the math. I may well prefer a million things that are .8me to one thing that is .99me. (Or I may not; I don’t mean to suggest that my preference for an approximation of me existing is linear with how well it approximates me, or with how many of it there are. Indeed, I doubt that’s true.)
======
(1) Conversely, if I relax that level of precision sufficiently, that pattern (and, therefore, I) existed ten years ago… but it’s not clear to me why I should stop there. If I relax it a little further, I exist in hundreds of other bodies right this minute. Relax it a smidge further and there are seven billion of me currently occupying this planet.
To my way of thinking, I am a nonrecurring pattern of interactions instantiated in a constantly changing system, some of which is in my brain, some of which is in other people’s brains, and some of which is in the physical world around me, including but not limited to my body.
Upvoted for this. Exactly what I feel about statements that people are their brains. (Hofstadter makes a similar point in I Am a Strange Loop.)
The pattern instantiated in the set of neurons that is currently typing this did not exist ten years ago, at least not if the pattern is specified to a certain level of precision (1). So if I am that pattern, I did not exist ten years ago. Nor will I exist in ten years. Nor do I wish to exist in ten years, except in the sense that I would not mind continuing to exist indefinitely as a backup, though I would very much prefer not to experience that kind of existence.
To my way of thinking, I am a nonrecurring pattern of interactions instantiated in a constantly changing system, some of which is in my brain, some of which is in other people’s brains, and some of which is in the physical world around me, including but not limited to my body. “Preserving me” is consequently not a well-defined operation; it’s very hard to say what it means to “preserve” a nonrecurring pattern.
That said, some things definitely seem to qualify as “preserving me” better than others. Preserving the information content of my brain and using it to reconstruct a dynamic entity which has the same memories and habits of thoughts that my brain does now, and embedding that entity in an environment with which it can interact in ways that it experiences as importantly similar to the ways in which my brain currently experiences its interactions with its environment, is a pretty good approximation of “preserving me”.
To my mind, if I value “preserving me” (which I often do), I do best to evaluate various things that might hypothetically exist in the future in terms of how closely they approximate “me”, then do the math. I may well prefer a million things that are .8me to one thing that is .99me. (Or I may not; I don’t mean to suggest that my preference for an approximation of me existing is linear with how well it approximates me, or with how many of it there are. Indeed, I doubt that’s true.)
======
(1) Conversely, if I relax that level of precision sufficiently, that pattern (and, therefore, I) existed ten years ago… but it’s not clear to me why I should stop there. If I relax it a little further, I exist in hundreds of other bodies right this minute. Relax it a smidge further and there are seven billion of me currently occupying this planet.
Upvoted for this. Exactly what I feel about statements that people are their brains. (Hofstadter makes a similar point in I Am a Strange Loop.)