I would never have guessed that one of the side effects of the computational paradigm of mind would be a new form of proxy immortalism—by this I mean philosophies according to which you live on in your children, your race, your species, in the future consequences of your acts, or in your duplicates elsewhere in the multiverse. I suppose it’s just another step beyond the idea that your copy is you, but it’s still ironic to see this argument being made, given that it emerges from the same techno-conceptual zeitgeist which elsewhere is employed to urge a person not to be satisfied with living on in their children, their race, et cetera, but rather to seek personal survival beyond the traditional limits, because now it is finally conceivable that something more is possible.
Needless to say, I disagree profoundly with the idea that I “am” also anyone with whom I have some vague similarity. There’s also a special appendix to my disagreement, in which I disagree specifically with the idea that Timeless Decision Theory has anything new to add here, except an extra layer of confusion. You don’t need Timeless Decision Theory in order to identify with a group; identification with a group is not secretly a case of a person employing Timeless Decision Theory; and “acausal trade”, as a phenomenon, is as real as “praying to God”. Someone might engage in a thought process for which that is an accurate designation; and somewhere else in some other reality there might even be an entity which views itself as being on the other end of that relationship; but even if there is, it’s a folie a deux, a combined madness. If someone in one insane asylum believes that he is the Emperor Napoleon, separated from his beloved Josephine, and if someone in another insane asylum believes that she is Josephine, separated from Napoleon, that doesn’t validate the beliefs of either person, it doesn’t make those beliefs rational, even if, considered together, the beliefs of those two people are mutually consistent. Acausal trade is irrational because it is acausal. It requires that you imagine, as your counterpart on the other side of the trade, only one, highly specific possible agent that happens to be thinking of you, and happens to respond to your choices in the way that you imagine, rather than any of the zillion other possible agents that would think of you but react according to completely different criteria.
If you do try to take into account the full range of agents that might be imagining you or simulating you, then you’re no longer trading, you’re just acting under uncertainty. There is a logic to the idea of acting as if you are—or, better, as if you might be—any of the possible entities which are your subjective duplicates (whose experience is indistinguishable from yours), but again, that’s just acting under uncertainty: you don’t know which possible world you’re in, so you construct a probability distribution across the possibilities, and choose accordingly.
As for identifying with entities which are not your subjective duplicates but which share some cognition with you, where do you draw the line? My personal model of the hydrogen atom has something in common with Richard Feynman’s; does that mean I should regard my decisions as Feynman’s decisions?! I won’t absolutely decry the practice of feeling kinship with others, even in remote times and places, far from it; but the moment we start to make this more than a metaphorical identification, a feeling of similarity, and start to speak as if I am you, and you are me, and all of us are one, we are sliding away from awareness of reality, and the fact, welcome or unwelcome as it may be, that I am not you, that we are distinct beings.
I would even say that, existentially, it is important for a person to realize that they are a separate being. You, and only you, will experience your life from inside. You have an interest in how that life unfolds that is not shared by anyone else, because they don’t and can’t live it for you. It is possible to contemplate one’s existential isolation, in all its various dimensions, and then to team up with others, even to decide that something other than yourself is more important than you are; but if you do it that way, at least you’ll be doing so in awareness of the actual relationship between you and the greater-than-you with which you identify; and that should make you more, not less, effective in supporting it, unless its use for you really is based on blinding you to your true self.
I would never have guessed that one of the side effects of the computational paradigm of mind would be a new form of proxy immortalism
Odd, this was one of the first things that occurred to me when I learned of it.
it’s still ironic to see this argument being made, given that it emerges from the same techno-conceptual zeitgeist which elsewhere is employed to urge a person not to be satisfied with living on in their children, their race, et cetera, but rather to seek personal survival beyond the traditional limits
I am actually already signed up with CI, so I’m not solely satisfied with my greater-self continuing on. But I also realize the two are related—if/when I am revived, the measure of meta-me is increased. Also, once reanimation becomes possible, I would work toward getting everyone revived regardless of who they are or how much it costs. As such, increasing the number of people sufficiently like me (ie: the measure of meta-me) increases my chances of being revived, and also is healthy for meta-me.
I’m curious if a meta-being having awareness of it’s own existence is a competitive advantage. I’d wager it’s not, but it’ll be interesting to see.
It may seem like a confused form of thinking, but I have come to accept that I have a very mystically-oriented thought process. I prefer to think of Azathoth and Alethea as beings, even though I know they are not. Struggling against evolution is hopeless, but holding back Azathoth for the good of man is noble. I find that I am both happier in life and more able to do useful things in the real world when I think in terms of metaphor. So while meta-beings may be no more than a useful mental construct, the same can be said of many things such as “life” and “particles”. If it makes winning more achievable it’s worth embracing, or at least exploring.
I would never have guessed that one of the side effects of the computational paradigm of mind would be a new form of proxy immortalism
Odd, this was one of the first things that occurred to me when I learned of it.
I actually had the opposite reaction, wondering if the me of next year was close enough to be the same person. I have a tendency toward a high future discount in any case, and this didn’t help. :)
I would never have guessed that one of the side effects of the computational paradigm of mind would be a new form of proxy immortalism—by this I mean philosophies according to which you live on in your children, your race, your species, in the future consequences of your acts, or in your duplicates elsewhere in the multiverse. I suppose it’s just another step beyond the idea that your copy is you, but it’s still ironic to see this argument being made, given that it emerges from the same techno-conceptual zeitgeist which elsewhere is employed to urge a person not to be satisfied with living on in their children, their race, et cetera, but rather to seek personal survival beyond the traditional limits, because now it is finally conceivable that something more is possible.
Needless to say, I disagree profoundly with the idea that I “am” also anyone with whom I have some vague similarity. There’s also a special appendix to my disagreement, in which I disagree specifically with the idea that Timeless Decision Theory has anything new to add here, except an extra layer of confusion. You don’t need Timeless Decision Theory in order to identify with a group; identification with a group is not secretly a case of a person employing Timeless Decision Theory; and “acausal trade”, as a phenomenon, is as real as “praying to God”. Someone might engage in a thought process for which that is an accurate designation; and somewhere else in some other reality there might even be an entity which views itself as being on the other end of that relationship; but even if there is, it’s a folie a deux, a combined madness. If someone in one insane asylum believes that he is the Emperor Napoleon, separated from his beloved Josephine, and if someone in another insane asylum believes that she is Josephine, separated from Napoleon, that doesn’t validate the beliefs of either person, it doesn’t make those beliefs rational, even if, considered together, the beliefs of those two people are mutually consistent. Acausal trade is irrational because it is acausal. It requires that you imagine, as your counterpart on the other side of the trade, only one, highly specific possible agent that happens to be thinking of you, and happens to respond to your choices in the way that you imagine, rather than any of the zillion other possible agents that would think of you but react according to completely different criteria.
If you do try to take into account the full range of agents that might be imagining you or simulating you, then you’re no longer trading, you’re just acting under uncertainty. There is a logic to the idea of acting as if you are—or, better, as if you might be—any of the possible entities which are your subjective duplicates (whose experience is indistinguishable from yours), but again, that’s just acting under uncertainty: you don’t know which possible world you’re in, so you construct a probability distribution across the possibilities, and choose accordingly.
As for identifying with entities which are not your subjective duplicates but which share some cognition with you, where do you draw the line? My personal model of the hydrogen atom has something in common with Richard Feynman’s; does that mean I should regard my decisions as Feynman’s decisions?! I won’t absolutely decry the practice of feeling kinship with others, even in remote times and places, far from it; but the moment we start to make this more than a metaphorical identification, a feeling of similarity, and start to speak as if I am you, and you are me, and all of us are one, we are sliding away from awareness of reality, and the fact, welcome or unwelcome as it may be, that I am not you, that we are distinct beings.
I would even say that, existentially, it is important for a person to realize that they are a separate being. You, and only you, will experience your life from inside. You have an interest in how that life unfolds that is not shared by anyone else, because they don’t and can’t live it for you. It is possible to contemplate one’s existential isolation, in all its various dimensions, and then to team up with others, even to decide that something other than yourself is more important than you are; but if you do it that way, at least you’ll be doing so in awareness of the actual relationship between you and the greater-than-you with which you identify; and that should make you more, not less, effective in supporting it, unless its use for you really is based on blinding you to your true self.
Odd, this was one of the first things that occurred to me when I learned of it.
I am actually already signed up with CI, so I’m not solely satisfied with my greater-self continuing on. But I also realize the two are related—if/when I am revived, the measure of meta-me is increased. Also, once reanimation becomes possible, I would work toward getting everyone revived regardless of who they are or how much it costs. As such, increasing the number of people sufficiently like me (ie: the measure of meta-me) increases my chances of being revived, and also is healthy for meta-me.
I’m curious if a meta-being having awareness of it’s own existence is a competitive advantage. I’d wager it’s not, but it’ll be interesting to see.
It may seem like a confused form of thinking, but I have come to accept that I have a very mystically-oriented thought process. I prefer to think of Azathoth and Alethea as beings, even though I know they are not. Struggling against evolution is hopeless, but holding back Azathoth for the good of man is noble. I find that I am both happier in life and more able to do useful things in the real world when I think in terms of metaphor. So while meta-beings may be no more than a useful mental construct, the same can be said of many things such as “life” and “particles”. If it makes winning more achievable it’s worth embracing, or at least exploring.
I actually had the opposite reaction, wondering if the me of next year was close enough to be the same person. I have a tendency toward a high future discount in any case, and this didn’t help. :)