And even without copying “past you” no longer exist in that sense.
Yes, exactly. But normally we have a notion of personal identity as a straight line through time, a path with no forks.
If we agree that subjective experiences are unambiguously determined by physical processes in brain, than it must be clear that creation of copy doesn’t create any special conditions in subjective experience, as processes in both brains evolve in usual manner but with different inputs.
True. From the point of view of each copy, nothing seems any different, and experience goes on uninterrupted. The creation of a copy creates a special condition in personal identity, however, because there’s no longer just one “you”, so asking which one “you” will be after the copy no longer makes sense.
But I can’t see discontinuity of what you are speaking of? Which entity is discontinuous at the point of copying?
“You.” Your personal identity. Instead of being like a line through time with no forks, it splits into two.
The creation of a copy creates a special condition in personal identity, however, because there’s no longer just one “you”, so asking which one “you” will be after the copy no longer makes sense.
I don’t understand. Do you mean that personal identity is something that exist independently of subjective experience of being oneself? External observer again?
Sorry,but I see that you (unintentionally?) try to “jump out” of youself, when anticipating post-copy experience.
How about another copying setup? You stand in scanner chamber, but instead of immediate copy copying apparatus store scanned data for a year and then makes a copy of you. When personal identity splits in this setup? What you expect to experience after scanning? After copy is made? And if a copy will never be made?
The point I trying to make is that there is no such thing as personal identity detached from your subjective experience of being you. So it can’t be discontinuous.
Edit: I have preliminary resolution of anthropic trilemma, but I was hesitant to put it out, as I was trying to check that I am wrong about the need to resolve it. So I propose, that subjective experience has one-to-one correspondence not to a physical state of system capable of having subjective experience, but to a set of systems in possible worlds which are invariant to information preserving substrate change. This definition is far from perfect of course, but at least it partially resolves anthropic trilemma.
How about another copying setup? You stand in scanner chamber, but instead of immediate copy copying apparatus store scanned data for a year and then makes a copy of you. When personal identity splits in this setup? What you expect to experience after scanning? After copy is made? And if a copy will never be made?
After scanning, nothing unusual. You’re still standing in the chamber.
You ask what you will experience after the copy is made. After the copy is made, two people have the subjective experience of being “you”. One of them will experience a forward jump in time of a year. They are both equally you.
The point I trying to make is that there is no such thing as personal identity detached from your subjective experience of being you. So it can’t be discontinuous.
The discontinuity is with the word “you”. Each copy has a continuous subjective experience. But once there’s two copies, the word “you” suddenly becomes ambiguous.
The problem is to compute probability of becoming you that refers to original-you, and probability of becoming you that refers to copy-you. No one yet resolved this problem.
Edit: So you can’t be sure that you will not become you that refers to me for example.
Because it’s a meaningless question to ask what happens to the original’s subjective experience after the copies are made. There is no flame or spirit that probabilistically shifts from you to one copy or the other. It’s not that you have a 50% chance of being copy A and a 50% chance of being copy B. It’s that both copies are you, and each of them will view themselves as your continuation. Your subjective experience will split and continue into both.
The interesting question is how to value what happens to the copies. I can’t quite bring myself to allow one copy to be tortured for −1000 utiles and have the other rewarded for +1001, even though, if we value them evenly, this is a gain of 0.5 utiles. I’m not sure if this is a cognitive bias or not.
The interesting question is how to value what happens to the copies.
On what basis you restrict your evaluation to those two particular copies? The universe is huge. And it doesn’t matter when copy exists (as we agreed earlier). There can be any number of Boltzmann brains, which continue your current subjective experience.
Edit: You can’t evaluate anything if you can’t anticipate what happens next or if you anticipate that everything that can happen will happen to you.
Not sure I understand exactly. We don’t know if the universe is Huge, or just how Huge it is. If Tegmark’s hypothesis is correct the only universes that exist may be ones that correspond to certain mathematical structures, and these structures may be ones with specific physical regularities that make Boltzmann brains extremely unlikely.
We don’t seem to notice any Boltzmann-brain-like activity, which may be evidence that they are very rare.
Here is relevant post. And if Tegmark’s hypothesis are true, than you don’t need Boltzmann brains. There are infinitely many continuations of subjective experience, as there are infinitely many universes which have same physical laws as our universe, but distinct initial conditions. For example there is universe with initial conditions identical to current state of our universe, but the color of your room’s wallpaper.
Yes, exactly. But normally we have a notion of personal identity as a straight line through time, a path with no forks.
True. From the point of view of each copy, nothing seems any different, and experience goes on uninterrupted. The creation of a copy creates a special condition in personal identity, however, because there’s no longer just one “you”, so asking which one “you” will be after the copy no longer makes sense.
“You.” Your personal identity. Instead of being like a line through time with no forks, it splits into two.
I don’t understand. Do you mean that personal identity is something that exist independently of subjective experience of being oneself? External observer again?
Sorry,but I see that you (unintentionally?) try to “jump out” of youself, when anticipating post-copy experience.
How about another copying setup? You stand in scanner chamber, but instead of immediate copy copying apparatus store scanned data for a year and then makes a copy of you. When personal identity splits in this setup? What you expect to experience after scanning? After copy is made? And if a copy will never be made?
The point I trying to make is that there is no such thing as personal identity detached from your subjective experience of being you. So it can’t be discontinuous.
Edit: I have preliminary resolution of anthropic trilemma, but I was hesitant to put it out, as I was trying to check that I am wrong about the need to resolve it. So I propose, that subjective experience has one-to-one correspondence not to a physical state of system capable of having subjective experience, but to a set of systems in possible worlds which are invariant to information preserving substrate change. This definition is far from perfect of course, but at least it partially resolves anthropic trilemma.
After scanning, nothing unusual. You’re still standing in the chamber. You ask what you will experience after the copy is made. After the copy is made, two people have the subjective experience of being “you”. One of them will experience a forward jump in time of a year. They are both equally you.
The discontinuity is with the word “you”. Each copy has a continuous subjective experience. But once there’s two copies, the word “you” suddenly becomes ambiguous.
..for external observer. Original-you still knows that “you” refers to original-you, copy-you knows that “you” refers to copy-you.
Sorry, I am unable to put it other way. Maybe we have incompatible priors.
I agree with this statement. So what’s the problem?
The problem is to compute probability of becoming you that refers to original-you, and probability of becoming you that refers to copy-you. No one yet resolved this problem.
Edit: So you can’t be sure that you will not become you that refers to me for example.
Because it’s a meaningless question to ask what happens to the original’s subjective experience after the copies are made. There is no flame or spirit that probabilistically shifts from you to one copy or the other. It’s not that you have a 50% chance of being copy A and a 50% chance of being copy B. It’s that both copies are you, and each of them will view themselves as your continuation. Your subjective experience will split and continue into both.
The interesting question is how to value what happens to the copies. I can’t quite bring myself to allow one copy to be tortured for −1000 utiles and have the other rewarded for +1001, even though, if we value them evenly, this is a gain of 0.5 utiles. I’m not sure if this is a cognitive bias or not.
On what basis you restrict your evaluation to those two particular copies? The universe is huge. And it doesn’t matter when copy exists (as we agreed earlier). There can be any number of Boltzmann brains, which continue your current subjective experience.
Edit: You can’t evaluate anything if you can’t anticipate what happens next or if you anticipate that everything that can happen will happen to you.
Not sure I understand exactly. We don’t know if the universe is Huge, or just how Huge it is. If Tegmark’s hypothesis is correct the only universes that exist may be ones that correspond to certain mathematical structures, and these structures may be ones with specific physical regularities that make Boltzmann brains extremely unlikely.
We don’t seem to notice any Boltzmann-brain-like activity, which may be evidence that they are very rare.
Here is relevant post. And if Tegmark’s hypothesis are true, than you don’t need Boltzmann brains. There are infinitely many continuations of subjective experience, as there are infinitely many universes which have same physical laws as our universe, but distinct initial conditions. For example there is universe with initial conditions identical to current state of our universe, but the color of your room’s wallpaper.
Edit: spelling.