Ghosts and Mind Copies - The Identity Question

[whswhs]

Originally Posted by sn0wball

This works for your argumentation as well. "We don't really know, so why not believe that it will not work?" This is not about believing. What I am saying is rather "We don't really know, so all we can do is speculate." After all, this is about a fictitious technology in a game universe.

There are certain questions to which "advanced technology" is not an answer, any more than saying "a miracle happens" is an answer. The persistence of personal identity is one of them. The very same issue was already being debated by Christian theologians a thousand years ago or more, even though their only answer to "how can this be done" was "God can do it if he wants." (To which Aquinas gave the definitive answer: The omnipotence of God does not extend to contradictions.)

Your argument about "how big a chunk of the brain can you replace at once?" is just the paradox of the bald man. From the fact that we cannot draw a precise, absolutely correct line between two things . . . say, between the colors green and blue . . . it does not follow that they are the same thing. Human beings cannot measure anything with infinite precision; in fact, quantum mechanics seems to suggest that no physical system can measure anything with infinite precision. So we are always going to have to deal with vague boundaries. But we can't just collapse the universe into one undifferentiated category by removing every conceptual boundary that is not infinitely precise.

What this is is partly a philosophical argument about the meaning of "the same," and partly an argument about what process creates consciousness, or "point of view." As to the latter, we don't have a fully detailed answer. But we know that the occurrence of consciousness requires, as one of its conditions, a nexus of information processing, which is a causal process involving reciprocal exchange of physical signals that carry information. The amount of information passing through the corpus callosum is an upper bound on the minimum bandwidth needed to have one consciousness; two people talking face to face don't have a single consciousness, so face to face interaction is a lower bound. The hypothesized process for uploading does not involve any reciprocal information transfer at all, but only one-way information transfer; that's a different case.

Bill Stoddard

[whswhs]

Originally Posted by vicky_molokh

Awright. As I said some posts ago, we'll probably stay with our preferred opinions.

That sounds as if you are conceding that your belief is not a rationally provable one, but an expression of personal conviction . . . or, if you like, faith.

Bill Stoddard

[vicky_molokh]

Originally Posted by whswhs

That sounds as if you are conceding that your belief is not a rationally provable one, but an expression of personal conviction . . . or, if you like, faith.

Bill Stoddard

I'm conceding that we're working from different axioms, and axioms, especially ones different from one's own, usually share traits with faith.

[whswhs]

Originally Posted by vicky_molokh

I'm conceding that we're working from different axioms, and axioms, especially ones different from one's own, usually share traits with faith.

I think you misunderstand the nature of axioms, but that misunderstanding is widespread. But in any case, the point I've been making in my own recent posts is not an appeal to my own premises. Rather, it's a claim that you yourself do not hold consistently to your own premises, and do not have a consistent position.

You assert that identity=pattern similarity, and deny that identity=shared worldline. But unlike shared worldline, which has a unique criterion, pattern similarity encompasses classes of entities of varying breadth: at one extreme, the "pattern" of the information stored in my nervous system right now is only similar to the pattern of myself for a few seconds before and after; at the other, it is similar, let us say, to the pattern of every vertebrate. It's necessary to specify how great a breadth you want. You have not done so. I have suggested that if you set the breadth narrow enough to make me unique, you will have set it so narrow that my newborn self in 1949 does not have the same identity; but if you set it wide enough to encompass both of us, you have it sufficiently wide so that many other human beings also count as identical to my newborn self, and thus as part of its "me."

On one hand, it seems to me that you mostly deal with this question of "am I me?" by handwaving: You adopt a narrow standard of identity in order to say that other people do not count as future selves of the newborn molokh; you adopt a wide standard of identity in order to say that you and he are the same person, despite vast differences in knowledge, memory, self-awareness, and emotional state. On the other hand, it also seems to me that you shift from overall pattern similarity to similarity of what you consider to be the important parts of the pattern . . . but you have no independent definition of what those important parts are, and no evidence that they exist. They just happen to be the "let's supposes" that will enable you to say that molokh-now and newborn-molokh are the same person. This sort of thrashing around, this introduction of arbitrary free parameters into an equation, is exactly the sort of argumentative move that someone makes who is defending a nonviable paradigm.

And it seems to me that the concept of "identity" that you want to have emerge from your definition, and that you are making all these assumptions to get to, is in fact the very same concept of identity that emerges perfectly naturally from a worldline concept of identity . . . except that you don't want to adopt a worldline concept of identity, because it interferes with other conclusions that you want to reach.

Calling all of this "different axioms" is making your position look a lot more coherent than it is.

Bill Stoddard

[vicky_molokh]

Originally Posted by whswhs

I think you misunderstand the nature of axioms, but that misunderstanding is widespread. But in any case, the point I've been making in my own recent posts is not an appeal to my own premises. Rather, it's a claim that you yourself do not hold consistently to your own premises, and do not have a consistent position.

You assert that identity=pattern similarity, and deny that identity=shared worldline. But unlike shared worldline, which has a unique criterion, pattern similarity encompasses classes of entities of varying breadth: at one extreme, the "pattern" of the information stored in my nervous system right now is only similar to the pattern of myself for a few seconds before and after; at the other, it is similar, let us say, to the pattern of every vertebrate. It's necessary to specify how great a breadth you want. You have not done so. I have suggested that if you set the breadth narrow enough to make me unique, you will have set it so narrow that my newborn self in 1949 does not have the same identity; but if you set it wide enough to encompass both of us, you have it sufficiently wide so that many other human beings also count as identical to my newborn self, and thus as part of its "me."

On one hand, it seems to me that you mostly deal with this question of "am I me?" by handwaving: You adopt a narrow standard of identity in order to say that other people do not count as future selves of the newborn molokh; you adopt a wide standard of identity in order to say that you and he are the same person, despite vast differences in knowledge, memory, self-awareness, and emotional state. On the other hand, it also seems to me that you shift from overall pattern similarity to similarity of what you consider to be the important parts of the pattern . . . but you have no independent definition of what those important parts are, and no evidence that they exist. They just happen to be the "let's supposes" that will enable you to say that molokh-now and newborn-molokh are the same person. This sort of thrashing around, this introduction of arbitrary free parameters into an equation, is exactly the sort of argumentative move that someone makes who is defending a nonviable paradigm.

And it seems to me that the concept of "identity" that you want to have emerge from your definition, and that you are making all these assumptions to get to, is in fact the very same concept of identity that emerges perfectly naturally from a worldline concept of identity . . . except that you don't want to adopt a worldline concept of identity, because it interferes with other conclusions that you want to reach.

Calling all of this "different axioms" is making your position look a lot more coherent than it is.

Bill Stoddard

Actually, I do not insist that my version of identification produces unique results among 'natural' humans. I merely find it more convenient, and more easily acceptable by others. Yes, this is cowardice on my part, thank you for pointing me out.

[Tuoni]

Originally Posted by vicky_molokh

Actually, I do not insist that my version of identification produces unique results among 'natural' humans. I merely find it more convenient, and more easily acceptable by others. Yes, this is cowardice on my part, thank you for pointing me out.

Just to clarify, me and someone who thinks a lot like me are the same person?

Oh, and I don't really consider me now and me 20 years ago to be the same person, despite existing on a spacial/temporal continuum . Much like how as light is stretched it goes from blue to red, yet I can't state the point where it switches from blue to red.

Sadly, I also don't think that a destructive upload is "me". But if I'm going to die anyways I'll do it. Because if I'm wrong and it is still me, the yay! And if I'm right and its not me, well, I'm dead, so I wont be around to care.

We all die eventually. Even the chance that I can exist beyond this body would be enough for me to try it. Not before this body nears it expiration though.

[whswhs]

Originally Posted by vicky_molokh

Actually, I do not insist that my version of identification produces unique results among 'natural' humans. I merely find it more convenient, and more easily acceptable by others. Yes, this is cowardice on my part, thank you for pointing me out.

I don't call that cowardice, actually. I think there are a couple of quite different problems with it, though.

On one hand, if you are presenting your views to other people in a way that points out one possible interpretation of them that you think those other people will find acceptable, while not telling them about alternate interpretations that you think they won't find acceptable, and indeed resisting those interpretations . . . I'd call that false advertising. You might say "salesmanship" or "rhetoric," but it looks to me as if you have expressed a preference for stating your views in a way that will preventing other people from realizing their logical implications.

On the other, and more fundamentally, you yourself seem to think immediately of finding a way for it to be possible for newborn molokh and molokh now to "have the same identity" under your definition of identity. Now, of course, to someone like me, who believes in the worldline model of identity, that's a perfectly natural question to ask: here I am, obviously I'm the same person I was when I was born, does your theory support that obvious fact being true? But it seems to me that for someone who really, consistently believed in the pattern similarity model of identity, it would not even occur to them to ask that question: they would have no intuitive need for newborn molokh and molokh now to be "the same person" in the first place. By such a person's intuitions, there ought not to be any compelling reason to find newborn molokh=molokh now an obvious truth than to find newborn molokh = some other past infant an obvious truth, or to look for an argument to support believing the former to be the case. In other words, I think your own thinking still relies on the worldline continuity model to a degree that you do not fully recognize.

I think there are reasons that worldline continuity is so compelling. But I'll discuss them later, when I have a chance to organize my thoughts and time to present them.

Bill Stoddard

[whswhs]

Originally Posted by Tuoni

Oh, and I don't really consider me now and me 20 years ago to be the same person, despite existing on a spacial/temporal continuum . Much like how as light is stretched it goes from blue to red, yet I can't state the point where it switches from blue to red

So have you thought of swearing off all relations with your parents? After all, they were clearly the parents of the younger Tuoni 20 years ago, but if you and that younger Tuoni are not the same person, they are not really your parents, are they?

Bill Stoddard

[vicky_molokh]

I think the reason why I cling to the newborn==me idea is because I've got used to it, and now am trying to reconcile the 'precedent' with the first principles. I think similar way of thinking shows up most often in texts of common law and religions. I guess ZMC was at least partially right about some parts of my position.

[Crakkerjakk]

Originally Posted by whswhs

So have you thought of swearing off all relations with your parents? After all, they were clearly the parents of the younger Tuoni 20 years ago, but if you and that younger Tuoni are not the same person, they are not really your parents, are they?

Bill Stoddard

Most people have continuously updated relationships with their parents. I don't base my relationship with my parents off their care of me as an infant, I base it off of our interactions over the last couple years.

Frex, I had some very good friends from childhood who I haven't seen in 20+ years. If I saw them again, I'd be much more cautious in how I treat them than I would my current good friends. Many of my friends from childhood I doubt I'd recognize.