Continuity of existence
May. 10th, 2011 10:28 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jackA question oft posed in science fiction and amateur philosophy is what constitutes continuity of my existence. That is, when I'm saying "I want to do blah to achieve blah" what counts as "I" for this purpose?
A typical science-fictional spectrum of options is something like:
1. Myself, 5 seconds from now
2. Myself, after I sleep
3. Myself, 20 years from now
4. If you destructively and exhaustively scanned my body at the atomic level and then reassembled it from new atoms so it functioned the same.
5. If you destructively and exhaustively scanned my body at the atomic (or maybe only neuron) level and then simulated it in a sufficiently accurate simulation in a really really accurate computer.
6. If you found the series of simple encodings of the successive simulation states of #5 embedded in the binary digits of pi[1].
Greg Egan and Schlock Mercenary provide decent examples of several.
Now, there are fairly good reasons for saying #1 clearly does[2] and #6 clearly doesn't. So though each consecutive pair look as if they must have the same answer, there must be a break somewhere in the middle. I don't expect this intuition to change the answer to #1 or #6.
However, nor do I think it's worthless. I think asking "Does a shrimp have the property of floogle" is logically worthless (except insofar as it sheds light on how we ask questions) since it inherently doesn't have a meaning. But I think asking "If we meet aliens, should they have human rights" is relevant because even though we don't expect to meet any aliens in our lifetimes, I think our concept of human rights ought to extend enough to be able to give an answer ("yes", "no", or "under these circumstances..." or "your question is malformed because..."). It'd be bad to spend ALL your time on those questions, but I do think it's reasonable to think about them.
I expect some people to dismiss the whole question, since they have a convincing argument for #1, or against #6, and think that settles the matter[3]. If the only interest in the link between them was the answer, I'd concede that the question is not very useful. But I think pinpointing where the flaw is, if anywhere, is useful in understanding the concepts.
To me, the break seems to come between #5 and #6. Greg Egan expounded something like #6 in Permutation City, and while I couldn't refute it, I was sure it didn't count. Whereas #5, while practically ridiculous, does seem conceptually possible.
However, I think there's an axis oft glossed over in this discussion, which is how many copies of you there are. If there's just one (as when you awake from sleep), it's reasonable to to think of that as you. But when this appears in fiction, most stories have a conveniently simplifying premise that ensures there is only one, or in rare some cases, two "copies". Those examining cases with more, even tangentially, are rare.
I think this is one of the hidden flaws in #6. It's the same problem as having many parallel worlds. If there's one or two parallel worlds, we can treat the people there as people. If there's ALL POSSIBLE parallel worlds, then all of our morality is a big division by zero, since whatever we do, there'll be some parallel world where the outcome we hoped for, and the outcome we feared, happened. So we need a new metric for "how does what we do matter?" Possibly one based on honour and righteousness, rather than utilitarianiasm, would give answers (whether we liked them or not...)
But even #5 and #4 suffer from the same problem. If there can be multiple copies, do I just arbitrarily designate one of them as "me"? Or do something else? Or give up on treating myself differently to other people in moral systems?
[1] This is probably certain and certainly probable.
[2] You can argue otherwise, but I submit most people agree we should at least act as if we have a vested interest in our three-second ahead selves, which is what I mean.
[3] Indeed, I feel very defensive about mentioning it at all, since it's easy to assert that someone teleported or uploaded is "obviously" different, and hence that the original person simply committed suicide. I agree that argument is apparently convincing. But to me, so is the argument that it's practically the same as the previous case on the list. So if you only know one of those arguments, you can feel you know "the" answer. But because I'm thinking of both, I'm stuck in uncertainty.
A typical science-fictional spectrum of options is something like:
1. Myself, 5 seconds from now
2. Myself, after I sleep
3. Myself, 20 years from now
4. If you destructively and exhaustively scanned my body at the atomic level and then reassembled it from new atoms so it functioned the same.
5. If you destructively and exhaustively scanned my body at the atomic (or maybe only neuron) level and then simulated it in a sufficiently accurate simulation in a really really accurate computer.
6. If you found the series of simple encodings of the successive simulation states of #5 embedded in the binary digits of pi[1].
Greg Egan and Schlock Mercenary provide decent examples of several.
Now, there are fairly good reasons for saying #1 clearly does[2] and #6 clearly doesn't. So though each consecutive pair look as if they must have the same answer, there must be a break somewhere in the middle. I don't expect this intuition to change the answer to #1 or #6.
However, nor do I think it's worthless. I think asking "Does a shrimp have the property of floogle" is logically worthless (except insofar as it sheds light on how we ask questions) since it inherently doesn't have a meaning. But I think asking "If we meet aliens, should they have human rights" is relevant because even though we don't expect to meet any aliens in our lifetimes, I think our concept of human rights ought to extend enough to be able to give an answer ("yes", "no", or "under these circumstances..." or "your question is malformed because..."). It'd be bad to spend ALL your time on those questions, but I do think it's reasonable to think about them.
I expect some people to dismiss the whole question, since they have a convincing argument for #1, or against #6, and think that settles the matter[3]. If the only interest in the link between them was the answer, I'd concede that the question is not very useful. But I think pinpointing where the flaw is, if anywhere, is useful in understanding the concepts.
To me, the break seems to come between #5 and #6. Greg Egan expounded something like #6 in Permutation City, and while I couldn't refute it, I was sure it didn't count. Whereas #5, while practically ridiculous, does seem conceptually possible.
However, I think there's an axis oft glossed over in this discussion, which is how many copies of you there are. If there's just one (as when you awake from sleep), it's reasonable to to think of that as you. But when this appears in fiction, most stories have a conveniently simplifying premise that ensures there is only one, or in rare some cases, two "copies". Those examining cases with more, even tangentially, are rare.
I think this is one of the hidden flaws in #6. It's the same problem as having many parallel worlds. If there's one or two parallel worlds, we can treat the people there as people. If there's ALL POSSIBLE parallel worlds, then all of our morality is a big division by zero, since whatever we do, there'll be some parallel world where the outcome we hoped for, and the outcome we feared, happened. So we need a new metric for "how does what we do matter?" Possibly one based on honour and righteousness, rather than utilitarianiasm, would give answers (whether we liked them or not...)
But even #5 and #4 suffer from the same problem. If there can be multiple copies, do I just arbitrarily designate one of them as "me"? Or do something else? Or give up on treating myself differently to other people in moral systems?
[1] This is probably certain and certainly probable.
[2] You can argue otherwise, but I submit most people agree we should at least act as if we have a vested interest in our three-second ahead selves, which is what I mean.
[3] Indeed, I feel very defensive about mentioning it at all, since it's easy to assert that someone teleported or uploaded is "obviously" different, and hence that the original person simply committed suicide. I agree that argument is apparently convincing. But to me, so is the argument that it's practically the same as the previous case on the list. So if you only know one of those arguments, you can feel you know "the" answer. But because I'm thinking of both, I'm stuck in uncertainty.