Comment by lxgr
5 years ago
> Erasing a copy that only diverged from the scan for a few hours would have more in common with blacking out from drinking and losing some memory than dying.
That's easy to say as the person doing the erasing, probably less so for the one knowing they will be erased.
We used to joke about this as friends. There were definitely times in our lives where we'd be willing to die for a cause. And while now-me isn't really all that willing to do so, 20-28-year-old-me was absolutely willing to die for the cause of world subjugation through exponential time-travel duplication.
i.e. I'd invent a time machine, wait a month, then travel back a month minus an hour, have both copies wait a month and then travel back to meet the other copies waiting, exponentially duplicating ourselves 64 times till we have an army capable of taking over the world through sheer numbers.
Besides any of the details (which you can fix and which this column is too small to contain the fixes for), there's the problem of who forms the front-line of the army. As it so happens, though, since these are all Mes, I can apply renormalized rationality, and we will all conclude the same thing: all of us has to be willing to die, so I have to be willing to die before I start, which I'm willing to do. The 'copies' need not preserve the 'original', we are fundamentally identical, and I'm willing to die for this cause. So all is well.
So all you need is to feel motivated to the degree that you would be willing to die to get the text in this text-box to center align.
> The 'copies' need not preserve the 'original', we are fundamentally identical…
They're not just identical, they're literally the same person at different points in their personal timeline. However, there would be a significant difference in life experience between the earliest and latest generations. The eldest has re-lived that month 64 times over and thus has aged more than five years since the process started; the youngest has only lived through that time once. They all share a common history up to the first time-travel event, but after that their experiences and personalities will start to diverge. By the end of the process they may not be of one mind regarding methods, or maybe even goals.
Indeed, and balanced by the fact that the younger ones are more numerous by far and able to simply overrule the older ones by force. Of course, all of us know this and we know that all of us know this, which makes for an entertaining thought experiment.
After all, present day me would be trying to stop the other ones from getting to their goals, but they would figure that out pretty fast. And by generation 32 I am four billion strong and a hive army larger than any the world has seen before. I can delete the few oldest members while reproducing at this rate and retaining the freshest Me as a never-aging legion of united hegemony.
But I know that divergence can occur, so I may intentionally commit suicide as I perceive I am drifting from my original goals: i.e. if I'm 90% future hegemon, 10% doubtful, I can kill myself before I drift farther away from future hegemon, knowing that continuing life means lack of hegemony. Since the most youthful of me are the more numerous and closest to future hegemon thinking, they will proceed with the plan.
That, entertainingly, opens up the fun thought of what goals and motivations are and if it is anywhere near an exercise of free will to lock your future abilities into the desires you have of today.
5 replies →
Honestly, it depends on context. From experience I know that if I wake up from a deep sleep in the middle of the night and interact with my partner (say a simple sentence or whatever) I rarely remember it in the morning. I'm pretty sure I have at least some conscious awareness while that's happening but since short term memory doesn't form the experience is lost to me except as related second-hand by my partner the next morning.
I've had a similar experience using (too much) pot, a lot of stuff happenrd that I was conscious for but I didn't form strong memories of it.
Neither of those two things bother me and I don't worry about the fact that they'll happen again, nor do I think I worried about it during the experience. So long as no meaningful experiences are lost I'm fine with having no memory of them.
The expectation is always that I'll still have significant self-identity with some future self and so far that continues to be the case. As a simulation I'd expect the same overall self-identity, and honestly my brain would probably even backfill memories of experiences my simulations had because that's how long-term memory works.
Where things would get weird is leaving a simulation of myself running for days or longer where I'd have time to worry about divergence from my true self. If I could also self-commit to not running simulations made from a model that's too old, I'd feel better every time I was simulated. I can imagine the fear of unreality could get pretty strong if simulated me didn't know that the live continuation of me would be pretty similar.
Dreams are also pretty similar to short simulations, and even if I realize I'm dreaming I don't worry about not remembering the experience later even though I don't remember a lot of my dreams. I even know, to some extent, while dreaming that the exact "me" in the dream doesn't exist and won't continue when the dream ends. Sometimes it's even a relief if I realize I'm in a bad dream.
The thought experiment explicitly hand-waved that away, by saying "Obviously for this to work, you would have to be comfortable with the possibility..."
So, because of how that's framed, I suppose the question isn't "is this mass murder" but rather "is this possible?" and I suspect the answer is that for the vast majority of people this mindset is not possible even if it were desired.