X-Message-Number: 15148
Date: Wed, 20 Dec 2000 22:05:36 -0700
From: Mike Perry <>
Subject: Survival Issues

Robert Ettinger, #15132, says:
>
>Mike Perry thinks that if Derek Parfit were gradually changed into Greta 
>Garbo, Parfit would no longer exist, and before the change Parfit "should" 
>have no direct personal interest in any joy or sorrow that Garbo might later 
>experience. He thinks a successor must retain memories in order to be the 
>"same" person or a true continuer--even though there could be radical 
>changes.

Not just arbitrary changes, however. The changes must not be such as to
prevent identification with the past self.

> (Spatially separated systems, however, he thinks, must be very 
>similar in order to be considered the "same" person.) 
>
I'll accept isomorphic systems that may look very different but in what I
think are the important ways would be similar. But I want to emphasize that
we are talking about two very different notions of "same person" here, and
it's too bad the English language is limited in that different words for the
two concepts are not readily available. There is the sameness by which a
continuer or later version of a person could be said to be the "same" as an
earlier version, and the much more exacting (in certain important ways)
standards that I would insist on holding between what I would call two
instantiations of the same person. By way of a rough analogy, the first
sameness is like that holding between two editions of the "same" book, while
the second holds between two copies of the same book, where we assume all
important details are the same, i.e. same edition and everything. I hope I'm
making myself clear.
>
>First, as many times noted, if the brain has a portion or aspect that is 
>central in the sense that it creates or allows subjective experiences, then 
>one could say that the "same" person endures so long as that subsystem 
>endures--Parfit endures even if he becomes Garbo or a frog. In a less extreme 
>case, an amnesiac is the "same" person. (Yes, if this central self is 
>generic, we have additional problems.)
>
If it isn't, then we are talking about what amounts to different information
from one person to another, and this does distinguish persons, as far as I
am concerned. Of course, the notion of survival must be recognized to have
some fuzziness about it too.

>Second, in addition to the amnesiac case, we have the opposite--ersatz 
>memories. All of us have had some kinds and degrees of ersatz memories and 
>attitudes--for example, just by reading a novel, you temporarily, and to some 
>degree, take on the persona of the protagonist. You "become" him (or her, 
>even if you are a male reader!) to a certain extent. In extreme cases, crazy 
>people "become" Napoleon or Jesus. With future technology, you might
"become" almost anyone to almost any desired degree.

Yes, I've experienced this feeling of "becoming" too but I think I can keep
track of the persona I am temporarily identifying with vs the person in the
background that is really me.

>
>And yet again, I have no complete and final resolution for these questions, 
>and I don't think anyone else does either. But life remains interesting, and 
>sometimes more fun than oblivion.
>
With these points I concur too--happy holidays.

Brook Norton, #15140, says
...
>But there is another view of survival that nicely covers all of the
>hypotheticals that both Perry and Ettinger raise.  That other view is that
>survival, in a strict, unambiguous description of how an entity continues
>through time, is simply impossible to define and survival is impossible to
>realize in the real world.

This is a position I disagree with though I'll grant that it would be a tall
order to strictly define "survival" in what I would consider any reasonable
way. But to me it is a fascinating problem. I've been working on a
mathematical theory relating to survival for some years now, and it't still
not by any means complete, though some interesting progress (to me at least)
has been made. Wish I had more time to spend on this.

>  Any definition of survival can be shown to be
>inadequate through the use of appropriate thought experiments.  Copied
>people, split and merged identities, identities that are discontinuous in
>time, etc., all form a set of inconsistent, irreconcilable thought
>experiments that indicate that survival is undefinable, and in fact I
>propose (though I'm sure not the first to do so), nonexistent.
>
To me many of these problems seem resolvable, and moreover, it's very
inspiring and exciting to work on them. Again, just wish I had more time.

>It is very simple and straightforward to suggest that all things in the
>universe, including conscious entities change over time.

Change need not preclude a definite "identity." Mathematical functions, for
instance, may vary from point to point yet one function as a whole will be
different from another one as a whole (y=x^2 is different from y=x).

>  Some changes are
>gradual, others very rapid.  Period.  There is no reason to hypothesize that
>entities possess a special "identity" that "survives".

Well, you can just ignore certain properties that might otherwise allow you
to conclude that there *is* an identity that survives. Be my guest, but that
approach is less interesting to me.
...
>If you accept the non-survival hypothesis as probable, then thought
>experiments with copied persons, many-worlds, etc are all consistent in that
>they can all be explained as a state at time t1 changing into a new state at
>time t2. Period. 

Mighty dull. True but trivial.

>No gnashing over whether someone "survived" from t1 to t2,
>just the acknowledgment that they changed.
>
Then you have to ask, does it matter how they changed, and if so why, etc.

>The non-survival hypothesis implies a very different approach to cryonics
>and the pursuit of happiness.

It seems to me that, accepting that survival fails even from moment to
moment, one could rationalize complete inactivity. Don't bother to eat
because you will not be satisfied, only someone else maybe. And how could
helping them benefit you? On the other hand, it's hard to imagine someone so
much as reaching for a bite of food without the thought that it will be
them, not someone else, that will momentarily be consuming that morsel. And
similarly with other things in life. Otherwise, aren't you just kidding
yourself?

>  A discussion of these points was in one of my
>CryoNet messages a few months ago.  That discussion touched on the fact that
>we have evolved with the concept of survival because it is an effective way
>for our genes to be continued through generations. 

Some things we evolved with are, in my view, worthy of continuation in some
form, and one of them I think is the concept of and desire for survival. No
longer will it be to perpetuate genes, to be sure. But I think it will serve
a higher purpose, which is really its primary purpose anyway: to (in some
reasonable way) perpetuate individuals. 

Mike Perry

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