Jack, welcome back. I no longer read every post here, but I read this post
and found your positions pretty close to my own. This one, especially, I
totally agree with:
> The important thing to realize is that _definitions don't matter_!
> Predictions, decisions, appropriate emotions to a situation - these are
> completely independent of definitions of personal identity.
This one is more problematic:
> So if our utility function is U = M Q, where M is the guy's measure (which
> is constant here) and Q is his quality of life factor (which we can assume
> to be constant), [...]
The ASSA/RSSA and QTI debates can be rephrased as whether U should equal
M*Q, or just Q, but that is an "ought" question. If we accept the standard
view in decision theory that the utility function is completely subjective,
then that means the ASSA/RSSA debate can't be resolved by objective
arguments.
We can get around this a bit by asking what most people's utility functions
actually are, instead of what they ought to be. Are they closer to M*Q, or
Q? I'm afraid that for most people, it's closer to Q than M*Q. One might
have expected that evolution would have programmed us to have U=M*Q, but
that doesn't seem to have been the case. I have a couple of speculations as
to why:
1. M cannot be perceived directly. It can be inferred, but that takes a lot
of work.
2. In our EEA, M couldn't increase, only decrease. (Because there were no
mind-copying machines.) So evolution could essentially simulate the effect
of U=M*Q with U=Q plus fear of pain and fear of dying, and that's what it
did because it's a lot easier than getting the brain to compute M. (For a
similar reason, we value sex instead of number of offspring.)
Initially I was also an advocate of ASSA until I realized that it's
ultimately a subjective question of values. I think once mind-copying
machines are invented, there will be a much greater selection pressure
towards U=M*Q. But given that U=Q is closer to the reality today, I'm not
sure what good it would do to "taking a stand against QS/QI".
--~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group.
To post to this group, send email to everything-list.domain.name.hidden
To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscribe.domain.name.hidden
For more options, visit this group at
http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en
-~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
Received on Tue Feb 24 2009 - 14:52:55 PST