Discover more from Overcoming Bias
Consider 3 possible space-time experience trajectories:
In A, a person takes a drug at the start of a party which causes them to not remember that party the next day or anytime later. In C, an em splits off a short term “spur” copy which does a short term task and then ends.
Scenario B can be seen as like A, except that right after taking the drug the person quickly moves to a distant party location. Call this B1. Alternatively, B can be seen as like C, except that the em original is archived and inactive while the spur works. Call this B2.
In my talks on Age of Em, I’ve heard many object to scenario C, but few object to A. In scenario A, few think they’d be stressed near the end of the party, thinking they are about to “die.” Yet many see scenario C as a “death,” and claim the em spur would refuse to do their assigned task, and instead fight fiercely to keep going.
Scenario B is designed to be intermediate between A and B, and so to force a choice between conflicting intuitions. Would you really see B2 as “death” but B1 as no big deal, even though they have the same space time structure of experiences? If not, I think you should admit either that A is “death”, or that C is not. Or explain what matters besides the space-time structure of experience.
I confidently predict that ems see all of these as no big deal, because a competitive em world selects for ems who are more productive, and a willingness to create short term spurs is quite productive in the em world.
Note that this issue engages similar space vs time morality intuitions as these three prior posts.
Is Forgotten Party Death?
Let's adjust the scenario. Lets remove all the Emulation, and say that instead of uploading to a hard drive and I'm altering a brain like in scenario A.In scenario B I'd be altering some other persons memory to be like mine, but am knocked out. Me being knocked out does not seem to be interesting here. If the person were brain dead or like a child after 10 hours I'd argue I'd killed them in some sense. Similarly scenario C and B is about the same as me being knocked out or not doesn't matter.This only leaves A to examine, this person either forgets a minute a day a year or their entire life. If I were to wipe out a minute no one would say I'd killed them, I argue, maybe I'd be arrested for poisoning if it were a month or a year. If I wiped out their entire life, I'd argue they or their family members would say I killed them. So human intuition seems to allow for degrees of damage. The EM example would be more similar to a forgotten party if they reset their mind to how it was yesterday, rather then being deleted.
If we continue the substrate independence analogy, lets say you can copy someones brain, and make a pill that makes you that person, and you can change back with a pill. Let's say I'm Bill the plumber, I take a pill now I'm Phil the doctor. Let's say Phil in Bill goes to perform surgery, does it, Phil in Bill takes the Bill pill, and is now Bill in Bill. Did Bill die, did Phil die, did Bill resurrect or is it a different Bill? All good questions. Does your answer change if Phil in Bill leaves and never goes back to Bill in Bill. Is it questionable to force Phil in Bill to take the bill pill. What if someone spikes Phil in Bills drink and is now Dill in Bill unwillingly, and empties his bank account murders Bills family and disappears with the Bill body? What if Dill destroys all Bill pills, did Dill murder Bill? What if Dill in Bill alters his brain to not allow Bill to revert with a bill pill? What if they find Dill in Dill and make him take the Bill pill, did Bill get resurrected as Bill in Dill?
What if instead of different people this process it's being done to initially empty clones. As a person ages they get a new body and ta da, they're young again. What if they go into multiple clones and hire themselves out for work. What if the clone making company wants their bodies back for new clients? Do you repossess the clone body? If there's years of relationships built up by the clone does that change the argument compared to if it worked for a day?
Your analogy seems a bit confused as it's arguing for a day to be destroyed from memory in a specific body in scenario A, and everything to be destroyed in a separate body in B & C. You'd need to vary time destroyed , make the time the same for both cases, and make the bodies the same or different
I would argue that at the least you should be concerned with both the original and the copy, or not be concerned with either to the extent that they were backed up recently. I don't see a way to be concerned for the original but not the copy.
So the question is, which is death?
We all know that on some level with just time or by drinking too much one night we forget things, so A seems more like an interesting question then how we usually define death. Certainly if you knocked out 20 years of my lifes memories I'd argue I'd lost something, but if I remembred it later I'd argue I didn't lose anything.
So if not memory, is it just your brain? Maybe, this would exclude B and C as not death though, as you would be on different hardware.