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-l...@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
