Pooperscootian Utilitarianism part 2: Individuality probably works differently than many of think.

Should you think about your duty, or about the consequences of your actions? Or should you concentrate on becoming a good person?

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Clinton
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Pooperscootian Utilitarianism part 2: Individuality probably works differently than many of think.

Post by Clinton »

Pooperscootian Utilitarianism part 2: Individuality probably works differently than many of think. (read both this and part 1 for best results)

Thought Experiment: Many Beths in One
(created by me)

It’s 500 years in the future. Asteroid miners live and work in space stations in the asteroid belt.
A soldier named Beth has been hired to defend one of these space stations from space pirates. She has a husband who works far away, on Earth. She also has a son back on Earth. They come to visit her whenever they can.
Whenever approaching space pirates are detected on the space station’s long-range scanners, Beth is alerted and prepares to attempt to fend off the space pirates. She immediately walks down to a room containing hundreds of adult clones of herself that have never experienced consciousness. Beth then plugs a cord into an outlet in the back of her head, presses some buttons on a control panel, and copies her memories and personality into as many unconscious clones of herself as she believes will be needed to fend off the space pirates, and then the clones with her memories awaken within a few seconds.
After awakening, all Beths, including the original, have nearly the same memories, except for minor differences such as different clones remembering awakening in different parts of the room and the original having a few more seconds of memories than the clones do. All the Beths perceive themselves as having the same right to the identity of the woman named Beth, who they each perceive themselves as being.
Each of the Beths, including the original, then enter into a single-pilot fighter spaceship and fly off to fight the space pirates.
The Beths have never lost a battle to space pirates. No battle has ever lasted more than a few hours.
Each time they defeat a group of space pirates the surviving Beths engage in the same ritual. They shut off their spaceship engines and drift through space. They then all take pink pills out of their arm rests. All except one of these pills is instantly and painlessly lethal. One of these pills is a sugar pill. Whoever received the sugar pill had been determined randomly.
Each Beth is fully aware of the high likelihood of their body being destroyed by a pill, and yet they all always voluntarily ingest the pink pills. Through ingesting the pills, only one Beth survives. The spaceships housing the deceased Beths then eject the bodies of their occupants into space and automatically follow the spaceship of the last surviving Beth back to her space station.

Discussion of the thought experiment

Before ingesting the pink pills all the Beths believed their bodies would likely die from ingesting the pink pills. Despite this, all the Beths also believed that even if their bodies died from taking a lethal pink pill, they themselves would not actually die, but rather be more accurately described as living on through the last surviving Beth. Are the Beths correct? Why or why not? Or is there some better answer to that question than yes or no?

My Analysis:

Yes, the Beths all definitely lived on through the last surviving Beth…largely because they believed they did. It wasn’t just their belief that they did that made it so. That merely removed some likely negative impacts of their bodies dying…like reducing some of the fear of it. It’s also that the way the Beths’ bodies died lost pretty much every noteworthy disadvantage death typically has.
The Beths all still got to continue their old lives, for example. They Beths also didn’t experience any pain from death, because the pills were instantly lethal. Their relatives didn’t end up missing them. They didn’t lose any power over their lives. The only thing they lost from their deaths was however many hours or minutes of life they spent from the time they arose, conscious, from their tanks they’d slumbered within, to the time they ingested their pills…which would have been no more than a few hours of memories. That’s keeping in mind that when we go to sleep and awaken again, we also lose memories, so I’d argue the Beths lost little more than we lose when we go to sleep and awaken again the next morning…so I’d say unless you believe we’re best described as dying and being reborn as new people each time we go to sleep and awaken the next day, you should perceive the Beths as living on through the last surviving Beth.

Question: What about the soul? You never even mentioned it?
Answer: I think the concept of the “soul” should be deleted from language in general. I’d say it’s entirely replaceable with the term “mind and memories.” That’s because I have no idea why I’d refer to something as “me” if it didn’t contain my mind and at least some of my memories…and the fewer of my memories it has the less it would be me. That’s keeping in mind that the Beths all have nearly the same memories…so if they don’t share the same soul (whatever that means), I don’t see how we could have a coherent definition for what the “soul” is.

Question: Couldn’t there be some inherent quality that just makes the Beths different people?
Answer: No. That’s impossible. You need some reason for people to be different people. You can’t just say they are. In other words, if I clone myself and rapidly age the clone to adulthood and implant my memories and personality into that clone, then I die and it awakens, and I believe that clone is me before I do…that clone has to be me in pretty much every relevant way.

Question: What if the Beths did not believe they lived on through the last surviving Beth?
Then I think we should treat them, and almost certainly describe them, as not surviving through the last surviving Beth…out of respect for their bodily autonomy. Imagine what terror might be felt if you thought you were going to die, but the world thought you’d be going through some mild circumstance you’d live through? You’ll feel terrified and alone…and the question of whether or not someone died, as I hope you’ve seen from this thought experiment, is largely about the impact of that description on the people it’s most important to. That’s what matters about whether or not we describe someone as having died: the context and implications of the statement…because you could easily look at it like we’re constantly dying and being reborn. Every moment of our existence, who we are is fading into who we were…shifting constantly into a person who used to be us, who can no longer gaze out through our eyes. Our past selves are completely different people than us, in many contexts….but there are of course valid reasons why we typically say someone has actually died, and why we don’t typically don’t describe ourselves as constantly dying, and these reasons are rooted in the impacts of death such as those the Beths avoided through there being one last surviving clone…and the Beths still live on through the last surviving clone according to every major reason we typically describe people as still being alive.

Question: Why would the Beths choose to end their lives the way they did?
Answer: Well, they’re soldiers. They have dangerous lives. Cloning themselves and uploading their memories into their clones essentially gives them multiple lives. If they wouldn’t take the pink pills to end their lives, they’d have to change their lives, which they likely wouldn’t like. This way…with all but one Beth having their body die, all those Beths that died get to continue the same life they always have. They don’t have to share their husbands or property or friends with any other Beth. So, in this way, the Beths gain extra lives with no real disadvantage.



Concluding thoughts:

We tend to feel who we are is something very specific…and yet, the “me” when I was very young, is likely more different than the “me” I am now than you, if you are an adult male. We can live on through other bodies, and really, what’s most important about the question of whether or not we live on is how that feels to us, typically, because we’re the ones who care most about that.
We are more connected to one another than we tend to instinctively feel. We are, essentially, one another in some very valid ways…and in this sense, we can live on through one another after we die…because no matter who you are, when you look out through your eyes at the world and feel like you’re gazing outward from some mental room, other people will have different memories and thoughts, but they’ll all have that same sense of gazing out through that room into the world.
Throughout my life my memories will change. My opinions will change. My hobbies will change. My preferred foods will change. My friends will change. The particles composing me and molecules will change. My cells will die and be replaced by new cells. My skills will change. The one part of me that will remain the same as long as I am fit to be called sentient, is me gazing out into the world, and being able to impact that world, and that unchanging part of me is identical to that unchanging part of you.
In this way, all feeling life is, in many ways, sensory appendages of a single super organism, and you are, in many ways, my afterlife, and so there are greed-based reasons for me to assist you in your life, in addition to the more empathetic reasons I described in part 1 of this series on Pooperscootian Utilitarianism.

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Another thought experiment, this one open-ended: Memory Uploading Cancer
Treatments and Such (by me)


*Bob has inoperable cancer. Bob is from a time where the technology exists to rapidly age clones to adulthood. Bob copies his memories into a clone he’d created and aged to adulthood in an unconscious state. Then, quickly, Bob goes to sleep and triggers a device that will euthanize him after he goes to sleep, and awaken the clone. In this way Bob feels he’ll cure his cancer and awaken in a younger body.

*Tim also has inoperable cancer. Time also creates a clone of himself and uploads his memories into the clone so that he’ll (as far as he’s concerned) be able to live on after he dies. Unlike Bob, Tim sees no reason to have himself be euthanized, but like Bob he awakens the clone with his memories. Tim lives for 2 more years with the inoperable cancer, all the while becoming best friends with his own clone. Though they began with identical memories, they grow to have more different personalities over time. Nonetheless, on Tim’s deathbed, Tim feels like he’s still going to live on through his clone. He dies with that opinion.

*Ralph has inoperable cancer. Ralph clones himself and rapidly ages his clone to adulthood. He uploads his memories into his clone, goes to sleep, and before he went to sleep he clicked a button on a euthanization machine from Euthocorp that should have euthanized him once it detected him being in a deep sleep, and would have resulted in an identical scenario as what Bob went through…with the clone living on with Ralph’s memories as a continuation of Ralph, but without the cancer. A glitch occurs and the Euthocorp euthanization machine doesn’t end the original Ralph’s life though. Ralph awakens to see his clone with his memories looking at him. Ralph feels like the sense of continuation he was seeking by having his body die and his clone arise is now ruined and the whole procedure has been made pointless. He now has to also share his identity, friends, and ownings with his clone. He attempts to sue EuthoCorp for damages equal to the worth of ½ of his owned property, because he now has to share it with his clone, as well as a refund for the machine.

*Trevor has inoperable cancer. Trevor creates a clone for himself and uploads his memories into his clone. Like Tim, he sees no reason to end his life though. He then perceives his life as continuing on through his clone with his memories while they’re both alive. One year later though, Trevor concludes that the personality of himself and his Trevor clone have diverged too much for them to be the same person anymore, and so Trevor no longer believes his life can be continued through his clone…so he creates a second clone. The new clones eventually feel similarly. They don’t have any life-endangering ailments, but they like the idea of living as long as possible, and so both the clones make two more clones of themselves with their memories. After about another year, the clones perceive their personalities as having diverged away from the personalities of their clones enough that they no longer perceive themselves as continuing on, if they die, through the clones, so all the clones now make new clones. This continues until there are billions of Trevor versions, each routinely making more clones of themselves so as to maintain their immortality.

*Greg has cancer. Greg thinks all of the above persons are crazy. Greg dies of his cancer and is reasonably content with his path in life.

Question: Which of the above persons was the most reasonable and why?

My main conclusion regarding the above thought experiment, and what I hope people will have learned from it: The concept of individuality, death, and the continuation of life is pretty weird and not as clear-cut as it may at first seem, ain’t it?
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Agent Smith
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Re: Pooperscootian Utilitarianism part 2: Individuality probably works differently than many of think.

Post by Agent Smith »

Deus Magnus Est to that!

The man's at the door.

Who? Mr. Jackson?

No!

:mrgreen:
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