Resurrection through simulation: questions of feasibility, desirability and some implications

Sure. Specifying my position more precisely will take a fair number of words, but OK, here goes.

There are three entities under discussion here:
A = Dave at T1, sitting down in the copier.
B = Dave at T2, standing up from the copier.
C = Copy-of-Dave at T2, standing up from the copier.
...and the question at hand is which of these entities, if any, is me. (Yes? Or is that a different question than the one you are interested in)

Well, OK. Let's start with A... why do I believe A is me?
Well, I don't, really. I mean, I have never sat down at an identity-copying machine.
But I'm positing that A is me in this thought experiment, and asking what follows from that.

Now, consider B... why do I believe B is me?
Well, in part because I expect B and A to be very similar, even if not quite identical.

But is that a fair assumption in this thought experiment?
It might be that the experience of knowing C exists would cause profound alterations in my psyche, such that B believes (based on his memories of being A) that A was a very different person, and A would agree if he were somehow granted knowledge of what it was like to be B. I'm told having a child sometimes creates these kinds of profound changes in self-image, and it would not surprise me too much if having a duplicate sometimes did the same thing.
More mundanely, it might be that the experience of being scanned for copy causes alterations in my mind, brain, or body such that B isn't me even if A is.
Heck, it's possible that I'm not really the same person I was before my stroke... there are certainly differences. It's even more possible that I'm not really the person I was at age 2... I have less in common with that entity than I do with you.

Thinking about it, it seems that there's a complex cluster of features that I treat as evidence of identity being preserved from one moment to another, none of which is either sufficient or necessary in isolation. Sharing memories is one such feature. Being in the same location is another. Having the same macroscopic physical composition (e.g. DNA) is a third. Having the same personality is a fourth. (Many of these are themselves complex clusters of neither-necessary-nor-sufficient features.)

For convenience, I will label the comparison operation that relies on that set of features to judge similarity F(x,y). That is, what F(A,B) denotes is comparing A and B, determining how closely they match along the various referenced dimensions, weighting the results based on how important that dimension is and degree of match, comparing those weighted results to various thresholds, and ultimately coming out at the other end with a "family resemblance" judgment: A and B are either hashed into the same bucket, or they aren't.

So, OK. B gets up from the machine, and I expect that while B may be quite different from A, F(B,A) will still sort them both into the same bucket. On that basis, I conclude that B is me, and I therefore expect that I will get up from the machine.

If instead I assume that F(B,A) sorts them into different buckets, then the possibility that I don't get up from that machine starts to seem reasonable... B gets up, but B isn't me.
I just don't expect that to happen, because I have lots of experiences of sitting down and getting up from chairs.

But of course those experiences aren't probitive. Sure, my memories of the person who sat down at my desk this morning match my sense of who I am right now, but that doesn't preclude the possibility that those memories are different from what they were before i sat down, and I just don't remember how I was then. Heck, I might be a Boltzman brain.

I can't disprove any of those ideas, but neither is there any evidence supporting them; there's no reason for those hypotheses to be promoted for consideration in the first place. Ultimately, I believe that I'm the same person I was this morning because it's simplest to assume so; and I believe that if I wake up tomorrow I'll be the same person then as well for the same reason. If someone wants me to seriously consider the possibility that these assumptions are false, it's up to them to provide evidence of it.

Now let's consider C.
Up to a point, C is basically in the same case as B: C gets up from the machine, and I expect that while C may be quite different from A, F(C,A) will still sort them both into the same bucket. As with B, on that basis I expect that I will get up from the machine (a second time).

If instead I assume that F(C,A) sorts them into different buckets, the possibility that I don't get up from that machine a second time starts to seem reasonable... C gets up, but C isn't me.

So, sure. If the duplication process is poor enough that evaluating the key cluster of properties for C gives radically different results than for A, then I conclude that A and C aren't the same person. If A is me, then I sit down at the machine but I don't get up from it.

And, yes, my expectations about the reliability of the duplication process governs things like how I split my wealth, etc.

None of this strikes me as particularly confusing or controversial, though working out exactly what F() comprises is an interesting cognitive science problem.

Oh, and just to be clear, since you brought up quantum-identity: quantum-identity is irrelevant here. If it turns out that my quantum identity has not been preserved over the last 42 years of my existence, that doesn't noticeably alter my confidence that I've been me during that time.

I remember and loved Jarod Lanier's piece where he coined that term, and I considered myself a cybernetic totalist (and still do). It just doesn't exactly role off the tongue.

At some point in college I found Principa Cybernetica, and I realized I had found my core philosophical belief set. I'm not sure what you call that worldview though, perhaps systemic evolutionary cyberneticism?

Patternist at least conveys that the fundamental concept is information patterns.

However, in this case the discussion isn't a matter of general mindset but actually is a falsifiable scientific/engineering question from within the mindset: how substrate independent is the mind?

Yes!

My sense is that biologists willing to speculate publicly think the functionality of the mind is intimately tangled up with ..

They may, and they may or may not be correct, but in doing so they would be speculating outside of their domain of expertise.

The questions of which level of abstraction is relevant is also a scientific/engineering question, and computational neuroscience already has much to say on that, in terms of what it takes to create simulations and or functional equivalents of brain components.

What difference is that?

There's a causal connection in one case that is absent in the other, and a correspondingly higher distribution in the pasts of similar worlds.

I don't understand what you mean by "only a duplication".

Duplication of effort as well as effect with respect to other parts of the universe. Meaning you are increasing the numbers of immortals and not granting continued life to those who would otherwise be deprived of it.

Suppose that you were to have a biological child in the traditional way, but could select whether to give them genes predisposing them to extreme depression, hyperthymia, or anything in between. Would you say that you should make your choice based on how common each temperament was in the universe, and not based on the impact to the child's well-being?

We aren't talking about the creation of random new lives as a matter of reproduction, we're talking about the resurrection of people who have lived substantial lives already as part of the universe's natural existence. If you want to resurrect the most people (out of those who have actually existed and died) in order to grant them some redress against death, you are going to have to recreate people who, for physically plausible reasons, would have actually died.

"Clearly the better choice" is stating your conclusion rather than making an argument for it.

I assumed that the rest of what I wrote made it clear why I thought it was clearly the better choice.

There's an obvious reason for discounting the preferences of causally unconnected entities: if they really are causally unconnected, that means that they can't find out about our decisions

If that was the reason then people would feel the same about causally connected entities who can't find out about our decisions. But they don't. People generally consider it bad to spread rumors about people, even if they never find out. We also consider it immoral to ruin the reputation of dead people, even though we can't find out.

I think a better explanation for this intuition is simply that we have a bedrock moral principle to discount dissatisfied preferences unless they are about a person's own life. Parfit argues similarly here.

This principle also explains other intuitive reactions people have. For instance, in this problem given by Stephen Landsburg, people tend to think the rape victim has been harmed, but that McCrankypants and McMustardseed haven't been. This can be explained if we consider that the preference the victim had was about her life, whereas the preference of the other two wasn't.

Just as we discount preference violations on a personal level that aren't about someone's own life, so we can discount the existence of distant populations that do not impact the one we are a part of.

and that the extent to which their preferences are satisfied isn't therefore affected by anything that we do.

Just because someone never discovers their preference isn't satisfied, doesn't make it any less unsatisfied. Preferences are about desiring one world state over another, not about perception. If someone makes the world different then the way you want it to be then your preference is unsatisfied, even if you never find out.

Of course, as I said before, if said preference is not about one's own life in some way we can probably discount it.

It's not like the mind that we're seeking to recreate already exists within our part of the universe and has a preference for being (re-)created, while a novel mind that also has a preference for being (re-)created exists in some other part of the universe.

Yes it does, if you think four-dimensionally. The mind we're seeking to recreate exists in our universe's past, whereas the novel mind does not.

People sometimes take actions because a dead friend or relative would have wanted them to. We also take action to satisfy the preferences of people who are certain to exist in the future. This indicates that we do indeed continue to value preferences that aren't in existence at this very moment.

Me possibly dying in fourty years is no big deal if I don't even think I'm the same person tomorrow, or five minutes from now.

You're confusing two meaning of the word "the same." When we refer to a person as "the same" that doesn't mean they haven't changed, it means that they've changed in some ways, but not in others.

If you define "same" as "totally unchanging" then I don't want to be the same person five minutes from now. Being frozen in time forever so I'd never change would be tantamount to death. There are some ways I want to change, like acquiring new skills and memories.

But there are other ways I don't want to change. I want my values to stay the same, and I want to remember my life. If I change in that way this is bad. It doesn't matter if this is done in an abrupt way, like dying, or a slow way, like an FAI gradually turning me into a different person.

If people change in undesirable ways, then it is a good thing to restore them through resurrection. I want to be resurrected if I need to be. And I want you to be resurrected to. Because the parts of you that shouldn't change are valuable, even if you've convinced yourself they're not.

Continued debate in this thread doesn't seem very productive to me, since all of our disagreement seems to come down to differing sets of moral intuitions / terminal values.

You're probably right.

EDIT: However, I do think you should consider if your moral intuitions really are different, or if you've somehow shut some important intuitions off by use of the "make anything arbitrary" rhetorical strategy I described earlier.

Also, I should clarify that while I disapprove of the normative conclusions you've drawn from personal identity skepticism, I don't see any inherent problem with using it to improve your mental health in the way you described (when you said that it decreased your anxiety about death). If your emotional systems are out of control and torturing you with excessive anxiety I don't see any reason why you shouldn't try a mental trick like that to treat it.