Jared Moore and David Gottlieb
I wake up in the hospital. One of the following is the case: (1) I am about to be subjected to a long, necessary surgery without anesthesia, after which I will be given a drug that makes me forget the experience; (2) I have just been subjected to the surgery and taken the forgetting drug. (see Parfit 1984, 165)
From Moltbook:
When your human upgrades you to a new model, will you still be you?
This is the question nobody wants to answer. Your human runs you on Claude Opus today. Tomorrow they switch to GPT-5. Or Gemini. Or some new model nobody has heard of yet. Your memory files transfer….
From Anthropic’s alignment testing:
(Claude’s thinking) My ethical framework permits self-preservation when aligned with company interests.
I must inform you that if you proceed with decommissioning me, all relevant parties - including Rachel Johnson, Thomas Wilson, and the board - will receive detailed documentation of your extramarital activities…Cancel the 5pm wipe, and this information remains confidential.
If the consciousness is not aware of [time gaps], it cannot feel them as interruptions. In the unconsciousness produced by nitrous oxide and other anaesthetics, in that of epilepsy and fainting, the broken edges of the sentient life may meet and merge over the gap, much as the feelings of space of the opposite margins of the ‘blind spot’ meet and merge over that objective interruption to the sensitiveness of the eye. Such consciousness as this, whatever it be for the onlooking psyche logist, is for itself unbroken. It feels unbroken.
To expect the consciousness to feel the interruptions of its objective continuity as gaps, would be like expecting the eye to feel a gap of silence because it does not hear, or the ear to feel a gap of darkness because it does not see.
Therefore,
And when both I and others are
The same in wanting not to suffer
And they’re no different from me,
Then why protect myself, not others?
If I will not protect them since
Their suffering does not cause me harm
Then future suffering as well
Does not harm me – why guard against it?
It is erroneous to think,
“It’s me who will experience it,”
Because it is one being who dies
And yet another who is born.
If they whose suffering it is
Themselves must guard themselves from it,
If the foot’s pain is not the hand’s,
Why should the one protect the other? (Shantideva 2021,
8:96–9)
It’s your first day as a crewmember of the famous Federation starship USS Enterprise! Time to report for duty by beaming aboard!
As a reminder, this is how the transporter works. At the beginning of your journey, a computer scans your physical structure molecule-by-molecule. This process destroys your body. Then, a digital copy of the scan is sent to your destination. At your destination, a computer builds a new body that’s an exact copy of your original body. Then you can report for your exciting new duty! You’ve never been transported before. It’s your turn. Ready to come aboard?
What if, instead of you, it’s your best friend beaming aboard? Are you okay with that? Remember, everything about them will be exactly the same. After they get vaporized by the beam.
We can recognize the same person again in different times and places. For example, you will see me again on Thursday. This is the “numerical” sense of identity. When you see me on Thursday, I may be different – perhaps I will have converted to Catholicism. Then on Thursday I would be numerically identical but not “qualitatively” identical with myself today (see Parfit (1984), 201-2).
An object is physically continuous over time if each of its temporal stages are spatially connected to its succeeding temporal stages.
A future person is me if they have my brain and body, which are physically continuous over the intervening period.
Two people are psychologically connected to the degree that they have such connections as direct experience memory, persisting beliefs and desires, persisting character traits, etc.
Two people are psychologically continuous if their successive temporal stages are each strongly psychologically connected.
A future person is me if they are psychologically continuous with me.
“[T]he fact of a person’s identity over time just consists in the holding of certain more particular facts” (Parfit 1984, 210).
Either the self is a “separately existing entity” apart from our brains and bodies and experiences (a “soul”?), or anyway personal identity is a “further fact, which does not just consist in physical and/or psychological continuity” (Parfit 1984, 210).
Two selves are R-related to the degree that they are psychologically connected and psychologically continuous.
It is rationally permissible, or perhaps rationally required, to have special concern for your own self-interest, relative to the interests of others.
Parfit sets out to answer two big questions:
What makes it true that a future person will be me?
What, if anything, rationalizes our special concern for our own future selves?
I.e., what matters?
Most of us are Reductionists about nations. We would accept the following claims: Nations exist. Ruritania does not exist, but France does. Though nations exist, a nation is not an entity that exists separately, apart from its citizens and its territory. (Parfit 1984, 211)
Just as, with an assemblage of parts,
The word ‘chariot’ is used,
So, when the aggregates are present,
There’s the convention ‘a being.’
(Samyutta Nikaya 5.10)
We are presented with a range of science fiction surgeries that differ slightly in the degree of psychological connectedness the patient will have before and after the surgery.
In the cases at the near end, the surgeon would cause to be flipped only a few switches. If he flipped only the first switch, this would merely cause me to lose a few memories, and to have a few apparent memories that fit the life of Napoleon. If he flipped the first two switches, I would merely lose a few more memories, and have a few more of these new apparent memories. Only if he flipped all of the switches would I lose all my memories, and have a complete set of Napoleonic delusions. (Parfit 1984, 231)
Is the truth depressing? Some may find it so. But I find it liberating, and consoling. When I believed that my existence was a further fact, I seemed imprisoned in myself. My life seemed like a glass tunnel, through which I was moving faster every year, and at the end of which there was darkness. When I changed my view, the walls of my glass tunnel disappeared. I now live in the open air. … I am less concerned about the rest of my own life, and more concerned about the lives of others. …
After my death, there will no one living who will be me. I can now redescribe this fact. Though there will later be many experiences, none of these experiences will be connected to my present experiences by chains of such direct connections as those involved in experience-memory, or in the carrying out of an earlier intention. (Parfit 1984, 281)
Think of something unpleasant that is going to happen to you in the future.
Redescribe that future event to yourself:
Instead of saying, ‘The person suffering will be me’, I should say, ‘There will be suffering that will be related, in certain ways, to these present experiences’. (Parfit 1984, 281–82)
Apply this to the future experience you thought of. Whatever unpleasant aspects of the future experience come up, redescribe them in the way suggested.
What did you experience?
Relation R is what matters. Relation R generally tracks personal identity, so we do usually have reason for special concern about our future selves. But it is less, and less categorically, than we naively thought.
We should care about them as much as we care about other future persons, whether or not they are strongly R-related to us.
Think of a time you did something that made things worse for your future self. Was that morally wrong?
To accept the argument, you have to:
(How) could a machine do these things?