X-Message-Number: 17095
From: 
Date: Wed, 25 Jul 2001 11:41:16 EDT
Subject: Pride goeth before...

George Smith and Scott Badger have made some excellent points--all of which 
have been visited many times by many people over many years, but remain 
slippery, elusive, and multi-faceted. Just a couple of quick remarks:

"Self-esteem" can be a counterproductive criterion, as Mr. Smith says, but it 
can also be useful. In some contexts self-esteem could be called "pride," 
which goeth before a fall but also goeth before a climb or before a noble 
effort. And it's difficult to avoid pride--aren't the humble proud of their 
humility? Aren't you proud of the successes and virtues of your friends and 
relatives? Everything in its place.

Dr. Badger recalls some aspects of "identity" vs. growth. We aspire to become 
superhuman as well as immortal, and (with luck) we even anticipate a time 
when our future selves will have very little in common with our present 
selves, and may not even be interested in retaining memories of these ancient 
times. 

(A little thought experiment: Suppose that we had evolved in a different way, 
not by individuals breeding and then dying, but by the individuals themselves 
gradually changing over time. For all we know, that might even be possible, 
in a slightly different world, and in fact something like that actually 
happens with some microorganisms. We would not remember or care about our 
earlier incarnations. Why should we care about "our" future incarnations?) 

There is also the question of the exeriencer vs. the experienced. I tend to 
suspect they ARE the same, or at any rate that the experience is more 
important than the substrate or carrier. (If a silicon brain could have your 
feelings, as well as your memories and pesonality etc.--which is not at all 
clear--would it not be another you, or another being essentially equivalent 
to you from the point of view of a third party?) 

Feeling, or subjective experience, is in the quale, the physical embodiment 
of life-as-we-know-it, possibly a modulated standing wave in the brain, 
binding space and time. 

Well, we simply don't have all the answers yet, and should resist the 
temptation to pretend we do. But it seems to me to be shaping up something 
like this:

Since we (probably) can't change the past or the present, all motivation 
concerns the future. For this reason, and because qualia bind space and time, 
and because the goal is feel-good, we must aim to maximize personal feel-good 
over future time. To assign the weights correctly is the formidable task 
which we have barely begun to address. 

Common sense tells us that, other things equal, nearer rewards are worth more 
than distant ones, and are also easier to calculate and less uncertain; and 
major goals are worth more than minor ones. We may have almost nothing in 
common with our distant-future selves, but we connect through a series of 
overlaps. (You probably don't care much about the fates of your unborn 
great-great grandchildren, but you care about the closer generations, who in 
turn care about the later.) Switching from time to space, charity begins at 
home, and you probably don't care much about misery in distant places, but 
again the connection is not zero because of the overlaps as well as the 
concepts.

Lots of work ahead.

Robert Ettinger
Cryonics Institute
Immortalist Society
http://www.cryonics.org

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