On Thu, Jan 14, 2010 at 10:21:34AM -0600, Jason Resch wrote: > If you don't believe they are you, that would imply when you put a pot of > coffee on the stove, you do so out of altruism. Since it only benefits > those future observers who have memory of being you but are not. It's not a > useful philosophy for building anything on top of such as decision making as > according to that theory, observers cannot make changes affecting what they > will experience (since they only are that one moment). Perhaps things > really are that way, but evolution has created a useful illusion of > continuity which leads to the overall betterment of OM's on average. Rather > than sit around never making coffee because it will be someone else who > experiences it, you decide to make it knowing someone else will be better > off for it. As you said, there would be no observational distinction > between whether you are one OM, one track of OMs, or all OMs, but they lead > to different philosophies, the first being perhaps something like nihilism, > nothing you do matters to your. The second leads to egocentrism and > selfishness. The last leads to a golden rule, sacrifice for others type of > ethic. I think the middle one is the most complex, because it has the > hardest definition as to what OMs to group together. Of the first and last, > the last is perhaps simpler too, since it could be thought to attach one > observer to all OMs rather than an observer for each OM. > > > Jason
The last viewpoint leads to a kind of fatalism - all these other OMs exist/happen anyway, nothing I can do will change that. To get the "golden rule" evolving, you need a complex system of rewards and punishments, and perhaps a fair amount of shared DNA (see the usual evolutionary explanations for altruism). But it still evolves under the second option above. Cheers -- ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Prof Russell Standish Phone 0425 253119 (mobile) Mathematics UNSW SYDNEY 2052 hpco...@hpcoders.com.au Australia http://www.hpcoders.com.au ----------------------------------------------------------------------------
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