Arepo wrote:

Tarn Somervell Fletcher wrote:As to the 'preoccupation' that LWers have with uploading and cryonics, you may as well talk about the 'preoccupation' a cancer patient might have with a potential cure.

Re the cryonic vs cancer treatment comparison, I agree there’s little difference in principle (though that could show that people seeking cancer treatment are irrational rather than the reverse), but there’s are *huge* practical differences:

* Cancer treatment may be an inefficient use of resources all things being equal, but if you’re an active utilitarian who’d go on to do a lot of good, it could easily be worthwhile. Cryonics uses up far more resources, probably for less expected gain.
* If cancer treatment works, it potentially saves a lot of grief for family and friends. If cryonics works, they still suffer the same.
* Cancer treatment is already socially accepted and integrated into developed world healthcare, so there’s no desperate need to change the status quo (assuming we do think it’s a good thing). Cryonics is not, and trying to integrate it better into society uses up time and resources that could have been spent on higher expectation activities (eg Givewell/GWWC charities, wild animal suffering, SIAI, longevity research or whatever you think is the best current use of resources)
* If you, qua the motivated and intelligent utilitarian, are thinking about cancer treatment, you’re thinking about using up resources to maintain a world with a relatively intelligent and benign person. If you’re thinking about a future world where technology has progressed to the degree that they can reanimate you, they’re likely to have a lot of eugenic/GM/behavioural/other ways of improving their people, so your expected impact on the mean intelligence/altruism of the population is much lower – potentially negative.

TSF wrote:I was speaking more in terms of *Person seeking to avoid death* rather than any utilitarian calculation about what does the most good. Everyone I've spoken to/read on this issue agrees that, say, donating the money to an efficient and effective charity would *much* better maximize utility (ignoring considerations about the possibility of a cryopreserved person living much longer and other specialized arguments, anyway.)

Arepo wrote:Right, but that's what my third bullet is about. I'm not going to condemn someone for doing what they can to stave off something they fear (even if the only way in which is makes sense is the emotional satisfaction they get before they die).

On the other hand I have no time at all for people who think the desperate scrabble their selfish irrationality leads to is such a noble pursuit that *they* should condemn anyone who doesn't support it. See eg essays on the ‘hostile wife phenomenon’ http://www.evidencebasedcryonics.org/is ... -cryonics/ or Robin Hanson’s ‘Philosophy Kills’ http://www.overcomingbias.com/2009/11/p ... kills.html

TSF wrote:

Arepo wrote:On the other hand I have no time at all for people who think the desperate scrabble their selfish irrationality

Selfish? Perhaps, although it's not exactly in the normal use of the word - again, is a cancer patient searching for a cure selfish?
But irrational? How?

...

with the hostile wife example - are you criticizing the 'husband' or the 'wife'?

Arepo wrote:Cancer treatment is already socially accepted and integrated into developed world healthcare, so there’s no desperate need to change the status quo

Are you saying that if it wasn't, we shouldn't try to change the status quo? Are you saying that a cancer patient in a society where this is not true is wrong to seek treatment?

Arepo wrote:

TSF wrote:Are you saying that if it wasn't, we shouldn't try to change the status quo? Are you saying that a cancer patient in a society where this is not true is wrong to seek treatment?

You’ll never catch me using the word ‘wrong’* (for much the reasons Eliezer writes that we should ‘taboo our words’). But in in a society otherwise like this one it would clearly be counter to utilitarian goals to advocate such a change, yes.

*Forgot at the time to add the caveat 'in careful ethical discussion', before anyone gotchas me

TSF wrote:with the hostile wife example - are you criticizing the 'husband' or the 'wife'?

The people who criticise the wife. Ie the authors of those two pieces, and the LWers/cryonics advocates who support them.

TSF wrote:Selfish? Perhaps, although it's not exactly in the normal use of the word - again, is a cancer patient searching for a cure selfish?

Why not? It’s a question of scale. Someone who’s willing to trade huge amounts of overall utility for small amounts of personal gain (eg a tyrant) is generally called selfish. Someone who trades unfavourably but significantly less so – eg someone who buys an ice-cream rather than donating the money to charity - normally isn’t. Both of them are clearly doing something un-utilitarian, so the only relevant issue for us is whether it’s worth the cost of trying to get them to improve their behaviour. In the ice-cream case it obviously isn’t, not least because it would make us all visibly hypocritical (which in turn would reduce our expected influence), in the dictator case it might sometimes be.

In the case of cryonics it might also be, not so much because it’s on the same scale as being a tyrant but because such people are in greater contact with and more likely to care about the opinion and argument of the rest of us.

But it’s clearly a terrible idea to pay an opportunity cost of trying to persuade people to change their behaviour for the worse - which is exactly what cryonic advocacy is.

TSF wrote:But irrational? How?

Once one accepts the deflationary view of personal identity you claim LWers hold, any attempt to ‘prolong your lifespan’ is incoherent. Who is this ‘you’ who’s lifespan you’re prolonging? The only gain ‘you’ get from it – even if it works – is reduced fear of death in this lifetime. Once you’re frozen, the risk of such negative feelings is gone, so it would harm no-one if your brain was quietly tipped into local landfill.

So rational cryonics advocates would gain as much by advocating (or rather trying to effect) instead the illusion of cryonics without the opportunity cost of actually preserving someone for a decade. But they’d probably do far better by looking for other techniques to reduce our fear of death – and better still to accept that a few people will suffer a bit from it for the time being and entirely redirect their efforts to effective altruism.

TSF wrote:

Arepo wrote:Why not? It’s a question of scale. Someone who’s willing to trade huge amounts of overall utility for small amounts of personal gain (eg a tyrant) is generally called selfish. Someone who trades unfavourably but significantly less so – eg someone who buys an ice-cream rather than donating the money to charity - normally isn’t. Both of them are clearly doing something un-utilitarian, so the only relevant issue for us is whether it’s worth the cost of trying to get them to improve their behaviour. In the ice-cream case it obviously isn’t, not least because it would make us all visibly hypocritical (which in turn would reduce our expected influence), in the dictator case it might sometimes be.

In the case of cryonics it might also be, not so much because it’s on the same scale as being a tyrant but because such people are in greater contact with and more likely to care about the opinion and argument of the rest of us.

OK, I don't really have a problem with that so long as you're willing to extend that same label to cancer patients, which obviously you are. Consider that objection retracted.

Arepo wrote:But it’s clearly a terrible idea to pay an opportunity cost of trying to persuade people to change their behaviour for the worse - which is exactly what cryonic advocacy is

I would disagree with you on that. I'm not entirely sure why you think signing up for cryonics is a change for the worse. Could you state that explicitly?

Arepo wrote:Once one accepts the deflationary view of personal identity you claim LWers hold, any attempt to ‘prolong your lifespan’ is incoherent. Who is this ‘you’ who’s lifespan you’re prolonging? The only gain ‘you’ get from it – even if it works – is reduced fear of death in this lifetime. Once you’re frozen, the risk of such negative feelings is gone, so it would harm no-one if your brain was quietly tipped into local landfill.

You mistake my word, I think. The 'you' of 10 minutes ago and of 10 minutes in the future is still you. Cryonics advocates maintain that the difference between Time of preservation{You{ and Post-revival{You} is small (in the same sense that the difference between Present{You} and ~10min{You} is small, though to different degrees perhaps), therefore, you *are* the same person.

Arepo wrote:You’ll never catch me using the word ‘wrong’* (for much the reasons Eliezer writes that we should ‘taboo our words’). But in in a society otherwise like this one it would clearly be counter to utilitarian goals to advocate such a change, yes.

Which utilitarian goals?

Arepo wrote:If you think otherwise, then I don't think you fully understand utilitarian reasoning.

Or perhaps you don't fully understand the subject. As I said before, please state this part explicitly.

Arepo wrote:

TSF wrote:I would disagree with you on that. I'm not entirely sure why you think signing up for cryonics is a change for the worse. Could you state that explicitly?

Let me weaken this claim, since it obviously depends on the counterfactual. An average person does so little good with their money that it’s conceivable that their mean spending will be worse than the happiness they’d gain from cryonics. (I don’t actually think that it is, given that the people we’re talking about are people who someone’s trying to talk *into* cryonics, therefore people who don’t a priori expect to gain much serenity from it – but for the sake of argument I’ll assume it could well be)

An average consequentialist, one hopes, achieves far more with their time and money than an average person, an average utilitarian even more so. Even if – say – 95% of their efforts are basically selfish, or at least self-directed, the good they can do by carefully redirecting that 5% is potentially enormous. Since signing up for cryonics is going to reduce the total of which that 5% is a proportion, it’s going to be detrimental. Unless the utility they gain from signing up is both higher than the detriment of that reduction and higher than anything which they might have done instead, that signup was a change for the worse.

Since most LWers are consequentialists, and a fair proportion utilitarians, the latter group is the relevant one.

TSF wrote:‘You mistake my word, I think. The 'you' of 10 minutes ago and of 10 minutes in the future is still you.’

This is a bizarre claim, that only derives any sense it might have from fudging the language. Is 10cm from here also ‘here’, simply because there exist many greater distances from here which an arbitrary point might be?

Sure for some purposes it’s a passable heuristic to answer ‘yes’, but when speaking philosophically, given that we can easily answer more accurately, we might as well do so. So 10 cm from here is not here – it’s 10cm away. And the person who had my name and existed 10 minutes ago is not me - it's the person who had my name and existed 10 minutes ago.

Clearly [person who had my name and existed 10 minutes minutes ago] can’t be preserved or prolonged by cryonic suspension, since he’s already vanished. The closest thing to bringing him back and prolonging him would be a precise simulation of him that runs forever that state, but what was so special about the properties he had that he’s worth doing that for?

TSF wrote:Which utilitarian goals?

Maximizing utility. *The* utilitarian goal, I should say.

TSF wrote:Or perhaps you don't fully understand the subject. As I said before, please state this part explicitly.

A pure utilitarian, qua one who seeks to maximise utility, has the choice of behaving in any way that (s)he expects to maximise utility. Given the unbounded amount of expectation space, that’s probably a ‘choice’ of precisely one path. Doing anything else, however briefly, carries the opportunity cost of not having taken that path, for as long as the ‘anything else’ takes.

Sure an actual utilitarian-leaning human will have human foibles which they’ll satisfice/balance against the dictums of pure utilitarianism, but those are a different question.*

What we’re discussing here is not cryonics per se, it’s the behaviour of cryonics advocacy. But if cryonics is not an extremely utilitarian activity, it’s extremely unlikely that advocating it will be one, when there are numerous other ultra-high-expectation activities out there.

In a world where cancer treatment was looked down upon, if it was otherwise like this one, those alternative activities would still be available, so cancer-treatment advocacy would still look very poor by comparison (and, incidentally, might actually have negative expectation – see http://thehealthcareblog.com/blog/2012/ ... ctors-die/).

If you don’t consider counterfactuals when thinking about whether you’d do something (or rather, to the degree you don’t), you can’t be said to be behaving consistently with utilitarianism.

*Albeit one which can be answered similarly. To the degree that you’re looking out for yourself (in the colloquial sense) and those you love, you might as well follow the optimal way of doing so. Cryonics *advocacy* is unlikely to be that way. As far as I can see, the only substantial benefit it has to oneself is signalling to other LWers/transhumanists.

Lance Bush wrote:

Arepo wrote:Once one accepts the deflationary view of personal identity you claim LWers hold, any attempt to ‘prolong your lifespan’ is incoherent. Who is this ‘you’ who’s lifespan you’re prolonging?

Exactly. Any LW'ers who remain motivated by cryonics for these reasons are exhibiting a weird, unmotivated, anti-utilitarian inconsistency in their views which DOES make me suspicious that they have quasi-dualistic confusions lurking beneath their explicitly stated views. I don't actually think they are dualists, but I do think endorsing cryonics is objectionable on utilitarian grounds.

(The 'you' of 10 minutes ago and of 10 minutes in the future is still you. Cryonics advocates maintain that the difference between Time of preservation{You{ and Post-revival{You} is small (in the same sense that the difference between Present{You} and ~10min{You} is small, though to different degrees perhaps), therefore, you *are* the same person.)

You say that "you *are" the same person"; yes, by this definition you are, but the sense in which you are the "same person" doesn't seem to me to be a reason to act with *special* regard for that person that's "me" at all. What the hell makes future persons that are similar to you so much more important than other future people that aren't you that the former justifies so much investment of resources at the expense of the interests of the latter? There doesn't seem to be to be any motivating sense in which these people that "are the same person as me" should matter.

If aliens were producing exact copies of me on another planet right now, freezing them, and unfreezing them a week from now, a year from now, etc.; those unfrozen me's would be more me now than the future me's causally connected to this particular body. Yet despite being "me", such copies pull no moral weight than any other people on earth. Why should I be particularly concerned with how similar certain people are to me at present? I don't care about those hypothetical copies any more than I care about random people on earth who are in no coherent sense "me", so why should I care about preserving future me's through cryopreservation?

The sense in which it's "still you" shouldn't be remotely motivating to anyone who takes a deflationary view of personal identity seriously. It's still "me" only in the sense that this future person is more similar to the me of the present. Why the HELL should that matter? It's a totally bizarre form of partiality: preference to act in the interests of future persons that incidentally happen to be a lot like me. I can't help but see that as nothing short of irrational narcissism that fails to really appreciate a deflationary view of personal identity.

I suspect essentialist/dualist motivations lurk behind the inclinations people have to pursue cryopreservation. It's a silly, unmotivated activity, and this diluted use of the term "you" strikes me as impotent to motivate me to act with special regard for those future people that are "me". That it nonetheless seems reasonable to people on LW is one of the instances in which I depart from the consensus there.

TSF wrote:

Arepo wrote:Sure for some purposes it’s a passable heuristic to answer ‘yes’, but when speaking philosophically, given that we can easily answer more accurately, we might as well do so. So 10 cm from here is not here – it’s 10cm away. And the person who had my name and existed 10 minutes ago is not me - it's the person who had my name and existed 10 minutes ago.

Clearly [person who had my name and existed 10 minutes minutes ago] can’t be preserved or prolonged by cryonic suspension, since he’s already vanished. The closest thing to bringing him back and prolonging him would be a precise simulation of him that runs forever that state, but what was so special about the properties he had that he’s worth doing that for?"

We're talking about personal identity here. You're being unnecessarily specific. The [person who had my name and existed 10 minutes minutes ago] still exists, to a extremely close approximation. I share the *incredibly vast majority* of my attributes with that person, to the extent that I say that he *is* me, and if you copied him in some way, he would have the same 'weight' (moral and otherwise) that I do.

Now the question of whether or not cryonics (and cryonics advocacy) is 'utilitarian' depends a lot on your utility function. Transhumanists in general, and LWers in particular, generally are not fans of death, whether for themselves or others. Death is a *huge* negative in their utility function. Cryonics is an attempt to prevent death.

Lance wrote:If aliens were producing exact copies of me on another planet right now, freezing them, and unfreezing them a week from now, a year from now, etc.; those unfrozen me's would be more me now than the future me's causally connected to this particular body. Yet despite being "me", such copies pull no moral weight than any other people on earth. Why should I be particularly concerned with how similar certain people are to me at present? I don't care about those hypothetical copies any more than I care about random people on earth who are in no coherent sense "me", so why should I care about preserving future me's through cryopreservation?

Do you care more about yourself than you do these random people on earth?

Lance wrote:You say that "you *are" the same person"; yes, by this definition you are, but the sense in which you are the "same person" doesn't seem to me to be a reason to act with *special* regard for that person that's "me" at all. What the hell makes future persons that are similar to you so much more important than other future people that aren't you that the former justifies so much investment of resources at the expense of the interests of the latter? There doesn't seem to be to be any motivating sense in which these people that "are the same person as me" should matter.

This is correct if you care no more about yourself than others.
This is almost certainly false, however. *no-one* cares equally about themselves as others (Some people get pretty close though - if you're one of them, then your position is consistent, just not shared by many others)

There is an argument for cryonics being a very good utilitarian intervention, but that's generally not why people support it. People support it for the same reasons that they're willing to spend money on their medical issues, and on themselves in general.

Now cryonics advocacy is another issue. One point that needs to be made is that I think most people put cryonics advocacy in a *different category* than, say, donation decisions. It's not really a case of "should I convince this person to sign up for cryonics, or should I make some more effective charitable intervention", it's more like "should I convince this person to sign up for cryonics, or should I change the subject and talk about some random thing".

I'm not really sure what you mean by cryonics advocacy, though. I mean, there *are* people (like, say, the people who run Alcor, CI, etc) who support cryonics to a much greater degree, but they're hardly the majority, nor do they form any kind of LW consensus.
I think some explication of what you mean by cryonics advocacy would be helpful here (not in terms of a definition, more like a description of the sort of behavior you're talking about/criticizing. )

Lance wrote:

TSF wrote:Do you care more about yourself than you do these random people on earth?

Not morally. I don't think it would be ethical, if I had millions of dollars, to spend it on myself, and would probably not be motivated to. I probably would forego expensive end of life care for moral reasons, and feel the same way about cryonics. It's a selfish, unethical way to use additional resources, and I oppose it for that reason.

Furthermore, it's barely motivating at all. I just don't care about ensuring that at some point in the future there is some person who is "me" in a way that strikes me as totally irrelevant. The psychological pull of being concerned about "future me's" that will exist next year is strong, and heavily inclines me to act preferentially towards my "self". Cryonics doesn't do this, it lacks that intuitive pull. It doesn't feel, intuitively, like popping a pill to live forever. It feels more like dying and having a copy of me remade in the future, which isn't any morally different to me. That being said, I'm enslaved to my intuitions in this respect. If I could turn off my partiality towards myself by pushing a button, I would. I think preferring yourself and your friends and family is unethical.

A thought experiment helps illustrate why I don't think cryonics makes any sense as a motivating force and why I don't think people who are for it are really taking a deflationary view of personal identity seriously:

Imagine if you could engage in an extravagantly expensive, resource-heavy process of having a copy of you made 500 years from now. They do an atom-for-atom scan of your body, and, 500 years after you die, a replicator produces a copy of you.

This copy would be the same as me, so it would be me. I'd have been resurrected. Hell, they could make two copies, and I'd be double-resurrected! Why not, if I have enough money, invest in having as many copies of me made as possible?!

This isn't a remotely compelling prospect to me. Why would I care to do that? What would incline me to want to invest so much in ensuring that some time down the road some person exists that's more like me now? Using the definition of sameness given here, they would be the "same person" as me, but so what? WHY should that matter? I honestly don't give a shit about the replicator producing people that are more similar to me than someone else. And I don't think there's any principled difference between a replicator and using cryonics. Honestly, I'd prefer for them to produce people who are happier and healthier than I am. Only a weird, quasi-dualistic sense that somehow the ME right now would somehow survive would this really strike me as emotionally compelling and motivate me to want it.

TSF wrote:

Lance wrote:dollars, to spend it on myself, and would probably not be motivated to. I probably would forego expensive end of life care for moral reasons, and feel the same way about cryonics. It's a selfish, unethical way to use additional resources, and I oppose it for that reason."

Just clarifying: Even is the treatment literally cured you, and you could look forward to a excellent quality of life for some time?

Lance wrote:"Furthermore, it's barely motivating at all. I just don't care about ensuring that at some point in the future there is some person who is "me" in a way that strikes me as totally irrelevant. The psychological pull of being concerned about "future me's" that will exist next year is strong, and heavily inclines me to act preferentially towards my "self".

"Cryonics doesn't do this, it lacks that intuitive pull. It doesn't feel, intuitively, like popping a pill to live forever. It feels more like dying and having a copy of me remade in the future"

Cryonicists maintain that these are functionally identical (although popping a pill to sleep and waking up in the future where you can live forever is a better analogy).

Lance wrote:I think preferring yourself and your friends and family is unethical.

Again, there are arguments that buying cryonics is the best intervention *regardless of who it is purchased for*, but I don't want to get into that here - perhaps separately.

A thought experiment helps illustrate why I don't think cryonics makes any sense as a motivating force and why I don't think people who are for it are really taking a deflationary view of personal identity seriously:

Imagine if you could engage in an extravagantly expensive, resource-heavy process of having a copy of you made 500 years from now. They do an atom-for-atom scan of your body, and, 500 years after you die, a replicator produces a copy of you.

This copy would be the same as me, so it would be me. I'd have been resurrected. Hell, they could make two copies, and I'd be double-resurrected! Why not, if I have enough money, invest in having as many copies of me made as possible?!

This isn't a remotely compelling prospect to me.

It is to us.

Lance wrote:Why would I care to do that? What would incline me to want to invest so much in ensuring that some time down the road some person exists that's more like me now? Using the definition of sameness given here, they would be the "same person" as me, but so what? WHY should that matter? I honestly don't give a shit about the replicator producing people that are more similar to me than someone else. And I don't think there's any principled difference between a replicator and using cryonics. Honestly, I'd prefer for them to produce people who are happier and healthier than I am. "

"Only a weird, quasi-dualistic sense that somehow the ME right now would somehow survive would this really strike me as emotionally compelling and motivate me to want it.

This is the claim, yes, but it's not at all quasi-dualistic. The Me of right now *would* survive, at least that is the claim. If such capability existed, it *would* be you surviving.

I'd also point out that cryonics *doesn't have to be* as resource intensive (in terms of money that is) as it is today. If serious economies of scale where in effect, it would be *far*, FAR cheaper.

somervta/TSF: Just clarifying: Even is the treatment literally cured you, and you could look forward to a excellent quality of life for some time?

Again, there are arguments that buying cryonics is the best intervention *regardless of who it is purchased for*, but I don't want to get into that here - perhaps separately.

It is to us.

I'd also point out that cryonics *doesn't have to be* as resource intensive (in terms of money that is) as it is today.

Viliam_Bur wrote:You know, "politics is the mindkiller" is not only about the conventional meaning of the word "politics". It is about tribes and belonging. Right now you are conflicted as a member of two tribes, and you may feel pressured to choose your loyalty, and protect your status in the selected tribe. Which is not a good epistemic state.
Now on the topic:

Arepo wrote:Cryonics uses up far more resources (than cancer treatment)

Do we have any specific numbers here? I think the values for "cancer treatment" would depend on the exact kind of treatment and also how long the patient survives, but I don't have an estimate.

Arepo wrote:If cryonics works, (family and friends) still suffer the same (grief).

Wrong alief. Despite saying "if cryonics works" the author in the rest of the sentence still expects that it does not. Otherwise, they would also include the happiness of family and friends after the frozen person is cured. That is what "if cryonics works" means.

Expressed this way, it is like saying (for a conventional treatment of a conventional disease) that whether doctors can or cannot cure the disease there is no difference, because either way family and friends suffer grief for having the person taken to the hospital. Yes, they do. But in one case, the person also returns from the hospital. That's the whole point of taking people to hospitals, isn't it?

Arepo wrote:trying to integrate [cryonics] better into society uses up time and resources that could have been spent on higher expectation activities

Technically, by following this argument, we also should stop curing cancer, because that money could also be used for Givewell charities and animal welfare. Suddenly, this argument does not sound so appealing. Why? I guess because cryonics is far; curing a cancer (your, or in your family) is near; and Givewell charities are also far but less so than cryonics. Removing a near suffering feels more important than removing a far suffering. That's human; but let's not pretend that we did a utilitarian calculation here, if we actually used a completely different decision procedure.

...but you already said that.

I think that this discussion is mostly a waste of time, simply because your opponent's true rejection seems to be "cryonics does not work". And then all is written under this alief. Under this alief the arguments make sense: if the cryonics does not work, of course wasting money on cryonics is stupid. But instead of saying this openly, there is a rationalization about why utilitarians should do this and shouldn't do that, by pretending that we have numbers that prove "utility(cancer cure) > utility(animal welfare) > utility(cryonics)". Also, when discussing cryonics, you are supposed to be a perfect utilitarian and willing to sacrifice your life for someone else's greater benefit, but you are allowed to make a selfish exception from perfect utilitarianism when curing your cancer.

For me, the only interesting argument was the one that a smart human in a pre-Singularity world is more useful than a smart human in a post-Singularity world, therefore curing smart people now is more useful than freezing them and curing them in future.

Villiam_Bur wrote:Do we have any specific numbers here? I think the values for "cancer treatment" would depend on the exact kind of treatment and also how long the patient survives, but I don't have an estimate.

Wrong alief.

Despite saying "if cryonics works" the author in the rest of the sentence still expects that it does not. Otherwise, they would also include the happiness of family and friends after the frozen person is cured. That is what "if cryonics works" means.

Technically, by following this argument, we also should stop curing cancer, because that money could also be used for Givewell charities and animal welfare. Suddenly, this argument does not sound so appealing.

I think that this discussion is mostly a waste of time, simply because your opponent's true rejection seems to be "cryonics does not work".

It is my experience that LWers place considerable negative utility on death itself.

Cryonicists are absolutely right I think that getting frozen and unfrozen in the future really would feel just like what happens if you popped a pill to sleep and wake up later. But this continuity of consciousness is precisely what I think is illusory about personal identity. I don't see any difference from this and me being disintegrated 30 seconds from now and a copy of me made in the future. To the extent that I can emotionally divest myself from concern for future selves that are the result of reconstruction (those don't feel like me), I really don't assign more weight to them.

There's an intuitive difference between acting in the interests of myself next week and myself post-cryo

I'd rather remove the self-regarding disposition with respect to the former! So I'm stuck acting selfishly, and wrongly, about certain things (investing more in my own medical care, recreational activities, etc.)

In a very real sense, I'm accusing people who are motivated to pursue cryopreservation of having a totally arbitrary interest: they are going out of their way to make sure future people exist who are more like them...for what reason, exactly?

if one holds the views I do about personal identity, and which the people at LessWrong generally speaking purportedly do as we

There are utilitarian considerations where being the "same person" matters here. You can't just let someone's grandpa die, produce a totally different grandpa, and say "here you go! New grandpa!" Similarity matters in how others are psychologically bonded to that person, among other utilitarian-motivated factors.

I care about good experiences being experienced and bad experiences not being experienced.

I'm also an *eliminativist* about personal identity - I think we should drop discourse that claims that "I" exist in the future if I'm replicated, or that "I" am resurrected by a replication process carried out in the future, and use some new term that captures what deflationary views mean without distorting our intuitions by invoking traditional terms.

As Daniel said on LW, this reasoning only holds if all the relevant family and friends are also suspended and revived (and then the same reasoning applies to all them, and all their family and friends – ie all the socially networked people in the world).

Am I really claiming that I’d turn down cancer treatment?

I begin to think that this use of the term 'deflationary' is not useful - I don't think you mean what I thought you did by it.

we just think there is something meaningful about the 'copy', that the copy is you in the same way you are now.

You seem to think personal identity doesn't exist (we disagree)

You should have interest in the copies of yourself for the same reason you should have interest in the cryosuspended fversion of yourself for the same reason you have interest in yourself now.

We maintain that this intuition is a false one, that there is no relevant difference between a perfectly preserved you that is revived and the you that will exist a few moments in the future.

Again, the argument is that it wouldn't be a totally different grandpa.

This is not all there is to LW metaethics.

I am not, and I don't think many LWers are. I begin to think that this use of the term 'deflationary' is not useful - I don't think you mean what I thought you did by it.

Your Second post:

Why, then, do you think there is something meaningful about the 'copy'?

DanielLC wrote:Most everyone considers the copy of them that exists a few seconds in the future to be important.

What would 'important' even mean to a utilitarian in this context?