A thread through the archive
Essays tagged “personal identity”. Follow an idea across the archive.
Scott explores three approaches to 'writing for AI' - teaching knowledge, influencing beliefs, and enabling simulation - finding the first limited, the second theoretically confused, and the third creepy and ethically troubling.
Scott Alexander examines the prevalence of people going by initials, particularly those starting with 'J', and explores various theories to explain this trend.
Scott argues that if Big World theories are true and we accept the consequentialist view of identity used by cryonics advocates, then perfect copies of you already exist throughout the multiverse, making cryonics unnecessary for a form of immortality.