Comment by AlexanderZ | Hacker News Reader

Comment by AlexanderZ | Hacker News Reader

A few years ago I read an article about scientists planting false memories into a mouse. [0]

This got me thinking that people were next. Then I thought: what if it already had happened? What if I've already been planted false memories?

The only time frame in which I can be sure I am who I am is from the time I regain consciousness (wake up) until I lose consciousness (fall asleep). I liked this concept because it freed me from my past and future selves. I am not them.

So, I created a journaling app that uses versions of you instead of dates. This morning, it greeted me with "Good morning, Alexander №10821". I can browse and see what other versions of Alexander (like №9851) were up to. I also understand that tomorrow it's Alexander №10822 who will wake up and not me, so I got to live this day however I like (though as I like the future Alexanders, I'm gonna also contribute to their well-being).

I will make this app public, so if this type of thinking resonates with you, leave your email in the google form I just created. [1] The app will have end-to-end encryption and cost $3/month.

[0] - https://www.smithsonianmag.com/innovation/meet-two-scientist...

[1] - https://forms.gle/PX8Aca6TR6cg5S9WA

Reminds me a bit of Diaspora by Greg Egan. I recommend it to you! Post-singularity “people” in the book start to develop interesting ways to distinguish between themselves and past versions. Since they’re immortal and infinitely copyable, their sense of self is naturally quite different from our corporeal on one. You might be into it!

Egan’s best book IMHO. Genuinely mind expanding ideas.

> The only time frame in which I can be sure I am who I am is from the time I regain consciousness (wake up) until I lose consciousness (fall asleep).

I don't see what's privileged about continuity. All of us are pretty different in the evening from in the morning. And in theory you could have been created at noon with a memory of the morning. You might not even exist yet.

Not that I'm saying those are particularly useful possibilities to be aware of. To the contrary, my point is that the self, despite being a fiction, is generally too useful to see past.

You can not be sure you have ever had consciousness prior to the present moment. All you have are memories of it that may or may not reflect reality.

A subset of the ol’, “God created the entire universe 10 microseconds ago arranged so that everything looks as if it were around much longer”.

A superset, as it does not presuppose anything supernatural at all. The possible explanations that involves a God is a subset.

E.g the simulation argument is another solution. So would cloning be. Or simulation of just an individual. Or we might just fundamentally not understand what gives rise to consciousness - for what we know consciousness may only arise for brief moments punctuated by long periods where we're just acting as automata. Or we might fundamentally not understand the passage of time.

It makes sense for us to act as if consciousness is an ongoing consistent process, because we can't really tell if it is not. The same way as the classical materialist (in the philosophical sense) response to philosophical idealism is to point out that whether or not idealists are right (that we can not trust our senses and our physical reality could just be an illusion) doesn't matter - if we have no practical way to detect it or influence it, we just have to live with it.

Point being that drawing a line between asleep vs not sleep is totally arbitrary, because we can't tell.

> The app will have end-to-end encryption and cost $3/month.

Why does the app need a network connection? Why not just store everything locally?

That was my first thought, but I don't want to lose years of journaling if I lose my phone.

Put the file on Dropbox or Google Drive or set up a shortcut to save it to PDF every night.

Great idea, please share the app here once you go public

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