That's pretty fun idea. I wonder how people's intuitions differ on this, but for me, I feel like it is okay if A, in a chain A->B->...->Z doesn't approve of Z. It still feels like it's an improvement. It also kind of resembles more how people in the "real world" work, continually self-improving themselves by their current definitions of self-improvement only.
I think the cupboards have an additional underdetermination problem - that of the consequences of your choice on the larger universe. One of the first things I'm going to ask any improved version of the cupboards is going to be what the likely outcomes of my choice are, and what other people will think of that choice. Now, depending on how you plan for or attempt to convey the likely outcomes, you're necessarily revealing something about the cupboard's mechanism (which must take into account aspects of reality you don't know, since you didn't design the cupboards), or constraining the universe to one in which the cupboards "work." So, perhaps you discover that all perfected versions of you are p-zombies, and using the cupboard will remove your conscious experience. Well, now you've learned that your consciousness makes the world a worse (less-than-perfect) place, and this just makes you feel bad. Since you prefer not to feel bad, a more perfect version of yourself would have never stepped into the cupboards in the first place, which shouldn't be possible according to the cupboards' rules.
The capacity to keep intact a version of each improved self which assesses each previous and following self creates a parodoxical infinite regress.
In actual fact, the self, its changes, and the resultant new version with its new values, are all but transparent to the present self that decides for the future self. Every starting point is just a brute given to us, over which we can only speculate (I could I possibly get here? 🤷♀️ 🤦♀️) . We can detect some sort of shapes behind the veil of our experience, that's all, I think.
Other selves, not past versions of ourselves, might have a better perspective on a past version of ourselves, but again, not more than a perspective.
Also, and in combination with the first point, each improvement made in the pursuit of an ideal perfect self, makes the whole project, hopeless.
That's pretty fun idea. I wonder how people's intuitions differ on this, but for me, I feel like it is okay if A, in a chain A->B->...->Z doesn't approve of Z. It still feels like it's an improvement. It also kind of resembles more how people in the "real world" work, continually self-improving themselves by their current definitions of self-improvement only.
I could be millions of diamondoid bush robots, woohoo!
Or utility fog! Or both!
I think the cupboards have an additional underdetermination problem - that of the consequences of your choice on the larger universe. One of the first things I'm going to ask any improved version of the cupboards is going to be what the likely outcomes of my choice are, and what other people will think of that choice. Now, depending on how you plan for or attempt to convey the likely outcomes, you're necessarily revealing something about the cupboard's mechanism (which must take into account aspects of reality you don't know, since you didn't design the cupboards), or constraining the universe to one in which the cupboards "work." So, perhaps you discover that all perfected versions of you are p-zombies, and using the cupboard will remove your conscious experience. Well, now you've learned that your consciousness makes the world a worse (less-than-perfect) place, and this just makes you feel bad. Since you prefer not to feel bad, a more perfect version of yourself would have never stepped into the cupboards in the first place, which shouldn't be possible according to the cupboards' rules.
The capacity to keep intact a version of each improved self which assesses each previous and following self creates a parodoxical infinite regress.
In actual fact, the self, its changes, and the resultant new version with its new values, are all but transparent to the present self that decides for the future self. Every starting point is just a brute given to us, over which we can only speculate (I could I possibly get here? 🤷♀️ 🤦♀️) . We can detect some sort of shapes behind the veil of our experience, that's all, I think.
Other selves, not past versions of ourselves, might have a better perspective on a past version of ourselves, but again, not more than a perspective.
Also, and in combination with the first point, each improvement made in the pursuit of an ideal perfect self, makes the whole project, hopeless.
Forgot to mention: it's a great thought experiment to test some of our assumptions about
choice and values, which work under the constraints of a limited perspective, and unconstrained but unspecified ideals.
Oh, but this would absolutely destroy my marriage, which depends on us both being schlumpy and imperfect.
This was a really interesting read. I like how you explained all the implications.
It strikes me that the obvious solution, if we have this arbitrary magic technology, is duplication. Just let A *and* Z exist concurrently.