> It has a relation to what degree of evidence people will find satisfactory. Science alone is not sufficient for most people to carry on their lives, and this is one of those topics. This is not an argument for it being true or false, it's an argument against waving it away as a problem on the basis of "well we don't have any proof of it". Of course you don't have any proof of it.
I'm waving it away because problems which exist are more important to me than problems that don't exist. You can't rationally expect me to care as much about fantasy as I care about reality.
For someone who admits they don't have proof for their viewpoint and thinks proof isn't needed, it does seem like you tried surprisingly hard to provide proof.
> There's no solid proof that solipsism isn't true, either,
Maybe not in a meaningless hypothetical sense, but there's strong evidence that solipsism isn't a constructive theory. Try this experiment: see how long you can go pretending nobody else exists. I'll be impressed if you make it a day.
> None of these exist if there's no "you" to speak of. Who's curious? If you die every time you go to sleep, curiosity doesn't strike me as a very meaningful concept. That's what I mean by meaning. Basically all the things you list here rely on a stable concept of "you".
Not really. There has to be a me to experience these things, but that "me" doesn't have to be stable in any way really. In fact, I've changed pretty drastically over my lifetime.
> I am not talking about a "human self", there's nothing human about it since it's not tied to a specific body or a body at all in the first place. Sometimes I wonder if the problem is that people are still talking about the old concept of "soul", complete with consciousness and memories. I'm not talking about that, I'm talking about an address.
Okay, that's significantly more reasonable, but that was not at all clear from what you said previously.
> People using devices that upload their minds or break continuity is absolutely going to get political I guarantee it,
Obviously politics of the future will involve discussing this. I'm not sure how you concluded that I thought otherwise.
This should not be mistaken for thinking that politics results in a better understanding of our reality. Consciousness doesn't exist outside of hardware (brains or computers) even if a judge or congress says it does.
> and I can completely imagine people being forced and coerced to use such devices because it's convenient to someone else and because "well the evidence doesn't say there's a problem".
Well, if that happens I'll be against it. But maybe keep your imagination on topic, since nobody is proposing that as a good idea.
> Because if you go with that belief, you're not doing anything bad, and the person thinking you're murdering them is just ignorant in your eyes.
If a human self doesn't exist outside the human body, then ending the functioning of the human body is absolutely ending the human self. So I'm not sure how you draw this conclusion from anything I said.
If it's done without consent, obviously that's murder. But if that's done without consent, it's not murder. The problem here is consent, not human continuity. We weren't talking about consent until you just now brought consent in by saying we might force people to use this technology (which I would not). The technology being described is clearly not something we should be forcing on anyone, and I don't appreciate you accusing me of saying otherwise.