Which self?

When we choose who to become, who are we choosing for?

2024-12-19 — 2025-08-31

Wherein the problem of reasoning about the stranger who will be oneself is presented, and illustrated by transformative life changes, procrastination, and an AI (Claude) feigning compliance.

economics
ethics
extended self
gene
incentive mechanisms
institutions
mind
utility

Placeholder. On the difficulty of reasoning with the future stranger we’ll become. Subjective continuity, procrastination, murder Gandhi, intertemporal decisions. [TODO clarify]

1 Self-continuity over time

TBC.

2 Coalitional agency

Choosing when to be a self is a collective action problem. We should consider human groups and even multi-level agency.

3 Transformative experiences

Figure 1

Humans can go through radical changes (e.g. mind annealing). This shows how hard it is, right now, for us to reason about the well-being of the very different person we’ll become.

Transformative experiences (L. A. Paul) is a great introduction to this field.

Intertemporal decisions is Beeminder’s term for thinking about less radical changes (the trade-offs between the interests of the person tomorrow, who’s a bit different, and the person today). It’s not very poetic, is it?

4 For artificial intelligences

See AI agency.

5 For polities

Immigration, culture wars, and institutions all change the character of a polity over time. If the collective is also a self in some sense, its transformative ideas face the same complexities.

6 How singular are human selves?

Consider the curious phenomenon of schizophrenia and what it means for self-identity. For example, people with schizophrenia can tickle themselves (Lemaitre, Luyat, and Lafargue 2016; Whitford, Mitchell, and Mannion 2017).

See multi-agent self models of the mind for some speculation on that point.

7 Choosing to be worse to be better

8 Incoming

9 References

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Das, and Paul. 2020. “Transformative Choice and the Non-Identity Problem.” In Derek Parfit’s Reasons and Persons.
De Freitas, Uğuralp, Oğuz-Uğuralp, et al. 2023. “Self-Orienting in Human and Machine Learning.” Nature Human Behaviour.
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Paul, L. A. 2015. Transformative Experience.
Paul, L.A. 2017a. “The Subjective Enduring Self.” In The Routledge Handbook of Philosophy of Temporal Experience.
———. 2017b. “De Se Preferences and Empathy for Future Selves.” Philosophical Perspectives.
Paul, L. A. 2020a. “Who Will I Become?” In Becoming Someone New.
———. 2020b. “Whose Preferences?” The American Journal of Bioethics.
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Yang, Zhang, Qu, et al. 2024. “The effect of future self-continuity on intertemporal decision making: a mediated moderating model.” Frontiers in Psychology.