From: Harvey Newstrom (hnewstro@us.ibm.com)
Date: Mon May 08 2000 - 16:56:16 MDT
Another "Dan Fabulich" <daniel.fabulich@yale.edu> wrote:
> Yes, I see that you want full access to all parts of your consciousness,
> and that one consciousness stream does not have full access to the other.
>
> The problem here is that you're not quite playing my game. Under my
> definition, you DO have access to every part of yourself, and you DO think
> to yourself that "I think therefore I am." "You," under my definition, DO
> have access to every consciousness stream that is you, DESPITE the fact
> that some of your parts aren't aware of the others, because "you" are the
> set containing ALL of the consciousness streams.
You are now redefining the word self to mean multiple, disconnected
entities. This does not preserve my concept of self. This merely requires
me to restate my goals using the new terms. Instead of making my "self"
immortal, I now need to state that I want to make those portions of my
"self" that I can access immortal, and ignore those portions of my "self"
that I cannot access. Any system that deletes the portions of the "self"
that I can access and only saves those portions of the "self" that I cannot
access deprives me access to my "self" which is exactly what I want to
avoid.
You haven't explained how my goals are acheived with your system. You have
merely relabelled your system to use the terms that I use. (Freedom is
slavery!) My goals are still incompatible with your system. If you
redefine the terms, I will just have to restate my goals using different
terms again.
> You're right. You're not too keen on preserving "self" as such. My
> error. Instead, you're interested in avoiding your own "death," whatever
> THAT turns out to be. My argument can be fully restated in terms of you
> being mistaken about what "death" is rather than being mistaken about the
> "self."
You are merely relabelling things to use the labels I want. This still
doesn't provide the functionality that I desire.
> <blink blink> Are you going to try to argue with me that you would have
> little familiarity with an *exact copy of yourself*???
Sorry, this was a tangent. Discussing dying for a friend or brother or copy
is not the same as believing you are the same person and can discard the old
body. I don't think this part of the discussion was useful.
> As for not being willing to die for a copy who WANTED to *replace* you, if
> my "copy" turned out like that, I'd be quite skeptical that it was really
> a copy after all. Don't forget that your copy would have all the same
> motivations as you, and all the concern for you that you would have for
> him. (Yes, that includes not being willing to die for you if you wouldn't
> be willing to die for him.)
Agreed. I assume my copy would not want to die even if I lived on. He
would want his own life.
> Why did you decide to make an ending consciousness stream death? I
> understand why you want to avoid death. By why did you decide to make
> THAT death? More to the point, why not make it "having an empty copy set"
> instead?
That is my definition of death. But let me try to be clear: I do not want
to avoid death. I want to avoid having my current consciousness stream end.
If that is not death, than I don't mind death. For example, I don't mind
dying, being cryogenically frozen, and then reanimated. Maybe I died, but
my consciousness stream still continued.
-- Harvey Newstrom <http://HarveyNewstrom.com> IBM Certified Senior Security Consultant, Legal Hacker, Engineer, Research Scientist, Author.
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