From: John Clark (jonkc@worldnet.att.net)
Date: Mon May 22 2000 - 08:36:30 MDT
m <mt_2@yahoo.com> Wrote:
>>Me:
>>The John Clark of yesterday no longer exists, but I
>>remember being him so in my opinion he has survived.
>This sounds a bit like history being written by the victors, and has
>similar problems!!
This "problem" has never caused the slightest trouble to anyone, even
though it happens to everyone every day of their lives. Why should it start
causing problems now? If an example of death is the thing that happened
to the John Clark of yesterday then I don't care if I "die" when I go through
the transporter. In fact I'd be absolutely delighted to discover that I'm dead
because that would mean death was not all it was cracked up to be.
>Nice analogy. But you *could* trace some kind of trajectory for the
>wave in general. Ditto for macroscopic humans.
If so then you could also plot the trajectory from "The Original" to "The Copy".
>What seems important to you is that the PATTERN is retained; I agree
>with this.
I'm glad to hear that because if it's not the atoms and it's not the space-time
line and it's not the pattern either then it must be a religious type soul.
if I believed that I'd sell my science books shave my head and buy a spiffy
new wardrobe of saffron robes from monksRus.com
> But 1.) The PATTERN itself must be transcribed for transmission
> AFAIK. Does this change in the medium matter?
Does the meaning of this message change depending on whether it
was recorded on a hard disk or a floppy?
> (a) 2 copies of a computer file may well be structurally and
> functionally identical (I'm perfectly happy to agree with this)
And I'm perfectly happy with a consciousness that functions identically
with my own because then it is my own, that's exactly what I mean by "me".
>but NOT in the sense (b) That they inhabit the same space or time
Who cares? Making your consciousness survive is just another task, and
not every aspect of everything is relevant in accomplishing a task. I'll bet
you didn't need to open up your computer and note the color of the wires
in its power supply before you could use it to reply intelligently to my post.
>our programs are on our respective hard discs.
And if you erase your program by accident I can send you a copy of
mine, you could even put it on the exact same sectors of your hard disk
if you were the excessive compulsive type. What has been lost?
John K Clark jonkc@att.net
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