From: Jason Joel Thompson (jasonjthompson@home.com)
Date: Fri Dec 08 2000 - 13:56:17 MST
----- Original Message -----
From: "John Clark" <jonkc@worldnet.att.net>
> Jason Joel Thompson <jasonjthompson@home.com> Wrote:
>
> > if I delete my mp3 of my favorite Metallica song, I'm fairly certain
your
> > collection will remain unscathed.
>
> And if I make a copy and send it to you then your collection will be
unscathed too
> because you'll get the exact same mp3 file back, it is digital after all.
You're dodging the issue. I'm not disputing that it is a digital
equivalent. I'm asking whether they are the SAME thing, or are, instead,
two instances.
>
> >>If you have a better definition of death than having a last
thought I'd love to hear it.
>
> >Death = Permanent termination of the experience of reality.
>
> That's exactly equivalent to my definition, except that in my humble
opinion my wording is
> much better, it doesn't need a murky concept like "reality".
I disagree that they are equivalent. "Having a thought" seems to me to be
the active experience of forming an idea and is, I suspect, a poor model to
attach to certain life forms. Or is your definition relevant only to
humans?
> Like being brain dead. I am using "thought" in the broad sense that
includes feeling.
Well, you can use it in any sense you want John, but you'll admit that
there's going to be some issues for other people understanding what you're
talking about if the definition is not commonly held. Thought includes
feeling?
Anyway, this part of our discussion is kind of tangential to our
conversation.
> >How long is that instant?
>
> Depends of how long "now" is, probably second or two for most people.
Your contention is that there is a one or two second period in which both
entities would, in fact, be basically one? Why?
> >Is there an actual effective reality in which they are all "me?"
>
> Depends of which "me" your talking about, the "me" of a year ago, the "me"
> at the instant the copy was made, or the "me" of after the copy.
Your insistence on using the same word to refer to each of the copies is
unnecessarily imprecise. If you don't like original and copy, can we call
them One and Two (etc...)? In that context, let me rephrase: is there an
actual effective reality in which copies 2 through 10 are, in fact, One?
>
> > In what -scientific- fashion is one of the brains simultaneously
doing what
> > you describe above, and what possible substance does it have?
>
> Huh?
You appear to making the claim that my copies are not discrete-- that there
is some sort of shared experience across the entities. I'm asking for the
scientific basis by which you hold this belief.
>
> > By what science does my subjective experience mysteriously jump
across to
> > the clone?
>
> Something can't "jump" unless it occupies space (Where is the number
eleven?)
> and it's debatable if consciousness even has a position in space,
Space is a BIG issue with regards to consciousness-- we're talking about
discrete entities, remember? My brain is separate from yours-- we have
differing experiences of reality. It -matters- that our disparate brains
don't have hardware connecting them; that their relationship is non-local.
It appears to be your contention that the discrete conscious subjective
process that is One will somehow have access to (or become???) the discrete
conscious subjective process that is Two. I would like to hear your
explanation of how this 'transference' might take place (the movement or
transformation of the subjective experience of One into Two.)
> > Why is it important that the copy was made within a single
nanosecond?
>
> Because I can have a thought in 60 seconds. If the copy was made a 60
seconds
> ago and then I'm hit by a bus then I've had a last thought and so the
"me" after the
> copy was made is dead, and I wouldn't like that at all.
Your logic is fraying.
Let's try a little diagram. This is the subjective experience of One:
1: --------| <splat>
with the horizontal axis representing the passage of time, the dashes
representing subjective experience (your life up until now) and the pipe
representing the point of termination (the bus of our thought game.) In
what EFFECTIVE fashion does ANY external copying event alter this particular
subjective experience?
It -appears- to be your belief that if we create an instantaneous copy at
the moment of termination:
1: --------|
2: |--------
that the subjective experience that is One, will somehow be uninterrupted.
I'm curious to know:
a) By what scientific principle is the discrete experience of One affected
in any way by the initiation of Two? (Or, for that matter, ANY other
external copying event?) To put it another way: How does One "know" about
Two? Is there some sort of quantum magic going on here?
b) You appear to believe that if the switch isn't (practically)
instantaneous, then someone dies. How do you reconcile this belief in the
face of a harsh reality that would seem to dictate a (non-trivial!) period
of time to scan your information and reconstitute it elsewhere?
Further, why -should- time be a factor? If the copy REALLY is you, and you
get hit by the bus 60 seconds later, then all you've lost is 60 seconds.
You had a 60 second old back-up made. Yes, there IS a minute of subjective
experience lost to the mists of antiquity, but, hey, Two isn't going to know
about that.
Or let's pretend that a *second* copy is made, just as the bus hit you. Is
the second copy (Three) -more- you than the first? (Two) Since Three was
made at the moment of your death, is Three now the vessel for your
subjective experience? What about Two?
Is death of One a necessary component of the success of Two? You seem to
think that if we kill One -instantaneously- when we make Two, its okay, but
if One dies -later- that's a bad thing. By that logic, we should ALWAYS
KILL ONE (at the moment of copying)-- it saves you having to die down the
road.
All these ideas regarding multiple copies, etc, are confusing only if you
hold that there is some sort of continuity of subjective experience going on
here. Frankly, I don't find any of this confusing at all-- we're making
clones (xoxes?); they're separate people; if anything bad happens to them,
that's a bad thing (for them.) I don't think that -timing- makes it okay to
kill One!
> > Let me get this straight: is it your contention that my discrete
experience
> > of reality will, at the instant of impact, jump across to the (just
> > activated) copy?
>
> A loaded question. If your experience is and always will be "discreet"
then obviously
> I can't make another, but I've yet to find a scrap of evidence indicating
that is true.
Discrete, not discreet... my subjective experience is definitely discrete,
but not always discreet... :)
I'm not quite sure why this is a loaded question. I never said that my
experience always will be discrete-- only that it currently is. Since most
of us (except for the telepaths... damn you telepaths! Get out of my mind!)
have discrete experiences of reality, I think the burden of proof is on you
to show that a shared or transmitted experience of reality is going to occur
under conditions of copying.
> > there's got to be *something* making that mystical jump across into
> > the new substrate,
>
> Indeed there is but it's not mystical, it's information.
Exactly, and there's more than just information at stake here. Information
is good-- it tells you exactly how I am to be built. But we don't care
about just the information, we also care about the reality of the instance.
The information of the precise composition of the Brooklyn Bridge is NOT the
Brooklyn Bridge. It only becomes a bridge when we build it. And once we
build it, we no longer care about the information again. We care about the
reality of the instance of a bridge. *I* care about the reality of this
instance of *me.* You might use my data to create another instance, but
that process is irrelevant to the first particular instance of the
implementation of that information in reality. I am not -just- information.
>
> >As far as I'm concerned, -you're- the one who believes in a human
soul
>
> You're the one claming this huge difference between "The Original" and
"The Copy".
Actually, I don't claim a huge difference at all. I think that Two will be
an "exceedingly precise (nearly exact) copy" It will be a second instance
of the implementation of my information in reality and will be totally
similar to myself in every way. It will be *another* Jason. It just won't
BE the first Jason.
> Something must cause the difference, what is it, what does one have that
the other does not?
> It can't be matter, science can tell no difference between one hydrogen
atom and another,
Are two separate hydrogen molecules the same hydrogen molecule?
and
> if you're right and it's not information either then it can only be
something beyond the scientific
> method, the soul.
Well, it might be beyond -current- scientific method (for now) but that's
not because I think it's mystical! Intelligence is a tricky animal, that's
all. We are representative of the finest, most complicated self-adaptive
emergent process in reality, of which we are currently aware.
--
::jason.joel.thompson::
::founder::
www.wildghost.com
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