From: Emlyn (emlyn@one.net.au)
Date: Wed May 30 2001 - 00:01:51 MDT
Lee Corbin wrote:
> CONGRATULATIONS! Almost all people (and even some on this
> list!) cannot grasp this. Of course, your first statement was
> wrong "SO WHAT if it's NOT you;" ---- but I know what you mean.
I am one of those challenged individuals.
How about this... Say I am walking down the street, and a genie appears in
front of me. We get talking, and it turns out the genie is an SI from the
future. It tells me that it has made an upload of me, who even now is
running in a simulation inside Jupiter (which it has retrofitted into a
giant brain suitable for an SI, while leaving it intact to all external
observation). The SI informs me that the scan of my body was perfect, that
the copy is running excellently, and having a great time driving around
sensor pods in the asteroid belt. This sounds reasonable to me.. I would
enjoy that, after all.
According to Lee's conjecture, this upload running around in Jupiter
actually is me. But I, here on earth, see that as a somewhat abstract
proposition... I feel pretty much like me here on Earth, just as I did a few
minutes before. I would probably be happy to meet the jupiter-sim me
(probably he's a damned cool guy, after all), but I don't think I'd be happy
if he emptied out my bank account, or ate my dinner. The idea that I would
happily kill myself on receipt of this new knowledge is kind of ludicrous
(not your point Lee, I know that).
So, how in fact is the copy actually me?
Emlyn
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