From: Emlyn (emlyn@one.net.au)
Date: Wed May 30 2001 - 01:55:38 MDT
----- Original Message -----
From: "Lee Corbin" <lcorbin@ricochet.net>
To: <extropians@extropy.org>
Sent: Wednesday, May 30, 2001 3:39 PM
Subject: Re: uploading and the survival hang-up
> Emlyn wrote:
> >I think you may be getting at the idea that the human sense of identity
is
> >basically illusory... that what we call the self is not something real,
and
> >as it is not easily preservable there is no point worrying about it.
>
> >
> >I agree that the sense of self is largely illusory. However, it's a
> >cherished illusion! I'm pretty attached to it, personally, and I don't
see
> >any really good reasons to change that.
>
> I don't think anyone has shown that it is illusory, and I don't think it
is.
>
> >> However, knowing that a being which is 'exactly me'
> >> would carry on seems sufficient to me to end my own
> >> existence. And why shouldn't it?
>
> >Um, because it actually isn't you?... Thus, no matter how similar
> >another being is to me, it's still not me, and doesn't influence
> >in any way my personal decision whether to exist or not.
>
> Emlyn, a number of us believe that if an exact copy of you is made,
> then you and your duplicate are the same person. (Not that this
> view isn't difficult to get used to, and not that it doesn't have
> awkwardnesses.) You may be interested in my story
>
> http://www.leecorbin.com/PitAndDuplicate.html
>
> Lee
"And only if you phrase everything of value to you (including your own
immortality, for example) in these objective terms, do the linguistic and
semantic problems become tractable."
Lee, I think it's a lot of handwaving, personally. I've added the above line
from your discussion, because it highlights what I perceive as the true
motivation for this materialist line of reasoning... that it makes the
problems tractable. Finding an easy (if incorrect) out is different from
looking for truth.
In the pit thought experiment, Yevgeny the original is still in the pit,
every time. There is a consciousness "attached" (I use that extraordinarily
loosely) to Yevgeny, in the pit, which will stay there forever.
Meanwhile, a lot of new people are being created on the outside of the pit.
If they know what has happened (ie they are assembled from a new collection
of atoms), they will also know that they are copies, even though they feel
exactly like they are the original. At the point that the button is pressed,
a new object is assembled from parts, which is structurally identical to
Yevgeny.
How about this... how about if the button, when pressed, would make a copy
of someone entirely different. Every time Yevgeny presses the button, a copy
of Yuri is created at the rim of the pit. Yuri's wearing warm weather gear,
so he doesn't mind the cold, but he does wonder what's going on. Now, is
this person actually Yevgeny? Clearly, I'd say he's not.
Now, Itself plays a fun trick. He changes the button mechanism so that Yuri
will be created on the outside of the pit, but with his Yevgeny's memories
instead of Yuri's. Of course this is not an "atom for atom duplicate"...
Yevgeny presses the button, and Yuri (whom he doesn't know) appears on the
rim of the pit. From the outside, Yevgeny/Yuri looks down, and thinks "I got
out!"... then looks at his hands, and inspects his body. "My body has been
swapped for someone else's! Aarrgghh!"
"Moral: Imagine yourself in the pit. Both of the following statements are
true: (1) you will never get out of the pit (2) you will get out of the pit
every time you press the button. "
I disagree. I think that 1 is true, but 2 is not; someone is created outside
of the pit, but that someone is not the same someone who pressed the button.
Just someone who bears a striking resemblance.
"You may be tempted to think that the "original one" (now coatless) is the
only real Yevgeny---that all the others are just "mere copies". This is
easily shown to be false. Suppose that every atom of your body were being
replaced quickly, say hundreds of times each second, instead of slowly over
years. You'd never know the difference. "
I probably would notice the difference. How would you replace the atoms
quickly? Not through the usual mechanisms... without magic, you have to
severely interfere with the physical structure of my body (by adding some
rather weird atom-swapping machinery to it... I doubt this can be done). I
propose that this cannot in fact be achieved, through any mechanism.
However, I grant you that we are not static objects... matter comes and goes
as a consequence of the natural operation of the mechanism that is our
bodies.
The rest of the discussion from your story basically says "get over it, you
narrow minded fool"... maybe that's the thing to do, after all. But I will
still always assert that, although from a external point of view an atomic
deconstruction/reconstruction looks like "teleportation", from a subjective
point of view there is a death occuring. Remember the pit... no matter how
many Yevgenys you construct on the rim of the pit, the eventual death by
hypothermia of the Yevgeny in the pit is still plainly a death, it's moral
weight lessened not a whit by the existence of other Yevgenys, even as that
number approaches infinity.
Max had a great paper around somewhere, which I can't find now... it posited
the existence of a teleport machine which used decontruction/reconstruction
on the atomic level. Except it turned out to be expensive to deconstruct
someone atom by atom, so it was better to have a burly man with a large
hammer at the "from" end to take care of unfinished business...
Emlyn
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