From: Emlyn (emlyn@one.net.au)
Date: Thu May 31 2001 - 01:18:13 MDT
Eugene wrote:
> Harvey Newstrom wrote:
> >
> > I hate the copy question. But....
>
> > Yet, we keep trying....
>
> Kerrrrist in a sidecar, haven't we solved the problem
> like five years ago?
Lol!!!
You are going to see this topic reappear with increasing frequency as the
years go by. Eventually it'll turn up in a horribly munged form in the
mainsteam media, and stay there for quite some time, as we get closer to
copy technology.
It's a silly old philosophical problem, which is slowly turning into
something which people are going to need to have a position on, because they
may very well be faced with a real life situation where it matters to them
personally - to upload or to not upload? (please assume usual disclaimers
that most paths will let us hit singularity before upload is possible, in
which case we most likely don't get the opportunity, etc etc etc)
You should save your email somewhere, and just forward it as necessary for
the next few decades.
> As long as two (three, four, ...)
> copies remain in synch, they're the same person. There
> is no measurement procedure which can tell them apart.
>
> This can only occur in extremely controlled environment,
> like a simulation where both the upload (deterministic
> model) and upload's input are identical down to a single
> bit.
>
Well, wait a second. From inside the sim they are identical... from outside
they are clearly not; they might even each map onto something as crude as
separate process ids. From each being's subjective position, they are not
identical... that being can say for certain "I am me, and the other guy is
not". Only to an external observer inside the sim are the processes
(intelligences) identical, and only given a highly contrived environment.
That's a pretty unreasonable basis on which to declaim the processes
"identical".
> If this does not happen, a fork occurs, and you have
> two individuals. At this point to have to ask the
> individuals, whether they mind being terminated. The
> answer is personal, I would very much mind being terminated
> after I can become aware that we've forked.
>
Me too... in fact, I'd object regardless of whether I knew we'd forked or
not.
> I don't get it. This topic is so dead, it's not even smelling
> anymore.
heh heh!!! I apologise in advance to you Eugene, and commiserate, that the
world will continue to inflict this topic on you, for a long, long time...
Emlyn
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