From: hal@finney.org
Date: Thu May 31 2001 - 21:22:24 MDT
Damien B. writes:
> Don't beam me up, Scotty
>
> If I were copied by a teleport machine, xeroxed elsewhere by a `transporter
> beam', and the one at the transmitter end was to be killed (to even up the
> metaphysical balance of the universe), I'd go kicking and screaming... I'd
> be not one whit reconciled by the simultaneous existence of my double in
> the receiving pod-- *unless* I had remained, throughout, in perfect
> nonlocal continuous connection/identity with him. In that case, I'd swiftly
> get used to the notion that it was just like dropping off to sleep on the
> jet and waking up in another town. Of course, I could be *fooled* into
> believing that this were the case, even if a destructive-uploading expert
> knew it wasn't, which would soothe my dread. `Just step into the nice warm
> shower, Damien...' But I'd rather not be deceived in that way.
So if you did ever find yourself an upload, would you have the same
reluctance to have your program copied to a different computer? Would you
worry that shutting down your program *here* and resuming it over *there*
was actually a matter of killing the original? Faced with the prospect
of your program stopping running here, does it fail to reassure you that
your program will continue running over there?
Hal
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