From: Lee Corbin (lcorbin@ricochet.net)
Date: Sat Jun 02 2001 - 00:18:44 MDT
Eugene Leitl wrote:
>Identity in a simulation is defined by the system state
>being exactly the same, down to a single bit.
Personal identity in philosophy has no easy definition
like that. Unlike the important concepts in computation
theory, the important ramifications of personal identity
determine future courses of action that you may take.
Philosophy's proper role is to prescribe action, and
today's bafflement about
* whether to teleport (assuming fictional equipment)
* whether to upload (assuming its immanence)
* whether to fork (after uploading)
and so on, demand careful thought. People have to eventually
confront extremely numerous and varied possible thought-
situations in order to formulate concepts both consistent and
satisfactory. The only entirely consistent and (mostly)
satisfactory view that I know of is the "information theory
of identity", sometimes called the state theory, explained in
most detail in Mike Perry's book "Forever For All". I believe
that you, Eugene, are a "statist" like me, but that for some
reason you think that if even a single bit, (or a single atom
in the physical thought experiments) is different, then
identity goes from 1 (completely true) to 0 (completely false).
But how could that be? If an entire hair disappeared from
my head, or a whole neuron died (sadly that happens now and
then), it matters not a whit to my personal identity. And
anyone who thinks that it does isn't trying to understand
what we are talking about.
> "That's not a good reason. The correct answer is "What
> benefits me most". You erroneously have concluded that
> you are not your duplicate."
>
>As it stands, it voices an opinion, nothing more. Please
>define the identity and similiarity metrics you use.
Of course, as I explained above, this is asking too much.
(Much as someone might ask of a socialist or libertarian,
"define the preference metrics you are using".)
>Also, please tell me whether you think that your twin
>brother is yourself (basically the same situation has
>occured in reality as in simulation).
This is an interesting empirical question. Evidently,
identical twins learn to distinguish themselves very
early in life. First, though, I am not talking about
the animal level "it hurts when they spank me, but it
doesn't hurt when they spank him". I'm talking about
---and here I am guessing a little---the way that each
twin almost seizes upon tiny differences, and slowly
amplifies them over time to create an actual, separate
person.
The strongest clue: people who fall in love with one
twin, but not with the other. But duplicates, however,
are totally different: if your wife loves you, she'd
love your close duplicate too.
(Naturally, since many people are reading this, it is
necessary to define "close duplicate". A close duplicate
is a process running at a separate spacetime location such
that neither is a memory superset of the other, and such that
the differences correspond to temporal differences of just
a few minutes, or at most a few days of a normal human's
life.)
Lee Corbin
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