From: Lee Corbin (lcorbin@ricochet.net)
Date: Sat Jun 02 2001 - 07:30:35 MDT
Emlyn wrote:
>the person with the copy problem only has a problem
>with the concept of a straight copy.
Hey, what is this "copy problem"? Sounds very ambiguous, if
not just poor terminology. Means objection to something?
>If there is some method for moving a consciousness from
>one substrate to another, I would be all for it; that's
>a different kettle of fish. Further, one might then suppose
>some method of combining consciousnesses, based on the
>consciousness-moving techniques and some wild handwaving...
>in that case, I might be happy to try a "teleport", as long as
>my original consciousness could be moved into and merged
>with my copy's consciousness (whatever the hell that means).
So let's suppose that you have two machines, and you
want to make the second one have some property that
the first one has, e.g., "is conscious". How do you
do that?
All that you have to do is put the second machine in
the same state as the first. When you say that you'd
try teleportation "as long as my original consciousness
could be moved", indeed, what on Earth could that mean?
It really sounds like you believe in the soul, or something.
I mean, what more can we do than make an exact physical
copy? You must really be believeing here that there is
something non-physical attached to you that would fail to
be "transferred".
When you "lose" consciousness going to sleep, where does
it go? How do you know that you get the same consciousness
back the next morning? WHAT IF YOU'VE GOT SOMEONE ELSE'S?!
Clearly such concerns are nonsense. And so is thinking that
somehow your consciousness has gone away when you teleport.
Lee
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