From: Lee Corbin (lcorbin@ricochet.net)
Date: Sun Jun 03 2001 - 14:50:19 MDT
Eugene Leitl wrote
>"I" and "me" are irrelevant: you are a physical system.
Well, this is what we are **argueing** about. Many materialists
who adhere to the information theory of identity in fact maintain
that we ARE NOT physical systems---we are patterns, or programs
that merely run on physical systems. If you move the same (or
nearly identical) process to another system, it's still us.
>> 2. equivalence of time and space are preserved: "you" can be
>> at the same time in two different places as well as the
>> same place at two different times
>
>Panta rhei. You can't be at the same place at two different
>times.
What do you mean? I certainly can be at home today, and also
at home tomorrow. Or any other convenient place that you say.
(By the way, Eugene, I had planned to but then failed to
respond to a part of a post of yours; forgive me for forcing
you to repeat yourself.)
>Let's define a person as an animated object with a contiguous
>worldline (or, at least where the worldline is interrupted,
>the interfaces will form a contiguous world line, if brought
>together).
Well, this, again, is what we are arguing about. Some people
define (so to speak) a person as a certain set of atoms that
shuffles through space, slowly changing a few atoms at a time.
Others, like you, define it as an object (apparently) although
I don't think that the way that you've just defined it is
consistent with all your usages (see below about backups).
>> 4. state is all that matters (apologies to several people who
>> wondered what I meant by "statist"---I guess the spelling is
>> "stateist"); we have path independence which feels very right
>
>Path independence? I can't make sense from this in this context.
Sorry. Given a physical object in the year 3000, some would say
that it's running them (or that it is them) iff there is a
continuous path to what they are now. Others say that (in principle)
the path doesn't matter, only the final state. The best example
is Max More's "The Luckiest Man in the Universe", a story of the
sudden appearance of a set of atoms that just happens to be an
exact match of the atoms constituting Sir Francis Bacon on a
certain day in history. Those of us who are statists all the
way say that since there is no difference between this and the
actual Sir Francis from 1626, then it really is him and he should
be glad to be alive. He should not listen to people who say that
he's not the "real" Sir Francis, because the real Sir Francis died
in 1626, and there is no continuity between him and that historical
personage. We, however, say that paths don't matter (just as in
thermodynamic state).
>> 5. backups become possible and convenient: you can't make a
>> backup under the older view, because the nanosecond after its
>> made, it isn't "you" any more
>
>I don't know what "older view" is, but of course you can make backups
>(the correct term is checkpoints). You resume at last good checkpoint
>if the current instance of you managed to get killed (because it insisted
>to run Microsoft software, for instance), and thus there is no fork:
>the backup is not alive. You still lose all changes since the last
>backups, making most people pretty pissed. This isn't murder, unless
>the last backup is rather old (like, when you were 13), but it is
>definitely not a nice thing to do.
Of course. This is completely logical. It's funny how many
extropians will chime in and agree with you saying, "oh, for
sure, we'll have backups in the future". But they're forgetting
that the backup might consist of a frozen brain somewhere (in
one kind of thought experiment), or might consist of a stack of
CDs in another. Then, when they stop to think about how their
own destroyed brain is discarded---due to massive injuries
sustained in a car accident, say---and some kind of backup
produced that allows them to continue with their lives, well,
in this case they suddenly realize that for philosophical
reasons alone, backups aren't really useful to them (after
that point in time at which the backup is made).
If I were uploaded, and there was some stupid law that said
that I couldn't be executed in two places at the same time,
and so we decided to freeze our original brain and run uploaded,
then I would regard my frozen brain as a backup. But from what
you've said, you could not. After you were uploaded and running,
you would have to regard your old frozen brain as someone else.
>> 6. values vary continuously: in 5., for just one example, the value
>> of a backup, which is +1 right up to the nanosecond of duplication
>> is carried smoothly over in the nanoseconds following duplication,
>> instead of plummeting inexplicably to zero
>
>I don't understand you here, either.
Apologies, if I'm not characterizing your own view well, but
some people clinging to the path concept of personal identity
look forward to getting a backup made. "Here I am on Tuesday,"
they say, "and tomorrow's backup day. Then even when I go
skiing on Thursday, if the worst happens "I" will be okay.
By tomorrow there will be a checkpoint of me. So then Thursday
morning roles around. "Hey!", they blurt out, "that backup
ISN'T me anymore! It's a backup of that Tuesday fellow. If
"I" die today, there will be no path continuity between "me"
and that old worthless backup!"
If we graph the value of a backup, then it stays at 100% all
through Wednesday and part of Thursday. Supposing that the
scan process takes a micro-second, then suddenly the value of
the backup (to the funtioning process) has plummetted from 100%
to 0%. That's what I meant.
(Incidentally, I once formulated The Principle of Value Continuity,
which says that the value of any state should be a continuous
function iff one's values are consistent. For example, some
enemies of abortion claim that the egg has human value 0 but
that a microsecond after fertilization it has human value 1.
This discontinuity of value is a sign that their values are
not consistent. It's similar to Harvey claiming that the
fetus that he used to be when he was 1/100 inch long is really
the same person that he is.)
>> Suppose that you are a materialist who agrees to teleport and
>> you are teleported into a black box, but into a thousand locations
>> within that black box. Then inside the black box 999 are killed
>> and one emerges. Is it you?
>> The information view of identity is 100% clear that it is. Some
>> people say that your odds (even before entering the black box)
>> are only 1 in 1000 of surviving. Others say that each of the 1000
>> should break into a cold sweat because he has almost no chance of
>> survival. But under the state view, such concerns are silly.
>
>There's my worldline. At some point, it enters a very flat black
>box, and it leaves on the other side -- the box is so flat that
>state change are hardly measurable.... Whether it contains branches,
>which were truncated at creation time, or not, it is irrelevant
>[what happens in the black box].
That's exactly so! Now imagine that you've alreadly walked into
the black box and you start thinking, "Gee, there are 999 other
Eugene's in here." You pause to examine the wallpaper and you
think a random thought. "Oh, oh! Yikes! My odds now are only
one in a 1000 of surviving!", and you break into a cold sweat
and indeed fear that you are going to die. Now you no longer
believe that what happens in the black box is irrelevant to
Eugene Leitl's survival. But if so, then you are wrong. Eugene
is going to survive just fine. So you lose a little memory. So
what? It's exactly like being replaced by a checkpoint or backup.
It's exactly like you've just taken some Midazolem and aren't
going to remember the present anyway.
Lee Corbin
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