From: Lee Corbin (lcorbin@ricochet.net)
Date: Sun Jun 03 2001 - 16:05:27 MDT
Rafal Smigrodzki writes,
> Your abhorrence to teleportation is partially due to very ancient
> parts of your brain protesting at the idea of their destruction.
> However, other parts of the brain, dealing with abstract "third
> person" analysis of the mind (perhaps the frontopolar cortex?)
> can accept different models of identity - as it happened in the
> minds of many people, including mine. And if the teleportation
> works as advertised, my genes will be fine, too.
> Rafal Smigrodzki MD-PhD
> Dept Neurology University of Pittsburgh
>
smigrodzkir@msx.upmc.edu
Yes, the dispute can indeed be described as people using
different models of identity. Your description, or argument,
also works against the "continuity" concept of identity.
If one is killed in an accident this afternoon, but luckily
a backup or a duplicate was made this morning, then also
one survives in the way that you seem to be arguing.
However, in these identity threads, we should perhaps cut
to the chase. For over thirty years, I have found the
following thought experiment to distinguish those who
really go all the way in adopting the state view of identity
from those who do not. Currently, I know of only a few
people: myself, Robin Hanson, Mike Perry, John Clark, and
probably one or two others who would take the money in
the following illustration:
You enter a room and find a block of ice encasing a
frozen duplicate of you that was made a few minutes
ago. On the block of ice sits a briefcase with ten
million dollars in it. You have two choices:
(A) allow your frozen duplicate to be disintegrated
along with the briefcase
(B) agree to be instead disintegrated yourself, so
that your duplicate awakes and deposits the money
Here are the basic reasons that I would choose B. When
I got back from the bank, you'd all know from the enormous
grin on my face that it was the same character you've
always known. And I would realize that my duplicate and I
really were the same person all along, and that I would have
done it for him. In fact, I did do it for him, since we're
really the same person. I'm exactly, in fact, like him if
he'd had a few minutes' memories erased.
Also, almost every morning I stagger out of bed, grope my
way to the bathroom barely cognizant of what happened the
day before. This physical occurrance has been happening
in the same room almost every day for eight years. If
I go ahead and choose B, this same physical event will
occur again, only I'll be rich. From the viewpoint of
physics, what happens tomorrow will have the same general
description that happens every morning. Lee Corbin gets up.
The only reason to choose A is if you somehow believe that
there is some essence in you that isn't in your duplicate.
This really is counter to our understanding of physics. It
really does arise, as Dr. Smigrodzki says, from ancient parts
of one's brain that have a lower-order understanding of
identity.
Lee Corbin
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