From: Ross A. Finlayson (extropy@apexinternetsoftware.com)
Date: Sat Oct 12 2002 - 02:58:01 MDT
On Thursday, October 10, 2002, at 09:16 PM, gts wrote:
> Lee Corbin wrote:
>
>> gts wrote:
>>> Lee Corbin wrote:
>>>> One more question: suppose that protein synthesis
>>>> had been stopped instead. How long before there is
>>>> a noticeable effect on your delivery?
>>>
>>> I'd guess maybe a second or two, at most, but that's only a
>>> hunch. It
>>> might be only a couple of nanoseconds. I don't know.
>
>> to which you admit that you don't know the answer, may
>> be crucial! What if the answer does turn out that *hours*
>> could pass with no untoward effects on me and my behavior?
>> If that were established, then would you concede that all
>> that is *necessary* to make me (or upload me) resides---
>> ---however implicitly, in the remainder of my body?
>
> It would make no difference whatsoever if it were hours rather than
> minutes or seconds.
>
> Your future personality as "you" is dependent on the expressions of your
> genes in response to future environments. I mentioned the simple case of
> exogenous depression as an example. How would Lee Corbin respond today
> to the loss of something dear to him, like his partner, mother, father,
> sibling or goldfish? We don't know the answer to that question, but we
> do know your response to that event will be influenced by the manner in
> which your genes are coded to handle such events. This means that if we
> upload you today, without your genetic information, then your response
> to the event after uploading will be different from the response to the
> same event had we not uploaded, i.e., you will not be the same
> personality if we upload you without your genetic information.
>
> -gts
>
>
>
I don't know about that. Consider an experiment where there are only
two personalities, one that answers yes and the other that answers no.
This is so about a yes/no question. Then, consider a richer personality
that answers two yes.no questions, thus that there are four distinct
personalities. For any of six billion genetically unique people,
barring identical twins, which represent a very small portion of the
viable genetic combinations of people, they fit into one of four
categories. To represent that personality in the two-state environment
only takes two bits.
It doesn't take the complete DNA to encode those decisions. As the
number of decisions approaches the complexity of the DNA, then the DNA
becomes a more significant factor than the sum result of the binary
decisions. The DNA isn't the complete precursor of the decisions, your
clone or emulate may have made different life decisions than you.
(What time is love? 3AM eternal.)
When you talk about emulation then the point is that the emulate-ee, or,
I guess emulate, can't know that it's emulated.
That leads into the question, are we emulations, or rather, may we
confront a higher power?
It's turtles all the way down. That's a sentence about infinity.
Infinity is a great thing, it exists between any two points in the
continuum between those two points. Here's a funny fact, the constant
function f(x)=1 integrated over the naturals evaluates to equal to two.
You might expect it to equal to one, like a one by one square, I did and
was surprised. I figure that the single digits have something like
those rising and falling edges where the continuous points have either a
rising or falling edge.
That leads into indefiniteness, like, what is the smallest real number,
(iota), whatnot.
Ross
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