From: Damien Broderick (d.broderick@english.unimelb.edu.au)
Date: Mon Oct 14 2002 - 00:15:25 MDT
At 03:13 PM 10/14/02 +0930, Emlyn wrote another meaty, chewy post, from
which I snip these morsels:
>This is not to say that you can't change your mind. [...]
>A subjectivist, on being transported, might find
>that the world doesn't seem to have come crashing down around them after
>all.
Of *course* a subjectivist xox would *feel* continuous, but that's exactly
*not the point*. In fact, I'd expect teleported subjectivists to shed their
earlier qualms, a little like people warned against taking a potent
mind-altering (and perhaps damaging) drug:
1. `I don't know, ingesting this dilithium seems rather hazardous. But
since you're threatening to decorticate me with a spoon otherwise--'
2. `Aw, hey dude, that wasn' so bad. Gimme another hit.'
3. `Kewwwl! Wanna party?'
4. `droool.'
5. `~~~~~~~____________________'
>Related to the above, everything I've said is bunk if there really is an
>afterlife; in that case, destructive copying is going to do something very
>weird. Maybe that's the explanation for hell filling up in "dawn of the
>dead" and related movies?
Once you bring `souls' in, everything's up for grabs. Suppose when the xox
forms, it has no soul *until the original is destroyed*, at which point the
xox's nonlocal link with the original *drags* the soul into its brain
through superspace. Suppose when the xox forms, it *sucks* the nearest
dying quasi-copy to it from a Many Worlds cosmos nearby. Suppose a xox
forms a perfect telepathic union with the original if the process happens
fast enough, and thereafter they instantiate a unitary extended
consciousness. Etc.
>(meanwhile solipsism is looking good again; need more lithium?)
That's *di*lithium, d00Dster. Wow.
Damien Broderick
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