From: gts (gts_2000@yahoo.com)
Date: Sat Nov 02 2002 - 13:32:28 MST
Lee Corbin wrote:
> Just to make sure that we aren't miscommunicating here,
> do you believe that you would survive teleportation?
Again,
IF consciousness is purely a physical phenomenon (as I suspect it is), and
IF my entire physical person were duplicated elsewhere, instantly, in the
exact state in which it was at the origin,
THEN yes, I think I might survive the teleportation.
If my original were left intact then I would consider him a very intimately
related identical twin sibling, no different than had we forked. He would
see me the same way. We'd both think we were gts, but you (if you examined
us carefully) would find that our non-nominal identities were different. For
the three of us to make sense of the world, I and my origin version would
need to adopt different nominal identities, e.g., "gts-1" and "gts-2". We'd
then go on to live separate lives as separate people.
> What about backups? An inexpensive service offers to back you
> up every month so that if the worst happens, you can be
> reconstructed. That "you" will recall only the moment of
> backup, and everything before, but nothing since. Is this
> a service that you'd use?
I might use that service but I would not fool myself into thinking it would
allow for a continuation of my sense of self.. It would merely produce a
life of someone very much like me. Use of such a service would give me some
sense of satisfaction here and now but it would mean nothing after I ceased
to exist.
A backup service like that described by Eugene, however, might allow for my
continued sense of self. In that service exact backups are made in each
passing instant of time. Backup restoration would then be equivalent to
instantaneous teleportation.
-gts
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