From: Jeff Davis (jrd1415@yahoo.com)
Date: Mon Nov 04 2002 - 23:22:53 MST
Extropes,
--- Eugen Leitl <eugen@leitl.org> wrote:
> I notice people keep ignoring my suggestion to
clarify identity on evolution of discrete systems, as
modeled by a SHRDLU world in a conventional computer.
> You will make no progress until you start with a
simplified system first.
Gene et al,
Let me preface my comments by saying that I've quite
enjoyed this thread, and appreciate immensely Gene's
contribution. Admire, respect, and enjoy the way he
cuts through the obscuring outer layers and gets down
to the meat, filleting it with a parsimonious logic,
and then reporting his conclusions with thrift and
clarity.
I've spent the last couple of days catching up, and
now I'm ready to get back into it.
Gene writes:
> I'm ready to translate anything you would want to
figure out about real uploads, or meat people
in above framework. I suggest we start with uploads
first, because it's so much easier.
> That is, if anybody still feels like beating this
very dead horse.
Each time I visit the pasture, I find the horse
contented, alert, frisky as a colt. Perhaps, after
having recently been put so briskly through his paces,
he settled down in the pasture for a nap, whereupon
you may have mistaken his repose for expiration.
Sometimes, when I'm traveling down the road and chance
to see a cat or other creature at the side of the
road, in permanent repose after a failed contest with
rolling iron, I disingenuously observe for the inner
child of my fellow travelers, that, "Oh, he's just
asleep." Though you can only lose your innocence
once, you can be reminded of it again and again and
again. But I digress...
The below refers to an original person, an
at-least-momentarily indistinguishable copy of that
person, and the attendant identity question.
The problem with the SHRDLU model?
It's inadequate as a model because it lacks sufficient
correspondence with that which it is intended to
model. It may be instructive. It may be a jumping
off point. But an aerial photograph isn't the
territory, and a map even less so. And the SHRDLU
model doesn't rise even to the level of a map.
First, Gene, you set as a condition, no system noise.
It appears your intent was to construct a model which
was, a priori and by design, deterministic. This to
prevent forking of identical starting states, and thus
prove that identical states stay identical. In doing
so you beg the question. You do not construct a model
like you do a product, to perform in a certain known
and useful way. You construct a model to set it in
motion and find out how it performs. You may not
impose on a model a condition alien to the character
of that which you are supposed to be trying to model.
The real world is inherently and inescapably noisy,
and consequently unpredictable, indeterminate.
Secondly, the model is too simple. Gene, you didn't
say just how simple it was, but you insisted that one
must start with a simple system. But emergent
properties, unpredictable behaviors, and multiplied
sources of indeterminacy arise out of complexity. Yet
you specify simplicity. Again, this works as a place
to start, but lacks correspondence with the (vastly
complex)system you are seeking to model.
Finally there is the inherent difference between a
designed system and an evolved one. The designed
system--the model you are building--is based on the
notion of a 'designer' and his/her capabilities. One
can imagine a deterministic and reliable design
outcome if one supposes both a
highly(thoroughly?,perfectly?) knowledgeable designer.
We can even dispose of the problem of mistakes made
along the way, by giving the designer sufficient time
to work out all the bugs. And in a simple system this
might be achievable. But a designer creates a system
using a limited inventory of materials and techniques.
The final design is unavoidably bounded by this
limited skill set. The universe on the other hand,
evolves, rather than designs. It throws a set of
starting materials together and shakes them up and out
pops reality. Everything that exists takes part.
Expertise, and the known and unknown, don't constrain
the outcome, because evolution doesn't deliberate, it
just 'operates'.
(Even more extreme in its inapplicability is John
Clark's use of a Bose Einstein condensate to make the
point that historical distinctions can be made, ex
post facto, to disappear, and to suggest somehow from
this that those distinctions never existed in the
first place. Huh?!! Just how does the very special
quantum peculiarity of a small assemblage of atoms,
isolated in a vacuum at a nano-fraction of a degree
above absolute zero, bear the remotest correlation to
two hypothetically indistinguishably-identical vast
and complex assemblages of atoms, chemically,
physically and informationally evolving at room temp,
possessed of and manifesting levels of complexity both
partly grasped and suspected-but-as-yet-unassessed,
which, despite rare moments of proportionate humility
and justifiable awe, we nevertheless name "living",
"sentient", "self-aware", "intelligent", and
"conscious", and in so doing pretend an understanding
both vastly greater than we possess and vastly less
than we imagine? Forgive me for going adjectival on
you, but I thought the BEC argument a bit more than a
stretch. Later, I came back to rebut, on my own, my
thesis of the utility of historical distinctions.)
Segue time.
A few days a go I stumbled onto something which seem
an example of two things which share a single
identity. And it seemed immediately helpful.
(Perhaps I will seem a little slow for not having seen
this sooner but, well, so be it.)
Two copies of the same book. Two books that are two
books. Two books that are one book. We can speak of
them as two, and no one will dispute or complain. We
can speak of them as one, and likewise no one will
dispute or complain.
If we then compare two copies of a book and two copies
of a person, perhaps we can learn something about the
identity question.
The information pattern which is a book is static.
The information pattern which is a person is dynamic,
continuously evolving. The 'container' of a person is
biological, the 'container' of a book is not.
Finally, I was thinking about the 'transporter'
business. It occurred to me that thirty-some years of
familiarity with the concept, and with the attitude of
fictional characters toward the concept, have
influenced--I would say 'prejudiced'--our view of the
matter. Most of the star trek folk use/used it
routinely, didn't appear to consider the issues which
concern us, and suffered no apparent ill effects.
(Except for Dr. McCoy who "didn't like the idea"--does
this mean Roddenberry was hip to the problem more than
thirty years ago?--, and one fellow from TNG who was
the host for a symbiont that would have been killed by
transporter use.) Does this mean that we are required
to accept the view of these fictional folks, or their
authors, and everything is just fine? Setting aside
the fact that we're dealing with fiction, let me point
out that the accepting attitude is inseparable from
the sanitary and conceptually inoffensive character of
the process. But what's actually happening?
Judging from the list discussion, my
impression--please help me here, as required--is that
the transporter scans the pattern--thus the term
"pattern buffer"--records the pattern, stores the
pattern, and then either transmits the pattern to a
similar mechanism at the destination point where one
or both of the transporters 'restore' the pattern to
material embodiment. Or alternatively, one
transporter does the whole job, either re-embodying
the pattern at a distance, or scanning the pattern
from a distance, 'dematerializing' it from a distance,
and then re-embodying it locally, or at a second
remote location. Meanwhile, at the appropriate moment
in the sequence, the transporter
'destroys'(disintegrates? disassembles?
dematerializes? absorbs the energy of?) the original
at the site from which it is 'transported'.
Sorry to get so wordy. Here's my problem. The
process has been sanitized (though we do encounter the
occasional transporter 'accident'). The fictional
culture accepts the practice and shows no sign of
considering that the 'destruction' at the start of the
sequence is the killing of a person.
What if,... What if the transporter didn't neatly and
painlessly destroy the 'original' at the start of
transport? What if you had to messily bludgeon the
original Capt. Kirk into unconsciousness, and drag his
twitching and bleeding body down the corridor and
stuff it into the garbage chute? The end result is
the same, but now we're confronted with the unsavory
nature of the business, which we are otherwise spared
for the sake of a smoothly flowing narrative.
Either there is no homicide, or the culture has
persuaded its members that it's a case of no harm, no
foul. But the former speaks against the facts,
witness the blood trail down corridor, and the latter
an abstraction we call tradition or cultural value.
I wanted to be helpful, but don't seem to have made
much progress.
Maybe Emlyn's got it right, after all.
Best, Jeff Davis
"We don't see things as they are,
we see them as we are."
Anais Nin
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