From: Lee Corbin (lcorbin@tsoft.com)
Date: Wed Nov 13 2002 - 08:38:40 MST
Eliezer wrote
> Lee Corbin wrote:
> >
> > Just in case I anticipate your answer, recall that some properties
> > (e.g. tallness) occur as a matter of degree. Hence I may say that
> > George Washington was tall, yet concede that if historical research
> > began to revise his height downward, my statement would become
> > progressively less true over time, as his true height was determined
> > to [be] less and less.
>
> YIKES! I think you meant to say that the statement would be false and
> would have always been false, but our knowledge of this falsity would
> increase progressively over time.
Thank you for the correction. I should have said "statement would
have progressively *deemed* to be less true over time. Yes, as any
realist interested in talking about the world, I want to talk mainly
about what is true, not what we currently know.
Lee
P.S. Apologies for my last email in answer to Eliezer. It contained
one completely incoherent phrase that was the result of poor editing,
and it stated that he could not be held to be at any particular level
in the identity hierarchy, even though the entire meaning of his post
could be read as indicating otherwise.
You [Eliezer] wrote
> On the other hand, if my current personality is "only a memory" but I grew
> out of that personality by a continuous process of a kind that I regard as
> valid(*), I would regard that entity as being Eliezer Yudkowsky. But
> there are some kinds of disruptive supervention that could destroy
> continuity of identity without destroying continuity of memory.
Does the prevalence of the concept "I" in the first statement
refer or relate to personal survival?
One does not expect to survive an airplane crash, but one does
expect to survive medical operations to control epilepsy. If
all that remains of one is a memory superset, then evidently
at least Eliezer and I agree that this is insufficient for
survival.
Lee
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