From: Rafal Smigrodzki (rms2g@virginia.edu)
Date: Tue Nov 19 2002 - 11:50:18 MST
gts wrote:
> --- Rafal Smigrodzki <rms2g@virginia.edu> wrote:
>
>>> If you don't believe me then ask Hugh Hefner's
>>> girlfriends. :-)
>
>> ### Snipping out parts of my statement can make it
>> sound totally stupid, I agree.
>
> I did not see how the rest of your statement made any
> more sense than the first part, Rafal. You went on to
> say that it would be okay for me to identify myself as
> Hugh Hefner provided that I did not violate Hugh
> Hefner's rights. (?) But I thought *I* was Hugh
> Hefner!
### Now we are getting somewhere. There is a difference between your own
feeling of identity (a matter of taste, or to be more precise, of your
prefrontal cortex' wiring pattern), and the observable behaviors of persons.
>From the outside, the lawmaker or judge, have to rely on the observables,
and their decisions have to satisfy the needs of large numbers of people.
This is why it's perfectly fine to feel you are Hugh Hefner, it's even fine
to act on this feeling (wear silk pajamas, and such), but from the judge's
point of view, your freedom to claim identity must be curtailed. If the
entity recognized by the judge as Mr Hefner, the entity controlling the
property of Mr. Hefner, does not agree with your feeling, then the judge
must deny your claim if identity and act to protect Mr Hefner from you (e.g.
a no-stalking order to keep you away from Mr. Hefner's girlfriend). On the
other hand, if it turns out that Mr. Hefner indeed made a you as copy of
himself to do his chores, you would have a valid claim - the observable
similarity between you and the original, plus other evidence proving Mr.
Hefner's involvement. In case you were a copy made against Mr. Hefner's
wishes, you would have a claim against the party responsible for making you.
Failure to act in this way would indeed lead to confusion and problems.
There is nothing illogical as long as you keep the levels of private
feelings and objectively testable properties sufficiently separate.
-------
>
> Lee's level seven renders our speech illogical and
> unintelligible for similar reasons.
>
> Consider what it would be like to report a rogue copy
> of onself to the police under level 7:
>
> "Hello, Police Department."
>
> "Hi, I need to report a burglary."
>
> "What happened, sir?"
>
> "Well, I was asleep in bed when I awakened to some
> noise in my dining room. I went to investigate. I
> found myself standing there putting all my expensive
> silverware into a bag. So, I grabbed a baseball bat
> and whacked myself on the head as hard as possible.
> Unfortunately I did not hit myself hard enough. I got
> away."
>
> "It seems to me, sir, that you hit yourself on the
> head much harder than you think."
>
> And then there's the one about the man who divorced
> his wife after he found himself in bed with her.
>
> -gts
### This is a good one :-)
However, no matter how rational and logical an idea is, with sufficiently
inappropriate language you can make it sound ridiculous. The rogue copy 911
call needs more precise expressions, which are absent from our daily
language because so far copying is impossible. Just as we learned to talk
about the direction of the gravitational field in Australia after discarding
the flat Earth hypothesis, we'll need to learn how to speak about splintered
selves once we get there.
The 911 call would then be: "Officer, this is gts, SSN#312432-48 through 57,
I suffered a Splintering. One of my selves, located in the autonomous body
SSN#312432-53, failed to show up for the evening Synch, and subsequently
tried to steal my silverware. I renounce copy SSN#312432-53, and wish to
file a claim for theft and attempted killing (with a baseball bat) of copy
SSN#312434-48"
"Stay calm, be right there"
Rafal
Rafal
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