From: gts (gts_2000@yahoo.com)
Date: Tue Nov 19 2002 - 14:06:36 MST
Rafal Smigrodzki wrote:
> ### If you buy Mr. Hefner's memories and other data structures, and
> change your brain sufficiently to resemble Mr Hefner as much as he
> resembles his yesterday's recording, you would become Hugh Hefner,
> both subjectively and in a manner verifiable to a judge.
There is a lot more to Hugh Hefner's identity than his memories and data
structures. There is also his face and body (old, but I hear the ladies
still love it) and there is his property and his business empire, and
his personality (which may or may not fall under your "data structure"
category).
To be Hugh Hefner one would need to be and have all those things. But
this is to say only that to be Hugh Hefner, one must be Hugh Hefner.
> If Mr. Hefner, perhaps in need of funds, agrees to such a transaction,
> perhaps first accepting some of your memories and effectively merging
> the two of you, this would be a consensual agreement and it would
> have to be recognized by the legal system.
If we merged then the result would be someone entirely different from
Hugh Hefner, even if we agreed legally to call the merged individual
"Hugh Hefner."
re: use of social security numbers to identify copies
> ### It's one SSN with suffixes for the carrier bodies. If they are
> sufficiently similar and agree that they are one person, the judge
> should accept it.
A judge would accept it only if you made it a law, but then if we agreed
to such a law then you and I would not be having this conversation.
>> "Officer, this is gts, a person closely associated with three other
>> persons named bob and frank and john. The four of us all stem from
>> the same root person. Last night john broke into my house..." etc
>>
> ### This is another possible approach - if your copies do not feel
> you are the same person, you should feel free to act accordingly (as
> in announcing the Splintering, and denying access to property).
Yes and I think this is the only correct approach. One's copies are not
the same person, even if they differ only slightly. And they become more
different from one another with each passing moment.
This "splintering" of which you speak appears to me to be nothing more
than a euphemism for "disagreement." John and frank and bob and I had an
implicit agreement to respect each other's property, because, after all,
we are very intimately related to one another and should respect one
another. Then that scoundrel john broke the agreement and stole my
silverware.
-gts
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