Re: Uploading
Dan Clemmensen (Dan@Clemmensen.ShireNet.com)
Sat, 06 Sep 1997 10:27:09 -0400
John K Clark wrote:
> YakWaxx@aol.com On Fri, 5 Sep 1997 Wrote:
> >Although that mind may seem the same to everyone else, and the mind
> >itself may 'think' it's you, it might not actually be 'you'
> >(because you're dead).
> Perhaps that's already happened, perhaps you died yesterday and entered the
> realm of total oblivion, perhaps you're not conscious, perhaps you just think
> you are. If I were to somehow prove to you that that's exactly what happened
> can you think of any reason you should be the slightest bit upset about it?
> I can't.
"There you go, man.
Keep as cool as you can.
Face piles of trials with smiles.
It riles them to believe
that you perceive
the webs they weave."
--Moody Blues, "On the threshold of a Dream"
I admit that discussions about uploading require analyses that
look like excercises in applied philosophy, but let's be a
little bit careful. We can end up wasting time on questions that
can be demonstrated to be unanswerable. Such questions are IMO
content-free, and are thereby in the same class with unfalsifiable
hypotheses.