From: Lee Corbin (lcorbin@ricochet.net)
Date: Wed May 30 2001 - 22:02:19 MDT
Deniz Sarioz <ds1058@columbia.edu> wrote a very long post
claiming that my argument that duplicates are self is
massively flawed. I sincerely wish that he had made
one or two points very well, concisely edited, as a
basis for further discussion.
As it is, I simply cannot respond to statements like
>If someone told ME that they would give me $10 in
>exchange of being transferred memories of my arm
>having been cut 10 minutes ago, I would probably
>take it.
It doesn't even parse. (By the way, do you have a spell-
checker? You could use it.)
Here, I will only address the first point in that massive
post.
At 06:37 PM 5/30/01 -0400, you wrote:
>1) re: http://www.leecorbin.com/dupproof.html
>This "proof" is so fatally flawed. Consider that you put Albert Einstein
>and Adolf Hitler in two adjacent cells. Ask Hitler, would you like Albert
>Einstein to go through a bad experience for longer or you for less? He'll
>be like, of course. And then you merge their short-term memories into one
>another.
This completely ignores my qualification that it is meaningless to conceive
of "merging memories" of different individuals. (I wonder what "He'll be
like, of course" means, anyway.)
In fairness, he does add
>Anyway, the claim is that the two were the same person to begin with. If
>you make the bold claim that two distinct (however similar) brains can be
>merged at all, you can't deny that this is possible. That "proof" can be
>used to show that everyone is the same, an absurd proposition from a
>materialistic point of view. The glitch in the proof is the merging--I
>used to think it was possible, but I am not sure if it is possible to merge
>two entities that differ in experience only in two hours on the same
>physical substrate.
*No one* is making the "bold claim that two distinct brains can be merged"!
Could you also be much, much more careful in formulating your arguments?
This is the last time that I will respond to something from you so
obviously hastily written and with so little care.
No one to my knowledge has any idea how memories could be merged, any
more than anyone has any idea how a molecular copy of a person could be
created. That doesn't matter. The fact is, if you have an open mind
and a good imagination, you can easily imagine what it would be like
if you and your very close duplicate merged a few memories, as I
explained in that document. Therefore such a configuration of
molecules is not only logically possible. It is physically *possible*
(for it to exist).
There were many other interesting points in your paper (I think).
I invite you to discuss them further, one at a time.
Lee Corbin
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Sat Nov 02 2002 - 08:07:51 MST