From: Brent Allsop (allsop@fc.hp.com)
Date: Fri Jun 01 2001 - 11:37:06 MDT
Lee Corbin <lcorbin@ricochet.net> made a valiant attempt with:
> No, I think that you would too, unless you're just incredibly
> stubborn. Imagine that everyone but you began doing it. Years and
> years go by. You see the same people slowly age. Time and again
> you hear them recount their adventures on other planets. The tiny
> voice in your head "but they're not the same people! my old friends
> are dead!" becomes pitifully weak. Eventually you stop listening to
> it.
I think that, to argue this way, is to entirely miss the point
of what consciousness is, and what it will be like once we fully
understand and can manipulate/improve it. The reason people like this
have "copy" problems is because all we know about consciousness is of
ourselves being isolated and trapped inside our own subjective skull.
But when we can expand the conscious worlds or our conscious knowledge
out beyond ourselves, when we can eff, join conscious worlds with
other minds.... things will change drastically. The isolated
preconceived notions that we spend so much time arguing about will
then become silly and absurd.
The person with the copy problem, is assuming we must always
be subjectively isolated, and that things like the turring test are
the best we have to divine other's (including a copies) subjective
experience and consciousness. When you make arguments like this, you
are buying into the same fallacy - that we will always be subjectively
isolated from other minds but you'll still have the "proof by peer
pressure"...
Once we start effing, sharing conscious experience, and more
or less subjectively escaping from the walls that are now our skull,
everyone will wonder how people could have made these silly
assumptions: "that all minds will forever be subjectively isolated."
and that things like the turring test is the best we have of
determining what other's subjective minds were like, or that the best
we would have is "proof by peer pressure"... to convince others there
is nothing to fear from being uploaded.
"Harvey Newstrom" <mail@HarveyNewstrom.com> responded to me with:
> > If you happened to be a copy on a ship that was tragically
> > about to fall into the sun or something, and this remote conscious
> > merge with your twin back on earth, was such that the representation
> > of you, your conscious knowledge of yourself, all of it's memories and
> > experiences and everything, could transfer over this mind meld link to
> > enhabit an expanded conscious world of your twin, would this lesson
> > your fear of the eminent death of one of you?
> Nope, sorry. This is like watching a fancy TV or holodeck, where I
> experience life through the other person. This is exactly what it
> would seem like to be that other person. But like a TV, it ends
> when the show is over. As soon as the link breaks, I'm still in my
> original body and not in the other body.
But Harvy, with this you are still making the faulty assumption that
you are still subjectively trapped inside your skull as a single
isolated subjective "person". When two brains are subjective shared
like this, it will not simply be two different people sharing the same
subjective experience, you will be the same consciousness supper
beeing - spread across multiple joined platforms, bodies and brains.
Each of the consciously connected bodies (In your case many of them
drastically different than each other?) will be more like appendages
to the supper conscious you than an isolated copy of some other
isolated part of you. These will be appendages that you will freely
shed and replace at will while maintaining one supper consciousness
that is aware of all of them as they are shed and replaced with many
more improved ones. You will take everything, the personality, the
memory, what they were subjectively like... and absorb it into your
supper consciousness before discarding one of these appendages. You
will then replace that appendage with several more much improved
versions, back-load these personalities and memories in their entirety
back into them and turn them loose to grow and fill their new improved
expanded appendage or sub parts of you. The single conscious stream
that is you will be preserved far better in such a growing, shared
supper beeing, as it grows, improves, moves, and shares itself with
others, than the sleeping, forgetful, often unconscious you so
tenuously isolated within your mortal skull. Don't you think?
Brent Allsop
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