Re: uploading and the survival hang-up

From: Lee Corbin (lcorbin@ricochet.net)
Date: Sat Jun 02 2001 - 08:12:59 MDT


At 11:37 AM Brent Allsop wrote:

>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.

>... 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."

You know very well that only a small number of people (at
present) accept your ideas about effing. Many people agree
with Dennett that you'd endup up having to change all of a
person's unconscious and conscious associations before the
"effs" would be valid.

Your argument here amounts to saying that later after we
have obtain this wonderful new (and some say inconceivable)
technology, we'll look at things differently.

This is no stronger than saying that after we have telepathy
we won't "feel" so bad about dying locally and living
remotely.

I admit that your ideas have not yet obtained a fair
hearing, but an identity discussion is hardly the place
to start.

Lee



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