From: Jef Allbright (jef@jefallbright.net)
Date: Mon Oct 28 2002 - 08:48:23 MST
> Jef Allbright wrote to Lee:
>>
>> In your posts later today, two of your points
>> have become clearer, at least to me: (1) You are
>> talking about survival of identify, and (2) you
>> are saying that in the future, as the technical
>> means become available, it makes sense for us to
>> value the survival of our identity with
>> importance equal to our current concept of survival
> of self.
gts wrote:
> If survival of identity *separate from self* (i.e., as
> a non-living label or record) is the only object here
> then this discussion is pointless and trivial.
>
> We might just as well make holographic interactive
> talking images of ourselves now so that posterity will
> be able to pretend to interact with us after we die.
> Such devices would not allow for true *survival*. They
> would be nothing more than high-tech tombstones.
gts, I think we're talking about survival of identity in the sense of a
living, growing person who carries our identity into the future, exactly as
we do now now while our identity is limited to a single body. As you've
said, this is more correct than saying our "self" carries into the future,
because the "self" is continuously changing. So we understand that it's our
"self-identity", that set of thoughts, memories, and drives that we
*identify* as ourself, that we have such a strong desire to see carried
forward.
Lee has been saying that in the future we will contnue to have the same
attachment and concern for what we consider to be "our self", but that we
will apply the concept equally to more than one body that carries our basic
identity, even though they've branched.
I'm saying that in this hypothetical future we will fondly appreciate seeing
our "branches" set out on their own, but will think of them as a new kind of
twin sibling, rather than as "our self".
- Jef
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