From: Robert J. Bradbury (bradbury@aeiveos.com)
Date: Wed Oct 30 2002 - 16:06:12 MST
On Wed, 30 Oct 2002, Dickey, Michael F, commenting on my Damien disassembly
and reassembly "thought" experiment wrote:
> I am not disputing that both would view themselves as subjective
> continuations of Damien's Identity, I am saying that even though they
> believe they are, they are not.
The xoxes believe they are Damien, to me (and presumably you) they both
look and behave as Damien looks and behaves. Who is "truthteller" that
says "these xoxen are not Damien".
> Were they collected into a pile of atoms, and then used as raw materials to
> construct the two copies?
yes (at least when I was making up the example, that was what I was thinking).
> If that is the case, the original pattern made up of the
> original group of atoms was at some point completely destroyed, thus there
> would be no continuation of the subjective experience of the original
> reference Damien. Or so my argument goes...
There is no continuation of the "subjective experience" because we knocked
Damien out with halothane before we disassembled him. Its little different
from going to sleep one night and waking up the next morning having had
your bed relocated by a bunch of pranksters while you were catching your Z's.
> Your question confuses what I have been trying to argue, I have not argued
> that the atoms themselves hold some mysterious 'piece' of damiens
> conscioussness and that is why a copy is not him,
That's good because if you were making that claim you would be off in the
Penrose camp and we generally slowly roast such individuals here...
> If we copied damien, he and his copy would not experience the same
> subjective events, thus the copy of him is not a subjective continuation
> of him.
It sounds like you are saying everyone that has an operation involving
general anesthesia wakes up with a different identity. (I.e. you are
put to sleep in one place and you wake up someplace else with a "gap"
in your subjective experience.)
Now, what is the difference between that situation (in which I assume
you are going to "claim" identity is maintained) and a situation in
which (a) while you are lying alone, post-surgery, sedated, in your
private room, the blue people enter your room, disassemble all of your
atoms (carefully keeping track of each atom), then reassemble you with
all of your atoms in a different location (i.e. you get all the C's back
where the C's belong but it is a different C from the original C that was
in that location); and (b) while you are lying alone, post-surgery, sedated,
in your private room, the blue people enter your room, disassemble all of your
atoms (carefully keeping track of each atom), then reassemble you with
all of your atoms back in its *original* location. (The blue people were
having a slow day, so they can afford to waste some time playing with your
"subjective experience" this way. [1])
> If that were the result of this experiment (which I believe it reasonable
> to assume it would be, because if it were not *that* would imply a mysterious
> magical connection) Then I ask, why is that the case? I say it is because the
> original Damien was comprised of both a pattern and a group of atoms that
> made up that pattern, and the vast majority of that group of atoms was
> present in the same pattern that made up damien the instant before, thus he
> was a continuation of the previous one.
This term "continuation" isn't clear to me. I would argue that if you capture
the "pattern" and provide a "reasonable" shift between frames of reference
(environments) that "Damien" is still "Damien" even if we have two "Damiens".
If the atoms are important, then uploading will certainly involve a change
in "identity" since the same atoms are unlikely to be involved in the
different substrates. Obviously people can handle the "shift" from 10:00 PM
one evening to 7:00 AM the next morning. They also seem to be able to handle
the shift from being put under general anesthesia until they wake up
and even being in a coma for a number of years (though this is rare).
It raises some interesting issues regarding cryonic suspension as to
whether a person can retain an identity when the down time in their
subjective experience may be 30-100 years or more, particularly in light
of the accelerating changes one might expect from the singularity.
Robert
1. For more comments on the "blue people" you will have to peruse the archives.
[Am I the only nut case that enjoys writing recursive notes to the ExI list???]
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