From: John K Clark (jonkc@att.net)
Date: Wed Oct 30 2002 - 23:09:31 MST
"Dickey, Michael F" <michael_f_dickey@groton.pfizer.com>
> So to be identical you must mean we have to be experiencing
> the same subjective events
Yes
> for that to be the case we would have to take up the same
> space at the same time
No
> If we are in separate places, we must be different entities.
Not if you are an adjective and not a noun, not if you are the way
matter reacts when it is organized in certain complex ways,
then there is no reason you would even have a unique position.
> If you copy me and my copy and I do not experience the same
> thing, he *can not* be a continuation of me.
Yes
> As I have said, I do not know this is how this experiment would
> turn out
Of course you do, you already said that you don't know if you were taken
apart and copied last night so the subjective outcome must be zero otherwise
you could tell.
> If you think the copy and the reference would experience the
> same thing, that of course would contradict my arguments.
As I said before in most cases they would see different things but it
certainly wouldn't violate the laws of physics for it to happen, just place
them an equal distance from the center of a symmetrical room or place them
in the same virtual environment.
>It is reasonable to conclude that the copy is not a subjective
>continuation of me (if the thought experiment turns out the way I
predict)
That's what I'm trying to get out of you, exactly what do you predict? Just
saying they are "different" is not good enough, what is the difference, get
into the mind of the copy and tell me about his memories and what it's like
to be him. Does the copy's opinion of his own survival mean nothing to you?
> I do not doubt they see different things,
You should doubt it, especially if the copy is only a millisecond old.
> Tell me, if you were in a room full of copies made very recently (a few
> seconds) and you killed 10 of them, would you feel like you killed 10
> people? Or 1 person?
If there were at least 11 in the room and I destroyed 10 bodies then I
haven't killed anybody I've just made the place messy.
>What if they were a week old? A year?
Now I'm a mass murderer.
> You do not believe that definitions are important when arguing? What if
> we were arguing if farmouzabala was vitchilimi? Would you not want a
> definition of both farmouzagbala and vitchilimi?
I'd much rather have you point to a farmouzagbala, after all in the real
world use is where definitions come from not the other way around.
John K Clark jonkc@att.net
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