From: Harvey Newstrom (harv@gate.net)
Date: Sat Nov 15 1997 - 15:30:23 MST
At 2:09pm -0500 11/14/97, Hal Finney wrote:
>It's really not that. It's all analyzed from the p.o.v. of the person who
>walks away from the experiment.
I guess this is where our opinions diverge. I don't want to consider the
point of view of the person who walks away from the experiment. I want to
consider the point of view of the person who walks into the experiment.
That's the only "me" that exists right now. That's the "me" that I want to
preserve. I think that we are each contemplating different questions and
may not be disagreeing on the exact same points.
Question One, which I think is my concern:
- Is the original body still "me"?
- Does it stop being "me" for any reason?
- What is the criteria for it to stop being "me"?
- How does the copying operation meet these criteria?
Question Two, which I think is your concern:
- Is the new body "me"?
- Does it start being "me" for any reason?
- What is the criteria for it to start being "me"?
- How does the copying operation meet these criteria?
I am more concerned with the answer to the first question. If the original
person is still "me", then I don't want "me" killed. I see no mechanism
for its point-of-view of being "me" to be transferred to the new body.
Piping the new body's perception back to the original to make me
"experience" moving to the new body is backwards. It takes independent
experience from the new body and then later plays it back in the original.
This implies that the new body is having experience independent from the
original, that the new body's experiences are not enjoyed by the original,
and that the original's experience must be suppressed and overridden.
Implanting my memories to the new body makes it "remember" being "me", but
it never really experienced the things that it "remembers." We just as
well could program it to remember UFO abductions and Satanic Ritual Abuse
that never occurred. If I could perceive my point-of-view through the new
body, and have that point-of-view continue after the two are disconnected,
then I would feel transferred. If after the disconnection occurs, I
suddenly find myself still in my original body, I would think the transfer
had not occurred. Until the original body stops perceiving itself as "me"
from its point-of-view, I would still consider it to be "me". Killing it
to stop this perception is not an acceptable answer, because this death is
the exact thing that I am trying to avoid with the copy.
__
Harvey Newstrom (harv@gate.net)
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Fri Nov 01 2002 - 14:45:07 MST