From: mark@unicorn.com
Date: Tue Aug 25 1998 - 07:24:17 MDT
Joe Jenkins [joe_jenkins@yahoo.com] wrote:
>One of the fundamental premises of uploading is accepting the idea
>that your identity is preserved if an emulation of all relevant
>physical processes of your mind is preserved.
Yes, but that's not what you're doing here. You're taking a hundred copies
of someone, waiting for ten hours and then deleting them. Their minds are
*not* preserved. They are dead.
>If you accept this
>definition of identity you must also accept all of the counter
>intuitive implications that come with it.
Yes. So why don't you?
>It worries me that John
>Clark, someone well known for his extraordinary ability to tackle
>counter intuitive issues, is unwilling to follow his own definition of
>identity to its logical conclusions.
John has been making the same kinds of arguments on this list for as long
as I remember, and I've yet to see anyone show a flaw in his reasoning.
>So
>many otherwise rational people become an emotional wreck when dealing
>with these issues. Witness the following:
Well thanks.
>Mark, I appreciate and empathize with your comments. However, in so
>far as the safety and reliability of the technology is trusted
>"[having] a change of heart" is totally irrational.
Look, your definition of identity is fundamentally flawed, and no amount
of technology will change that. A copy is only a duplicate of you at
precisely the instant it's copied, and immediately begins to diverge. If
the copy is destroyed at that point it's dead.
Let's give a better example than yours. Suppose you decide that the
weather is too nice to work, so you create a copy and send it to the
beach; you'll go to work and then kill yourself, so the copy will take
your place the next day.
Will you kill yourself at the end of the day? This example is precisely
equivalent to yours except that you get to kill yourself, you don't get to
claim without evidence that your copies will do so.
Are you really that suicidal?
Mark
|-----------------------------------------------------------------------|
|Mark Grant M.A., U.L.C. EMAIL: mark@unicorn.com |
|WWW: http://www.unicorn.com/ MAILBOT: bot@unicorn.com |
|-----------------------------------------------------------------------|
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Fri Nov 01 2002 - 14:49:30 MST