X-Message-Number: 11135
From: 
Date: Tue, 19 Jan 1999 00:36:13 -0500
Subject: Re: One Twentieth of a Second

John de Rivaz wrote:

>..Nevertheless, understanding of what it is that makes us *seem* to be the 
>same person with continuity could give insight into how to preserve that 
>continuity whilst science catches up with the problems of disease and 
>aging.

Intuitively it seems there must surely be some continuity in the sense
that we feel that we are the same from one time interval to the next.
However, I suspect that a better approach to this question may be found
by looking at the underlying machinery of mind from an information
theoretic perspective. Can we identify some mathematical pattern 
that pervades all of the structural changes to our neuronal apparatus 
as we learn, grow and adapt. IF we could fashion such a theory it might be
possible to determine the precise ingredients that constitute a successful
upload. Would we then be looking for invariants over a group of
transformations in some suitable formal language?

To an uploaded mind, all of our musings about identity would likely appear
as childish banter for I suspect that the diamondoid substrate within which
it would live would be orders of magnitude more powerful than our current
organic variety.


/gary 

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