X-Message-Number: 14688
Date: Thu, 12 Oct 2000 20:19:09 -0700
From: Lee Corbin <>
Subject: What counts is what we are

Robert Ettinger wrote, subject "Corbin in Handcuffs", :-)
>Lee Corbin (#14662) writes, in part:
>
>>All the things that are really important about me,
>>and with which I identify, are equally true of
>>any close duplicate.
>
>That is merely an opinion or assertion, not a fact.
>Important to whom? By what criterion or criteria?

Well, yes, it's an opinion, but I think that we should
regard it as true!  It's much as when many years ago
some people believed that God didn't exist; they wanted
their assertion to be taken as an assertion about reality. 
I assert, and argue, that people who identify with, say,
their books, or their pets, or anything else that turns out
to be structurally unrelated to them are simply mistaken.

>In actual fact, hardly anyone is likely to FEEL that
>duplicates share his identity. Suppose the Lee who
>posts to Cryonet (Lee 1) could be led handcuffed into
>an auditorium full of duplicates (Lee 2, ...N) and told:

>
>"You (instantiation 1, in handcuffs) willl now be
>tortured to death. But not to worry--all those other
>Lees--who will not be aware of your death by torture
>--will live normal lives." I doubt that Lee 1 would
>find much solace.

Boy, are you wrong!  I would take immense solace, at least
right up to the point that the torture began.  Of course,
at that point the fact that I'm also an animal would begin
to take precendence in everything that I would assert and
even believe.  But we're all wired that way; we'll say or
do or perhaps even believe anything under sufficiently
compelling circumstances

If it's true that you wouldn't take any solace that at
least duplicates of you would survive,  then you can't be
tempted to "back up" your brain when the technology becomes
available.  After all, such a backup would become utterly
useless the instant that it was created.  But that's just
not logical!  We wisely backup every other thing that we can.

>Of course, he might take the position that he "ought" to
>take solace, but is prevented by instinct or habit. Well,
>it is true that instinct and habit can produce bad results,
>but that doesn't address the question of affirmative 
>proof that everything "important" about you is also
>present in near duplicates.

A proof is something, even mathematicians concede, that serves
to persuade everyone who simply and measurably exerts diligent
effort.  (I'm not talking about formal proof here--- that
raises entirely different issues.)  I don't claim to have
proof here; I merely assert that my position on identity has
fewer inconsistencies, and will be ultimately adopted.  All we
can do is argue the best case that we can.

>My present tentative opinion is that my predecessors
>and continuers do ("ought to be considered to") share
>my identity in some degree, because of the physical
>overlap. If there is no physical overlap--if the duplicates
>are created elsewhere in spacetime--then the individuals,
>however similar, are separate. They will certainly have
>separate feelings and experiences, since feelings and
>experiences are physical events.  

That's a point worth arguing, and you've stated it well.
But as Max More used to point out in his "Luckiest Man in
the Universe" scenario, were, God forbid, an H-bomb to
happen to fall on you now and blast you to smithereens,
and it just so happened, that a million years from now an
exact physical duplicate were created in the Virgo super-
cluster, Bob Ettinger would say, "How did I get here???".
The important point is: what would transpire in the
brain of that far away duplicate is "the same" as what's
been happening in your brain for many years (I know that
you like to think of it as the "self-circuit").  Moreover,
if there really is any objective physical criteria by which
it can someday be measured that, say, one is successfully
reanimated, then going by the same set of criteria, one
must logically demand that the Virgo cluster individual
be regarded as Robert Ettinger too, and that he actually
beat out the H-bomb attempt on his life.

All that is really important about me---which the wonderful
cryonicists have agreed to try to save---is my pattern.  For
if it's preserved, and some physical perambulatory body
is cloned for it, everyone would see that I had survived.
Anyone arguing otherwise would be laughed out of court, so
to speak.  It won't (can't) matter to me by what path this
state is effected;  I'm amazed that so many people still
suppose that any physical object (e.g. a person's body)
carries about with it non-physical data that has recorded,
somehow, the path through which the state traveled
historically.  What you are is what is important---not
how you got there.

Lee Corbin

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