X-Message-Number: 14717
From: 
Date: Tue, 17 Oct 2000 16:37:13 EDT
Subject: communicating & philosophy

Thomas Donaldson was kind enough to indicate he found some interest in my 
recent post about standing waves and the self circuit. Yet what I said was 
essentially the same thing I have said many times before over many years--the 
only difference this time being a touch of extra detail. Only a touch, for 
the benefit of those who had forgotten what a standing wave is. Goes to show 
you--you have to be VERY careful in your assumptions about what you are 
communicating, and you should usually assume that even the smartest and best 
informed reader won't understand you unless you are detailed and specific.

Lee Corbin hit the nail on the head in saying that the core of philosophy is 
a prescription for action. That is why almost all philosophers, ancient and 
modern--despite important contributions in specialized categories--have been 
close to total failures in the main task, providing rigorously derived 
guidelines for living. This is the modest aim of my book in progress, 
YOUNIVERSE.

But Lee and his fellow strong AI people keep missing the point in their 
attempts to justify duplicates-as-self. The question is not how you feel or 
someone else feels, but how you SHOULD feel, based on logic which in turn is 
based on biological essentials.

There are also many people--perhaps a majority--who feel that "values" or 
appropriate goals cannot be rigorously derived or proven correct, but in the 
end are arbitrary. "Everyone is entitled to his own opinion." I don't believe 
that. In many trivial or borderline cases, such as preferences in flavors of 
ice cream, it would be silly to waste effort on a scientific analysis of what 
you "ought" to like, but it could be done. On many significant questions, 
such as immediate self interest vs. altruism in various situations, it not 
only can be done but must be done, unless you are willing to be a feather in 
the breeze or the pawn of your conditioning.

Lee says correctly that one's attitudes, based on habit or instinct, can be 
"wrong"--but he fails to identify the criterion or criteria of "right." In 
particular, he justifies duplicate-as-self by assuming as self-evident that 
location doesn't matter, and continuity doesn't matter, and two or more 
instantiations of a thing or a person "ought" to be regarded as the 
"same"--and that any one of the person-instantiations should regard all the 
others as equally valuable. WHY? He doesn't prove his case--he just assumes 
his conclusion as an implicit premise.

My own view is far from final or complete, because there is too much we still 
don't know about physics and biology. But a reasonable starting point is that 
there is a person in the brain--not a homunculus, but a "self circuit" as 
previously suggested--and that its basic biological imperative is to feel 
good. For an intelligent organism, that means to seek to maximize personal 
satisfaction over future time.

None of this is new in principle, and elements of it can be found in the 
schools of the hedonists, epicureans, and utilitarians. Although all of those 
seemed to fail and fell out of favor, they had some things right; they just 
lacked the modern tools (physical and mathematical) required for progress and 
implementation. Needless to say, there are countless subtleties, 
complications, and apparent contradictions, and a discussion at book length 
can only clarify a few of the questions and offer partial answers to a few 
more. But we can make dramatic improvements over all previous philosophies of 
life. 

Robert Ettinger
Cryonics Institute
Immortalist Society
http://www.cryonics.org

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