X-Message-Number: 14992
Date: Wed, 22 Nov 2000 11:13:48 -0500 (EST)
From: Ruthanna R Gordon <>
Subject: Re: What if Uploading Appeared to Work

<On Mon, 06 Nov 2000 Lee Corbin wrote>
> 
> It is the year 2059, and some malefactor scans the brain of
> the great frozen cryonicist, Thomas Donaldson.  This malefactor
> does not harm the frozen brain, but merely copies all the
> information therein, and uploads it into a simulacrum. The
> uploaded version of Donaldson is presented to a number of
> doubting... well, let's just say that they don't believe
> that uploading can possibly result in the real McCoy.

It is possible to believe that uploading results in a conscious
intelligence with internal experiences (I do) without believing that it
actually is revival of the original (I don't).

If I am uploaded or duplicated, my copy has the same rights and
experiences as I do, since we are both real human beings, but it is not
me--my physically continuous self is still in the pit (or frozen in a
dewar).  

Of course, if I am a good person and like myself, my duplicate will work
hard to aid research that will get my original self unfrozen and undamaged
(returning to the metaphor of your story, I would press the button with
the understanding that my dupe would go back to civilization and return
with a helicopter).  Once out, I will freely acknowledge that my dupe has
inner processes just like I do--is one step beyond being my identical
twin, in fact.  It may even be convenient, legally speaking, to consider
us both me.  However, it isn't in fact true.  I have no objection to being
uploaded, but I object if once that is done anyone feels it is okay to
stop work on reviving my original self.

The difference between a conscious process and a non-conscious process is
that internal reality matters where the conscious process is
concerned.  If I put a program on my computer and then destroy the
original CD it was on, this makes no difference to anyone.  The program on
the CD does not care.  If my brain is emulated on a computer and then the
original is destroyed ...well, I won't care either, because I'll be
dead.  I hope my dupe would decide that you are right, because the
alternative would depress her.  However, she would still be wrong.

The definition of a process that saves me is that I have left the pit, and
am no longer in it, without having been vaporized in order to be no longer
in it.

Long life,
Ruthanna Gordon


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