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 Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=14992