X-Message-Number: 16118
Date: Tue, 24 Apr 2001 09:51:53 -0400
From: Thomas Donaldson <>
Subject: surviving as a copy

Hi everyone!

While supposing that we can make good copies of YOU or ME does raise
these issues about identity, the first question I would ask is that
of how far away we are from making such copies. Despite the sci fic
on this issue, I'd say we are very far indeed. 

Why? Because even the job of making an intelligent machine is simpler
that that of making a good enough copy of Mike Perry... a copy good
enough not only to convince strangers that he is Mike Perry, but to
convince Mike himself. It may even prove impossible: you, I, or Mike
Perry may find it impossible to cooperate with the job of getting
out enough specific information about ourselves to allow such a
perfect copy. I'm not referring to anything deep or abstruse here,
just the simple fact that we may not want EVERYTHING about ourselves
to be known to anyone but ourselves. On a slightly deeper level,
finding out such information and using it to make the copy doesn't
look to me like something that any of us can do alone for ourselves:
the job of reading out such information itself becomes more info
about ourselves, until it becomes impossible because we end up
chasing that information endlessly. SO, someone/something else may
have to do that job, and thus our memories become accessible to 
others. If the others are robots that may first seem OK, but 
what keeps other HUMANS from reading the memories of those robots?

Even supposing that we decide not to care if others learn literally 
everything about us (at a particular time), lots of practical problems
still exist in making such a copy. AS of this time, we don't even 
have a complete understanding of how our different kinds of memories
work (I'm not talking about computers or computer models here, but
about real living human beings). We know already that many memories
which seem quite real to us have been modified along the way, and
the belief that witnesses will automatically give the same story
of something they each have seen is wrong. Nobody's lying here, it's
just that each brain is going off and making its own story unconsciously.
This means that the memories of two copies may very well not coincide.
I refer here not just to recent memories but to older ones too. Thus
two copies will end up having DIFFERENT memories, again not just of
recent events but older ones too. So in what sense are they copies
of one another?

Yes, this variation seems to occur only with SOME memories. Yet even
if it occurs with only a few, it raises basic problems about just
what a copy of Mike Perry is supposed to be or do. 

I actually think that these are ultimately solvable problems, and
in some sense of the word "copy" (though not the sense used so easily
by those proposing the various problems on Cryonet) we'd be able to 
work out how to copy someone. But as a way of surviving any time in
the near future, or even a few centuries from now, it does not look
to me like the best of strategies. I hope that everyone who enjoys
thinking about such questions (yes, I do too) also gives some effort
or money to research into finding some way to revive brains with 
no or minor loss of memory only: by vitrification or any other 
method which is PROVABLE in animals.

		Best wishes and long long life for all,

			Thomas Donaldson

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