X-Message-Number: 23868 Date: Mon, 12 Apr 2004 01:24:25 -0700 From: Mike Perry <> Subject: Re: Pizer's UAS These comments on David Pizer's posting #23851 will have to be brief because of time pressure (it's getting late!). >1. You can make something from nothing. I think you meant to say, "You can't make something from nothing." I have no quarrel with the basic contention that *something* must have always existed--at least it seems so (although it invokes a concept of time, and we can ask if "time" is even meaningful in the largest possible context, but I'll skip over that for now). I also agree we should be signed up for cryonic preservation and should work diligently in other ways toward immortalization, eventually perhaps including trying to alter the cosmos itself--no quarrel there. I do take issue, however, with the idea that one is a "unique awareness center" and that personal experience data should be treated as incidental, rather like the books one might have in one's library. Based on this, one should have chosen the psychologists in my thought experiment the other day. "You" would survive, as long as only gradual changes were made over a period of time, no matter what the resulting being was like or thought he/she/it was, supposing, I suppose, that a few properties held such as basic intelligence and awareness. A being that retained your original memories, dispositions, etc. but was created suddenly from scratch, could never be "you" in the same sense, again according to this view. It isn't my view. The multiverse idea, which I take seriously, strongly hints that any "awareness center" is far from unique anyway. What you are is, I think, something that requires at least one awareness center somewhere for expression of consciousness. Yet it is also something that transcends any specific construct such as an awareness center. I have compared this notion of "person" with the idea of thinking of a book as a body of information rather than a specific copy of the book, and it is not a perfect analogy but does have some relevance. I think some object because a "body of information" is a static thing only and they think I am trying to argue that a person similarly is basically "static"--no, not at all. More another time. Best wishes and transcendently long life to all, Mike Perry Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=23868