X-Message-Number: 25577
Date: Tue, 18 Jan 2005 08:07:20 -0500
From: Thomas Donaldson <>
Subject: CryoNet #25563 - #25576

Hi everyone!

And, oh dear, Mr. Kluytmans too:

First of all, we're not going to come close to knowing how brains work
if we only look at a single neuron. Our brains are very highly parallel
computers, with more processors than any parallel computer yet built
has had.

Furthermore, SIMULATING a system of any kind falls far short of actually
examining its behavior in the real world. If you wish to do so without
this problem, you'll have to also simulate the real world, a far 
larger problem than that of simulating your "intelligent system". I
don't know of any simulations, by computer or otherwise, which do
not omit most of reality. Sure, simulation can be useful, but it should
never be identified with the real thing.

And as for the problem of too much speed to which I alluded, your
very fast computer brain will only waste its time by living in a 
virtual world (which presumably matches its speed). You are in short
saying that it will spend its time dreaming. While dreaming, too,
has its uses, too much would just be a waste of time and energy,
just as I said before. And if it simply stopped to wait until new
information came in, it's no longer working at the high rate you
say it could work. A living creature that did this would easily
lose out to one that put all that energy and time into something
else.

And for RBR:

Your arguments (so far as my tiny mind can understand them) are based
on the observation that a recreation of me (no matter how well it's done)
is not the same as the original me. 

There is a problem here. For some reason, you seem happy to say that
if I sleep and then awaken my QE will not have changed, nor would it
change if I were suitably suspended and then revived. You also say
that our QE is a physical object following physical laws. 

Suppose then that I am recreated with a  QE which exactly copies the
QE I had before I was destroyed. Yes, there may be many years 
between the destruction of my old QE and its recreation in a copy;
also remember that I specifically assume that this recreation is done
well enough that my QE works just the same as my previous one.

My recreation, then, won't notice any special change (other than
its revival). What is wrong, then, with saying that I have been
recreated, not just a duplicate but I myself? You must be willing to
accept even change in the matter composing our QE, since our bodies
do replace their molecules constantly... even in our neurons. Sure,
that happens more slowly than my recreation might have happened (who
says that my recreation was instant? Perhaps I remain unconscious
while my QE is slowly reconstructed).

Yes, the I which has been recreated isn't the I that was destroyed.
But then we change constantly, and in that sense we're never the
same... though in most cases everyone accepts that such change 
doesn't destroy our continuity. What feature, then, of this 
recreation implies that my I will not survive that destruction and
recreation? It's clearly not enough to merely say that it will not
be the same QE.

              Best wishes and long long life to all,

                   Thomas Donaldson

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