X-Message-Number: 27609 From: "Valera Retyunin" <> Subject: The magical power of decision - best remedy for your worries! Date: Sun, 12 Feb 2006 22:59:54 +0300 Daniel Crevier wrote in his "How I stopped worrying about uploading" post: "There is a point of view that drastically simplifies all these discussions we've been having about identity: it is to consider that sameness is not an ontological property. .................................. They are just tags that we mentally apply to things. I believe that however essential and necessary they may appear, our reasons for applying those tags have purely pragmatic origins. ................................................. I know that there will be an interruption in my consciousness when I go to sleep tonight. Yet I decide that the person who will wake up in my brain tomorrow will be the same as me today because otherwise, I'd go sleepless. Likewise, it is entirely up to me to decide whether my uploaded or reconstructed self would be the same person as me. If it has my memories and behavior, I choose to decide that it would be. It's as simple as that." This really is a point of view that drastically simplifies everything! Oh, that magical power of decision! Not only does it move mountains, it lets some people overcome death itself! It's as simple as that!!! Daniel, I wonder what will happen to you if you don't decide that the person who will wake up in your brain tomorrow will be you, or if you decide that he won't be you. Following you logic (that is, you are not your brain but merely a decision result) you will not survive your sleep. I'm terrified to imagine what will happen to me if you, for some reasons that have "purely pragmatic origins", decide to wake up tomorrow in my brain... I know, I know, I don't have your memories and behaviour, but why limit your magical survival decisions to biological clones and supercomputer simulations? As Flavonoid notes, identity is very fluid from the patternist perspective. You could well settle for someone who shares a substantial amount of memories and behavioural patterns with you. Your children, for instance. You wouldn't even need to wait for the advent of more advanced technologies, quite a few people already "decide" they will survive in their kids. Well, they don't believe of course that, the moment they die, they will actually pop up in their children's heads and start seeing through their eyes, hearing through their ears etc. But then, they lack the magical decision power you possess... Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=27609