X-Message-Number: 32508
From: 
Date: Wed, 24 Mar 2010 21:36:05 EDT
Subject: Freeposity & Sparks

All of the questions raised by Freeposity and Jordan Sparks,
and many others, have been addressed in Youniverse. My
challenge here is to try to deal with them much more
succinctly and yet more convincingly. Probably impossible,
but I'll give it a shot from time to time.
 
How do I know I'm not a simulation? I don't know that for
sure--we don't know anything for sure except our own
immediate feelings--but the arguments in favor of that 
hypothesis are full of holes. I have also shown that it
might not be impossible for a simulated person to test
that hypothesis. 
 
Freeposity also asks, "Also please explain how your mind 
is not a collection of memories and a collection of data 
processing algorithms." The point is that the uploaders
need to explain how they know the mind is ONLY a
collection of memories and algorithms. A collection of
such on paper would be as much a person as a 
collection in a computer, yet few would claim that a
bunch of writing on paper is or could be a person.
 
Jordan says that only the pattern is important, not the
material, noting that atoms are replaced from time
to time in our brains anyway, and a duplicate brain
would have the same thoughts and the same value.
 
I deny that a duplicate of me would have the same
value to me as the original. I don't deny that someone
who used the "Beam me up, Scotty" routine might 
become accustomed to it, but that proves nothing. 
People have become accustomed to misery and
death. 
 
No one has effectively disproven the necessity of
physical continuity for survival. The fact that our
continuity is incomplete shows that we need to
look harder for ways to justify our feeling of
survival. (Are you the same person as
your infant self? As your possible future superhuman
self? As your possible PAST superhuman self in
another branch of reality?) I believe I have done this.
My tentative answer is that "you" are basically your
qualia, and a quale is a physical construct--perhaps
a standing wave in the brain--with extension in space
and time. Your current self partly shares physical
existence with your past and future selves. You 
overlap your predecessors and continuers, and
hence in part share their identity. 
 
Let me end today by mentioning the Turing Tape. 
This is a conceptual computer devised by Alan
Turing more than 70 years ago, which he proved
to be a UNIVERSAL computer, capable in principle
of performing any computation that any digital 
computer might, albeit very slowly. The device is just
a long paper tape marked into squares, on each of
which there is or is not a mark. There is a mechanism
to move the tape backward or forward, one square
at a time, and a mechanism for making or erasing
marks. At any moment, the set of marks constitutes
the program and also the data store and the current
"state" of the computer. Surely you can see that such
a computer is only a manipulator of symbols, and
at a given moment is just a set of symbols, no more 
alive than a book.
 
Robert Ettinger




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