X-Message-Number: 32533
From: 
Date: Sat, 3 Apr 2010 21:50:25 EDT
Subject: Comments for Luke

Luke Parrish is quoted  below, with some comments by me labeled  such.
>If I was in a room with 50 copies of myself, I would consider
myself  to be a different individual from the rest of them.

>However this  feeling would not make me more important or more
closely connected to my past  life (prior to the copying event)
than the rest of them. So why should the  person prior to copying
identify more with the being that shares their atoms,  as
opposed to sharing their memories?
 
COMMENT: Neither sharing atoms nor sharing memories
signifies identity, only a specific kind and degree of  similarity

>People get spooked at the concept of trading their atoms  around
for a simple reason: this is not something evolution has ever  had
to cope with. Always in times past, keeping your information
pattern  alive has coincided with keeping your atoms generally
intact. We shouldn't be  surprised that this instinct remains.
 
COMMENT: People have always traded atoms to some extent,
e.g. by breathing the same air. Evolution does not "want" to
preserve either information or material--it is just a name we give
to a process tending, at certain times, to favor survival and 
proliferation of types with certain traits. In any case, I don't think 
our wish to preserve our bodies should be called an instinct. 
The "instinct" of self preservation, for most people at most 
times in modern conditions, is conspicuous by its  absence.

>Consider this: you lose consciousness every night. In  other
words, you cease to exist as a conscious being, yet are able to
come  back into existence as such in the morning. Information is
preserved, and  that is how you know you still exist later on.
 
COMMENT: Your identifying with your future and past selves, 
at least in part, is justified by your overlap in matter, time, and 
space. This is spelled out more fully in Youniverse.

>If you lost  all memories of your previous life, you wouldn't
know that you had survived.  The person you were before would
seem a stranger to you.

COMMENT: So what? 

>Getting your atoms replaced would be indistinguishable from
not  getting them replaced.
 
COMMENT: We must try to distinguish psychology from logic.

>* The  person existing before the event can't tell the difference.
They can't see  the future.
* The person existing after the event can't tell the  difference.
They have the same exact memories, emotions, skills, etc.
*  The person existing during the event can't tell the difference.
They are  unconscious.
* Nobody around them can tell the difference either.
 
COMMENT: This is unclear to me, but in Youniverse,
and in some of these postings, I have tried to lay out
logically and scientifically justified viewpoints. How
much any of this matters is also unclear, but in at
least some cases there will be effects on attitudes
toward cryonics.
 
Robert Ettinger






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