X-Message-Number: 32846 Date: Tue, 21 Sep 2010 00:23:03 -0700 Subject: Identity is as Identity Does From: Brian Wowk <> I read with interest Bob Ettinger's recent remarks about Mark Gubrud's piece in The New Atlantis. http://futurisms.thenewatlantis.com/2010/06/why-transhumanism-wont-work.html Although I have not been around as long Bob, I have nevertheless observed arguments about uploading, identity duplication, and related subjects for decades. In all that time there are two things I've never seen: (a) A truly new argument, and (b) Someone change their mind. What is seen are people who passionately believe they are correct, and who believe that they have just the argument to finally convince the other side that they are right. They never do. I have come to believe that the question of whether a computationally equivalent duplicate of a human mind (assuming equivalence in this context is even definable) constitutes a continuation of the original person may be objectively unanswerable. It's almost a matter of taste, like alternative interpretations of quantum mechanics that assume different underlying realities that give exactly the same measurable results. Eventually the distant day will come when the computational processes of a human brain are duplicated in an electronic computer, or even in another identical organic substrate. When that day comes, we can be certain of this: If the person who was "duplicated" believed before duplication that duplication constitutes survival of the self, then, by definition, the duplicated entity will insist vociferously that indeed they did survive. This has ethical implications. Conversely, an entity derived from a person who did not believe in this form of survival might be quite unhappy to be told that they were the product of a destructive scan of somebody. This too has ethical implications. Philosophical truth aside, evolution selects against humans who spend time worrying about whether sleep, anesthesia, or biostasis endangers personal identity. Similarly, it is easy to predict which side of the uploading and duplication debates will win in the long term. There is no entity more invulnerable or fecund than one that believes it consists of information. ---Brian Wowk Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=32846