X-Message-Number: 7928 Date: Sun, 23 Mar 97 18:40:44 From: Dave Pizer <> Subject: Reply to "Many Worlds and Many Words" Pizer Replies to Perry Mike Perry seems to me is still holding the position that a duplicate is the same as the original person merely if it contains all the same information. Mike and I began to differ (and debate this) about 10 years ago. Mike's position was that *information* was enough to comprise the total needed for a person to survive. If all the information from the original person was put into a new person (brain, computer-type-brain, big book?, long movie?), then the new person is the original person. My position was that information *AND* the part of the originial brain that senses self-awarness were both needed to continue to exist for a person to survive. I called it the "self-awarness-continuum." I think Mike's argument works against him when he points out that information in a present person changes over time, but we still continue that to be the same person surviving. If this is true (and I think it is) then it is not just information that gives the definition of a person surviving, but the self-awareness hunk of brain-meat that must continue to exist and work for a person to survive. Frankly, I don't really care about if a duplicate is me. The question that is crucial to any Immortalist is "how can *I* *survive*?" Dave Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=7928