A view on cryonics (was Re: [extropy-chat] Bad Forecasts!)

[Mike Lorrey]

--- John K Clark <jonkc at att.net> wrote:

> "Mike Lorrey" <mlorrey at yahoo.com>
> 
> > In the legal world, a document sent via fax (not printed
> > on thermal paper) is considered a 'true copy', not a 'true
> original'.
> 
> If there is one thing in the universe you can be absolutely certain
> of it is that you will not find philosophical enlightenment from
> lawyers.

Yeah, that US Constitution was a waste of time....

> 
> > everyone knows that you go to sleep, and you can be
> > observed through the night, and wake up still you in the
> > morning, the true original.
> 
> But not everything has been continuous during the night, not the very
> most
> important thing in fact. We know from first hand experience that our
> consciousness undergoes a radical change when we sleep, sometimes
> stopping completely for hours at a time.

Personal computers scan and defragment their hard drives and root out
viruses at night sometimes. This can cause a radical change in the
sequence of information on that hard drive. They don't stop being the
same PC.

Similarly, your conciousness undergoes a radical change when it is on
drugs. You don't stop being the same person when you are high, you are
just being more stupid than usual.

Now, you might suppose that what if we each got our minds backed up
somewhere at night, our brains were totally wiped clean, then the
backup was reloaded onto our now clean brains.

In this hypothetical scenario, you and the backup copy of you stopped
being the same person one instantiation of thought after the backup
finished. The rest of the world, and the backup copy might be convinced
that they are reasonable facsimiles of you, but the you that developed
in the time between the backup finishing, and the start of the erasing,
is now dead.

The more time that passes between these two events, the more
significant that fact is.

=====
Mike Lorrey
Chairman, Free Town Land Development
"Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom.
It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves."
                                         -William Pitt (1759-1806) 
Blog: http://www.xanga.com/home.aspx?user=Sadomikeyism


		
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