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

Slawomir Paliwoda velvethum at hotmail.com
Fri Sep 17 18:38:12 UTC 2004


> "Slawomir Paliwoda" <velvethum at hotmail.com>
>
> > How would it feel to be the copy? It would feel exactly
> > the same as being the original.
>
> Yes, with emphasis on the word “exactly”.
>
> > That doesn't mean I would be the original.
>
> OK, but if so then using nothing but your own words above I conclude that
> the distinction between the words “Copy” and “Original” is of trivial
> importance and not worth bothering about.

The most important idea I want to convey to people is that the copy and the
original never share the same subjective experience. If you destroy the
original mind process that enables that subjective experience, then that
experience won't automatically merge with, or become, subjective experience
of the clone.

Imagine yourself as an original, and a clone, and focus your attention
entirely on your subjective input. What is your subjective experience, as an
original, when your brain disintegrates? Is it not nothingness? Isn't the
existence of the clone completely irrelevant as to what you experience as an
original?


> > mind is a tangible process. It's an activity of matter
>
> But what makes this particular activity interesting is not the matter,
there
> is absolutely nothing special about those atoms,


Did I ever claim that there is? Of course there isn't. That's why I'm
talking about the *activity* of matter. We're in complete agreement here.


> the interesting thing is
> what they do and that is a function of how they are arranged and that is
> a function of a pattern and a pattern is information.


This is the source of our disagreement - grounding the concept of identity
in the accurate definition of what mind is. Mind is not a function of a
static arrangement of data, but a function of a process that operates on
that data.

Example:
Your brain is frozen. The arrangement of your mind data remains the same as
before the freezing so if a mind were a function of how mind pattern is
arranged, as you say, then how come you wouldn't be able to form thoughts or
be conscious? It would be precisely because your mind process was stopped.
Without it, mind doesn't exist.


> > Whatever these experiments might be, I'm afraid they would
> > have to violate the laws of physics first to prove that verification
> > of identity is impossible.
>
> I am unaware of any law of physics that makes it imposable to erase the
> information about which is the copy and which is the original.


Ah, of course it would be impossible to verify someone's identity if you
destroyed the log which measured mind process' trajectory in space-time, but
that would also be cheating.

Your initial claim was that there could exist no method to objectively
verify one's identity. By providing theoretically possible mechanism that
could objectively verify identity, I hope I've proven your original
assumption false.


> > Electrons flowing through the brain are not matter?
>
> You can also perform computations with photons and you can put lots of
them
> in exactly the same place.

Could you superimpose two separate mind processes so that their 4-D
parameter values would be exactly the same?

Slawomir



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