[extropy-chat] identity and copies, yet again

John K Clark jonkc at att.net
Sat Sep 18 15:31:37 UTC 2004


"Damien Broderick" <thespike at satx.rr.com>

> Obviously a nearly-exact copy would *feel*, from inside,
> just like you do now. The copy would also serve everyone
> else's needs as well as the original did. None of that has
> the slightest bearing on whether the original should be
> complicit, indeed happy, in its own termination.

If I understand your position correctly you concede that 2 months ago
somebody could have made a near exact copy of you and destroyed the original
and neither you, the present day Damien Broderick, nor any of your friends
would notice the slightest difference. However even though you can clearly
remember being a child you also insist that the Damien of old is dead, even
deader than our 10 year old selves is for all of us. Well, if you let me do
it once I imagine you'll let me do it again so if one month ago I made a
copy of the copy and killed the "original copy" I don't think your response
would change much. Let's take this process to the limit and see where it
leads. I'll let you operate for exactly one nanosecond and then I'll make a
copy and destroy the previous copy; I will do this many millions of
trillions of times. Now a billionth of a second is far too short to form a
conscious thought, and yet Damien Broderick, a dead man by your reckoning,
is conscious, happy, healthy, and wise. Something is continuous, how can
that be?

> What is so hard to understand about this distinction?

It's hard to understand because it seems to me you are making a distinction
without a difference, in fact I'm not even sure you're making a distinction.

  John K Clark      jonkc at att.net






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