Sidebar Re: [extropy-chat] Re: Formulating a bet

[Brett Paatsch]

Slawomir Paliwoda wrote:

> Hal wrote:
> [What I had in mind, regarding the "substantially the same person" test 
> for a bet on cryonics success, was something like a modified Turing test.
> We would pose questions and get responses from the person both before and
> after the suspension. These could then be randomized and someone who did 
> not
> know which were which would try to distinguish the post-suspension 
> responses
> from the pre-suspension ones.  If they were not able to do so, then we'd 
> say
> that the personality and memories of the suspendee were substantially
> intact.]
>
> This tests nothing more than whether revived person has the same
> memories and personality as the one who had signed up to be frozen. Is 
> that
> enough to determine whether a person, before and after suspension, is the
> same? Definitely not.

There are now three bears (a market reference ;-)  If you read Damien
Broderick's The Spike 1997 edition, you will find one of the other two.
Look for instance to the section Don't Beam Me Up, Scotty, pg 166 in
my hardcopy.  The book is a good read !

> For cryonics, the only test you'll ever need to determine whether revived
> person is the same is to track space-time trajectory of matter 
> implementing
> his or her original mind instance.
>
> I'm sorry but all this discussion about judges has been just silly. We're
> not trying to pick a best song here, but take a series of measurements.

There is more going on here than you are seeing. The purpose of
discussing a bet is that betting may be able to be used as a tool for
pooling information from a variety of sources to determine a market
price or consensus on esoteric topics.  See Robin Hansen's
Could Gambling Save Science?: Encouraging an honest consensus,
http://hanson.gmu.edu/gamble.html  or for a shorter treatment with a
specific reference to cryonics in the second line of the introduction,
see his Idea Futures: Encouraging an honest Consensus.
http://www.ideosphere.com/fx/docs/sean/Exi8-IF.html
These are also very good reads.

> Unfortunately, 95% of people who talk about preservation of self don't 
> even understand the problem so the solution continues to mystify
> them.

Be careful that you don't mistake a difference in prioritisation of 
interests
to your own to ignorance and mystification in others. Sometimes you
may think there is a disagreement when there isn't.

I think you want to talk about your ideas with respect to identity and
self and cryonics etc. I think your ideas are good ones. I just personally
don't want to talk about them right now. I *would* like to see you put
them into a paper.

Regards,
Brett Paatsch