[extropy-chat] I keep asking myself...

[Emlyn]

On 06/04/06, Russell Wallace <russell.wallace at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> As a subscriber to the pattern view, I wouldn't rely on that argument! I'd
> rely on "if I fail to come back, I'll still be alive nonetheless, since both
> copies are me"... though I'd also be skeptical of the value of sending a
> stream of expensive manned spacecraft, plus maybe subjecting myself to the
> unpleasant experience of dying of radiation poisoning/being eaten by aliens
> with acid blood/etc, on missions where none of them were coming back with
> data. Why not send cheap unmanned/narrow AI probes first to check whether
> conditions at the destination are survivable?
>

Fair enough. Leads me to a thought though...

Say you did truly subscribe to the pattern paradigm, so you truly
believed that, in facing death of your body, the fact that there were
other copies around would mean you wouldn't actually die.

Then, what would it be like to experience a really harrowing death
(being eaten by aliens with acid blood and space halitosis, say)? With
the fear of death really gone, ie: you *know* and *deeply feel* that
this is just destroying a body, no big problem existentially.

How about if you recorded those sensations somehow, and could send
them back to be merged with another "line" of you, so a surviving
instance could experience them without dying.

How then do you think that kind of terrible "death" would be? Hmm....

--
Emlyn

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