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

[Heartland]

"Heartland" <velvet977 at hotmail.com>

> A revived person would obviously *feel* similar
> to what people feel after waking up

John K Clark wrote:
And that's all I'm interested in, I want to *feel* alive. You can tell me
tell you're blue in the face that objectively I'm dead but if subjectively I
feel alive then I am.

That's the other way around. Subjectively you wouldn't feel alive, while 
objectively others would have to agree that you are alive.

> It's the other created instance that will but you
> will "feel" eternal nothingness instead.

John K Clark:
Even at a cutting edge place like the Extropian List your conventional ideas
that you are an object and atoms give you individuality are agreed with by
the majority of list members, and in the general population a similar naïve
world view is shared by 99% of the people in our culture. And 99% are wrong.

That's not my view at all. Atoms certainly don't give you individuality and neither 
does memory. It's the trajectory of your mind hardware in time and space that 
actually gives you individuality. That view is actually too "cutting edge" even for 
most transhumanists.


> What you feel is a copy's illusion.

John K Clark:
But you said it yourself, "you feel". And there is nothing wrong with
illusions, they are a perfectly reputable subjective experience. And there
is nothing wrong with copies either.

But the problem is that only some other person of your *type*, not your original 
*instance*, would feel that illusion. It's perfectly alright for you to think that 
subjective experience of your original instance will magically reappear once you 
get revived but it's simply not true.

> Anytime mind process stops running a person dies.

So I guess if you ever need major surgery you would refuse a general
anesthetic. What would you do, tell the surgeons to cut quickly and just
bight down on a stick? After all, under a general anesthetic there is no
mind, your brain is no more conscious than your liver.

   John K Clark

It's going to be very hard for people to accept the fact that anytime their mind 
stops they die. It's counterintuitive and that's why people reject this view 
automatically. For years it was that same inability to overcome that instinct that 
prevented me from extrapolating the theory to its logical conclusion. But once you 
accept that a person dies when his mind process stops I guarantee you that you can 
find not a single paradox that could make this logic break down.

S.