[extropy-chat] Cryonics and uploading

[John K Clark]

Heartland" <velvethum at hotmail.com>

> Mind process continues during sleep.

Brain process continues in deep sleep but not mind. Much of what brain cells
do has nothing to with mind, like any other cell its first duty is to just
stay alive through basic metabolism.

> what the copy thinks it is doesn't influence the objective truth of what
> it is

But subjectivity is far more important than objectivity, if subjectively I'm
alive that's all I need or want; if objectivity says I'm dead or I'm not me
or some other damn silly thing then objectivity can take its "truth" and
stick it where the sun don't shine. I don't care.

>  Okay, I had no right to be so confident that my original has survived.
> Does that prove that pattern view is correct?

I'll tell you what it does prove, your ideas are insane. I'm sorry but there
is just no other word to describe someone who doesn't know if they have
survived or not.

>  Only the trajectory log will show you who's who.

The trajectory of what? All your atoms get recycled every month or so. And I
don't give a hoot in hell who's atoms are who's anyway; if you've seen one
atom you've seen them all. I care about who's mind is who's and that has no
space time trajectory (or to put it in less pompous language, no time or
place)

>  What that process cannot do is to erase that trajectory from
> history.

You are quite wrong about that, when atoms form a Bose Einstein Condensation
the atoms individuality is lost. Before you had a billion atoms, a billion
things, a billion quantum wave functions; when the condensate is formed you
only have one thing and one quantum wave function. When you warm it up again
the atoms come back but it is imposable even in theory to know which atom is
which, the information about their individual history has been erased from
the universe and there is no way to get it back, at least as far as we know.
I suppose you could say maybe someday we'll discover new physics and find a
way to retrieve the information, but conjuring new physics is an act of
desperation, my ideas need no new physics. And in fact I don't much care
what the history of atoms are, I'm more interested in mind.

>  Sorry for bringing up the old cliché but the map isn't territory.

And I'm sorry for bringing this up but for some reason you keep sending me
the map of you Email but not the territory, it's no wonder you haven't
convinced me. Next time send the territory too, perhaps you could include it
as an attachment.

> You and Ben seem to think that computer code is equivalent to the process
> (activity of matter in space and time) of running the code. They are not
> even remotely equivalent.

Both your computer and mine ran code that produced your latest Email message
on a screen, but now you say what I read was not even remotely equivalent to
the message on your computer. Not even remotely? Well, that's going to make
it rather difficult to continue this debate.

  John K Clark