[extropy-chat] Cryonics and uploading

[Bret Kulakovich]

On Jan 26, 2006, at 12:14 PM, Russell Wallace wrote:
> You said you subscribe to the view that even a perfect copy is in  
> an important sense not the original; that's the view of identity  
> that I refer to as "the thread view" (I'm open to suggestions from  
> its adherents for a better name - no, "the correct view" will not  
> be accepted ;)).


... its the view of someone who is looking at two identical coffee  
mugs. =)

Let me ask this differently.

We make a perfect copy in every sense of the word, of item A.

How many items are there now?


> The thread view (identity is a verb, a continuing thread of  
> consciousness) and the pattern view (identity is an adjective; as  
> John Clark put it, "I am the way matter behaves when it is  
> organized in a Johnclarkian way") give the same results most of the  
> time; the one scenario that always gets adherents of the two  
> arguing with each other is destructive scan uploading (fine by the  
> pattern view, semelparous suicide by the identity view). (Happily,  
> gradual uploading is a potential way around this problem for the  
> thread view.)

Even if I re-arrange matter in a johnclarkian way twice, is it John  
Clark, or John Clark and another John Clark? Two John Clarks.


Bret K.
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