[extropy-chat] Cryonics and uploading

[ben]

Slawomir wrote: "Well, we'll see if that angle makes people realize 
what's going on."


I can tell you exactly what's going on. Crypto-Dualism.

"I can't believe intelligent people still don't get this" is exactly my 
reaction. I can't quite believe that intelligent people are clinging to 
this dualist view. All this talk of 'you' and 'your own life' is a form 
of mysticism. It ignores the fact that 101001101 is IDENTICAL to 
101001101. If a mind and everything in it, including all it's subjective 
opinions and feelings etc., is indeed information (and we know that 
information can be completely represented in a digital form), then thats 
it. That's everything. There is no room left for anything else. At all. 
Hence, the 'you', the 'life', the 'thread' is all in there, all 
information. It's absolutely no good saying "yes, but there's still the 
FLOW of that information, the link to the next brain state, etc.", 
because all that still boils down to information that can be read, 
recorded, and reproduced. The fact that it's rather weird to think of 
there being two of you is irrelevant. It's also weird to think of a 
photon being both a wave and a particle. So what.

Answers to those questions:

(Please fill the copy status for each case with either "is you" or "isn't
you".)

Case 1:
Copy is created, original still exist. Copy status is...
YOU

Case 2:
Copy is created, original brain was destroyed during scanning. Copy status
is...
YOU

Case 3:
Copy is created, original stays around for a while and is then killed. Copy
status is...
YOU!

All You! You=You. Copy You (perfect copy, includes all information 
relevant to a mind) = You. Exactly as a digital copy of "All of You" IS 
"All of You", no matter how many other copies exist. Saying that it's 
just one "All of You" is both true and irrelevant. Any one is completely 
interchangeable with any other, in every respect.

Oh, i give up.

It seems clear that the animists and the patternists here aren't going 
to convince one another of their respective viewpoints. Perhaps we 
should just concentrate on other things, like how an uploading procedure 
could satisfy both. F'rinstance, i suspect that we may crack the issue 
of neural interfacing, enabling more and more comprehensive and powerful 
links between neurons and electronics, and leading to something like 
Moravec's Transmigration, before we solve how to scan, destructively or 
not, an entire brain, then figure out what to do with the resulting 
information.

Any opinions on that?

ben