[extropy-chat] Just curious, it's not natural!

[Lee Corbin]

Robert writes

> On 10/31/06, Lee Corbin <lcorbin at rawbw.com> wrote:
>
> > But what happened to *me* in there?   I'm more than my memes, pal.
> > Don't forget my memories.

> Well memories are memes and at least some of them are essential
> components of the survival and reproduction processes.

Memories are memes???  That does violence to the concept so far
as I understand it.  Memories are more like raw data; for one thing,
they're very seldom contagious.  Beliefs are something else, and
are indeed memetic.

> > That's me, maybe.  I don't want to "become", especially if the end 
> > product is not me.  I would rather "are".  As you put it.

> Then you will be fighting a continual and probably eventually lose the battle.

Exactly!  And I vastly prefer not being dead!  I'm already dead almost
everywhere, dead on Mars, dead on Pluto, dead in Australia, Texas, 
and more places than I can name.  And it's no fun at all being dead in
those places, I can tell you.   Simplyh, it's definitely of no benefit to one
whatsoever to be dead anywhere or at any time.

> I have yet to see a strategy that guarantees avoidance of the external
> hazard function.

I've mentioned one on this list more times than I can remember, sigh.

Once the technology is in place, all one has to do is to make sure that
previous versions of one get adequate runtime.  If we had a benevolent
singularity tomorrow, I would request that new LC2006 versions be
spawned every so often.   That way, none of them (including this one)
can logically look forward to never being alive again (pace Heartland
and others who can't abide other instances being oneself).

> For many the  breaking point will be the decisions involving when and
> how to upload.  For others it may be managing the "self"-collective
> after uploading.  The problem is deciding when losing some part of
> oneself (some genes, reproduction behaviors, ones tribe, some ideas,
> etc.) constitutes "no longer surviving".

Yes, but again, there is a simple solution!  As I described above!

> For some it involves the "destruction" of memes derived from very
> old books programmed into them before they ever learned how
> to *think* about them. 

Honestly, it sounds to me as though you are still wedded, though hidden
at a deeper level, to the same notion:   that that other thing over there
cannot be me.  Fully me.  Provably me.    But YES IT CAN:

So you get your cake and get to eat it too:  just run another, earlier copy
of yourself who's still looking forward to eating the cake.  It's really you.
Physically you.  Provably you.

Lee