[extropy-chat] the self identity quest

[Jef Allbright]

David wrote:

> I think you, and most transhumanist, 

By the way, I consider myself more a humanist than a transhumanist, but
the difference is subtle.

> would agree that if we could capture reliably the identity 
> critical information, than this information could be uploaded 
> to future conscious artificial intelligence, or even to a 
> clone of the same person that carry this identity, to the 
> outcome that the future entity carrying the same self identity 
> as the original person. To that second phase person I call 
> the info-resurrected person and the claim is that A(original) 
> is survived in B (his duplicate) as long as they both carry 
> the same self identity and that they are not mutually existent.  
> So the critical query here is whether one can really capture now 
> the salient information regarding his self identity?

This idea is familiar within transhumanist and cryonics groups.  It is
mentioned in fiction; Joe Halpern, Greg Egan, Linda Nigata come to mind.
There is also Tipler's version of the "Omega Point" where everyone who
ever lived could be effectively reconstituted via latent information and
near-infinite computational power.  I recall Robert Bradbury (on this
list) and John Smart in the last year talking about how personality
capture might be valuable to the survivors, if not for the deceased.


> According to most reductionist theories of the self including 
> Max More The Diachronic Self, the self or the person just is 
> connectedness, continuity and the right kind of cause. 
> connectedness means the content that connect the different 
> stages or phases of person's life ; continuity means the degree 
> of change between consecutive phases of the same person and the 
> right kind of cause leading from a phase to its consecutive 
> phase. In this line of argumentation, the salient query that 
> remains is whether we can preserve much connectedness between 
> the original and his duplicate? since it is clear that we can 
> never gather all the information about person's life, memories, 
> intrinsic nuances and unconscious material. 

I think many of us here would agree that incomplete information can be
sufficient and that in any case complete information is never
attainable.


> Yet as is clarifies 
> in length in my work in the part on the transformation project 
> see  http://davidishalom1.googlepages.com/home  the very desire 
> and intention to transform, to enhance and ascend oneself in 
> the transhuman future, is in itself a primary connectedness 
> component that more than compensate for some reduction in 
> connectedness, which is inevitable anyway if we want 
> transformation. 

I read your web page some time ago, and again yesterday, but I don't see
how such a "desire and intention" fills in any essential gaps in the
information constituting personal identity. You seem to be saying that
the "desire and intention" specifies a future identity and that it is
that future identity which matter most, but that seems to imply a
convergence of all individuals toward an imagined abstract future
identity.  It seems to me this constitutes less information rather than
more.


> On this line of argumentation we can clearly 
> understand that the salient information regarding our self 
> identity, which holds much of our ideal self and transformation 
> intention, can be personally captured through elaborate 
> procedure that can soon be perfected and see for that  
> W.S. Bainbridge work on personality capture.

I looked at the description of the personality survey program and
thought it might be very interesting to see it used to gather anonymous
results from a large sample population for the purpose of understanding
shared perceptions and values. As a means of extended survival I think
it aims in the right direction but falls short.  Are you sure you mean
it will be "perfected" or do you mean "improved"?


> I do recommend to you Jef and others who really want to check 
> this option of info survival to review carefully my work albeit 
> its imperfection. I am sure you could gather something there. 
> My motivation to spread this notion of info-resurrection comes 
> from my realization that for this procedure to be practical and 
> instrumental, it has to gather some social and memetic spreading. 
> I will be thankful if  you can issue more concrete remarks to be 
> answered.


Thanks David for resubmitting your thoughts here. Now if you could
switch to plain text...?  ;-)

- Jef