[extropy-chat] Detectives and red herrings (was Survivaltangent)

[Jef Allbright]

Slawomir wrote:

> I also strongly suspect your motivation for "agency" 
> which is to save "patternism" from failing when considering 
> identity with respect to (changing) patterns over time. That's why
> Things->Body->Brain->Pattern->VBMs->Agency is warranted. Your 
> "agency" 
> Things->Body->Brain->Pattern->VBMs->is just
> another
> layer of abstraction or an "improvement" on top of the heap 
> of "improvements"
> constructed by patternists. Even though I applaud your 
> motivation for "agency" I'm afraid I have to file it under 
> SBA (suicide by abstraction), sorry. I simply can't accept 
> survival as intangible and abstract as this.

Slawomir, once again, we're talking about two different things.  I've
recognized your point all along, and I've demonstrated (with your
agreement) that I can state your point back to you, perhaps more
concisely than you can state it yourself.

My goal in this discussion is not to prove you're right or wrong; such
is not possible even in principle.  My goal is to improve the clarity
and breadth of our thinking on this topic and it's a frustratingly
wasteful (to me) effort to keep sliding back and rehashing the same
rickety old conceptual structures thinly disguised under a coat of new
words.

Let me state (my understanding of) our positions so we all feel clearly
heard, and perhaps to lay a clean solid foundation upon which future
discussion can *grow*.

Slawomir's position:
Survival of one's personal identity is strictly dependent on
continuation of the physical constituents of the mind-producing process.
While some people talk as if they could survive indefinitely by means of
copies of themselves to overcome loss due to aging or accident, they
overlook or deny the simple ontological truth that a copy is, by its
very definition, not the same as the original.

John's position:
Survival of one's personal identity is quite perfectly achievable in
theory, and will become so in practice when we have acquired the
technological means to make an effective working copy of a person's
identity. Neither substrate nor continuity matter in this endeavor, as
long as the process which constitutes one's mind is faithfully
reproduced and running. Copy and Original *are* identical when there is
no measurable functional difference.

Lee's position:
Survival of one's personal identity is absolutely possible in theory and
will become absolutely achievable if and when we have technology
enabling us to run copies of the pattern that constitutes the mind
including (but not necessarily limited to) its values, beliefs and
memories.  While it's an obvious mathematical truism that a copy is
absolutely identical to the original (in all ways that matter) at the
instant of copying, it is also true that values, beliefs and memories
naturally change over time so it is vitally important to survival of
one's personal identity that copies be made before too much change has
accumulated.  Beyond that point, the original person should be
considered effectively lost and dead.

Jef's position:
The Self that one imagines might survive independently of changes in its
environment is an illusion (albeit a convenient one) because the self
exists only in terms of its interactions with its environment. As an
agent acting within a given environmental context, what is best from the
point of view of that agent is not necessarily survival but that it
influences its environment so as to promote its own values into the
future, in effect acting to create a future world matching the model it
would like to see. To the extent that the future world contains an
entity representing Self, then it can be said that Self "survived."  To
the extent that multiple agents represent Self, then it can be said that
they are indeed Self.

Corrections, questions, comments...dirty jokes?

- Jef