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

[Heartland]

> 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.

Jef:
> 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.

Jef, I can report back to you that this frustration is mutual. I feel that whenever 
I write X, you read G; I write Y, you read C (and keep insisting I support G and 
C). I'll quickly add that, IMO, this is probably an honest mistake. In any case, 
when you say that, "I can state your point back to you, perhaps more concisely than 
you can state it yourself" you're assuming unbelievably high degree of confidence 
in your correct understanding of what I'm saying, and I must tell you that the 
longer we talk to each other the more I realize that this high confidence that you 
display is unwarranted. When you tell me that I don't understand your point, I tend 
to accept that as sufficient evidence that I don't understand what you're saying. 
And if I tell you that you don't understand what I'm talking about, perhaps it 
would be a good idea to treat this as evidence that you don't understand. It's just 
a suggestion. It's hard to achieve progress in any discussion when people fail to 
realize what they argue about in the first place.

Jef:
> 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.

First of all, "personal identity" is a bit of a red herring. Ultimately I'm 
interested in defining life and necessary conditions to extend life which is at 
least one meta-level above discussions about personal identity. Second of all, I 
fear that someone might read "physical constituents" and think "atoms" (J.K.Clark) 
instead of "energy across space and time."

So a less misleading message should be: "Life is an *instance* of process. It 
exists for the duration of that instance. Subsequent instantiations of the same 
*type* of process do not extend existence of previous instances."

Jef:
> 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.

That part is fine.

Slawomir