[extropy-chat] Avoid Too Much Change

[Lee Corbin]

Stathis writes

> > Unless I had guarantees that there'd be storage enough and the
> > ability to run lots of old-fashioned Lees in parallel to all the Lee-Pluses,
> > I'd decline [an offer to upload when the new "me" would be vastly
> > different from me]. The reason that I would decline is that I don't believe
> > in souls, and so cannot see---on scientific grounds---why the new little
> > device that I was supposedly downloaded into would resemble me
> > (or be me) at all.
> 
> The main difference between your scenario and growing up from infancy
> to adulthood seems to be that the latter occurs more slowly.

Well, this is where I differ from most people.  (Just now, I note that
The Avantguardian has made a similar point.)

For me, it's the end state
that counts, not the amount of time it took to get there. Let X be an
entity that has utterly nothing in common with one.  Then a lot of people
don't mind evolving into X provided it's done slowly enough, because
they believe as they step-by-step turn into someone else, their "essence"
is somehow retained.  I guess.  I guess that's what they must
believe, in some form or other.

Even if I finally reveal that X is, say, Max More, they don't seem to think
of this as especially identity threatening.  But if that happened to them,
I claim, then they'd be dead and there would simply be more Max
Mores. What possible difference does it make whether the transformation
was fast or slow?

Lee