[extropy-chat] Avoid Too Much Change.

[John K Clark]

"Lee Corbin" <lcorbin at rawbw.com>

> Yes.  Now, would you explain the difference between (A) the Alien granting
> your request and (B) the alien killing you, and then creating an IQ 12,000
> entity that the alien names Isador  which just so happens to have
> incredibly complete biographical information about you?

The difference is that in case (A) there is a living being that remembers
being me, and that's all you could ask for of survival; in case (B) there is
not.

I've been having variations of this debate on this list and elsewhere for
well over a decade and I must admit that yours is the most popular
interpretation, but I confess even after all these years I still don't get
it. What is obvious to most people is clear as mud to me. I have
concluded that one of two things must be true:

1) I have a congenital mental defect, like dyslexia or those people that
can't recognize faces; in my case I am totally blind to a threat to
survival that is very obvious to most people.

2) You and most people see a threat to survival that in fact does not exist.

My point was that it doesn't really matter which of the above two statements
is true, right or wrong in the future people (or Jupiter Brains) with my
viewpoint will vastly outnumber people with yours.

  John K Clark