[extropy-chat] Avoid Too Much Change.

[Lee Corbin]

John writes

> "Lee Corbin" <lcorbin at rawbw.com>
> 
>>The phrase "remembers being you"
>> is now, to me, full of hazard and ambiguity.
> 
> Well sure it is, but it's good enough to get the job done. Ambiguous it may
> be but I sort of remember being a thirteen year old John Clark, and that's
> good enough to make me think that boy is not dead.

I doubt that you think that that thirteen year old John Clark being
either alive or dead is like 0 or 1.  Don't you think that it's a matter
of degree?  Surely you do not think that the fetus you once were
is seriously "you".

>> All that is really being postulated is the existence of an IQ 12000 entity
>> who has vivid recall of what happened to me on every day of my life, and
>> what happened to Max More on every day of his life, and, yes, what
>> happened to John Clark on every day of his life.
> 
> Then I've survived, if the 12,000 IQ entity remembers being other people too
> (and I'd be surprised if he didn't) then they've also survived. A 12,000 IQ
> is a lot of horsepower, that's enough to be me and a lot of other people as
> well.

I'm glad you are so consistent; it saves many words. To recap, this being
Isador with his IQ 12,000 and his unbelievably vast erudition has concerns
that you today cannot relate to in the slightest. He spends nothing of his
time thinking at all like you have ever thought.  The very earliest things
that you can remember might as well have happened to another infant,
and the memories later added on into you.  (Note that this is not true
of your high school memories;  if we threw a lot of my high school 
memories into your head, they'd definitely clash with who you are.)

Lee

P.S.  You also have brought up---a couple of times---the evolutionary
argument:

> Perhaps my inability to see a problem is due to my stupidity, perhaps
> it is due to my brilliance,

well   :-)   it might also have more simply to do with you being either
wrong or right

> it doesn't matter; either way my style of thinking is that of
> the future, your style will become extinct in less than a century.

Humans and human thinking might very well indeed be extinct
within a century. The point is still whether them is us.