[extropy-chat] Personal Identity Bis

[Lee Corbin]

Excuse moi for butting in, but I may be misunderstanding something in
the arguments here.  It sounds as though several people are criticizing 
Heartland for claiming that "dead people are walking around".  I 
thought that his claim was merely that when you bring someone back
from a flat EEG, or you teleport them, or you restore them from
back up, hardly being zombies they're merely *different* people
that those who died.

This is similar to the refusal of several people on this list---who otherwise
would not agree with Heartland in the least---to teleport. They are
materialists in every other respect: cryonics is fine, for example. But
the destructive property of teleportation, to them, kills someone and
replaces him with an entity who only *believes* that he was the 
original. (Of course I heartily dispute this myself.)

I know how these people (who I disagree) with feel.  They feel about
teleporters and revived patients the way that I feel about insane
asylum patients who've studied every detail of Napoleon's life,
and through some separate mechanism have become persuaded 
that they are the very same person as Napoleon.  I claim that with
present technology, it is simpy false that any such preparation can
truly bring the big N back to life. 

(Later, of course, nearer the Omega point, it may indeed be possible
to bring him and everyone else back to life, for the reasons that Tipler
and many others of us give, notwithstanding the objections of many
other people.)

Lee