[extropy-chat] How to be copied into the future?

[Lee Corbin]

Of course in the current debate between Slawomir (Heartland) and Stathis/Eugen
(an ugly combination you don't want to mess with, take it from me) I naturally
and wholeheartedly agree with Stathis & Eugen.  And I have been arguing this
position since 1966, more than forty years now.  I may be a bit prejudiced  :-)

But *one* of the causes that progress is seldom made is that inadequate care
is taken in understanding other people's views. In this case, Stathis and Eugen
riddle their sentences with assumptions that Slawomir cannot possible agree with,
and so those sentences contribute nothing towards understanding, and in fact
succeed only in further frustration.

For example, Stathis writes

>
Suppose God tells you that you either die and are pseudo-resurrected every moment, or you have continuous life of the sort you 
describe. You have to guess which is the case... Say God reveals that this was in fact the case, but offers to give you a week of 
continuous life so you can see how you like it. At the end of the week, you have to admit that it doesn't actually feel any 
different to what continuous death felt like. I imagine that as a matter of principle, you would still express a preference for 
continuous life, but most people would probably say....
<

Can people see the intrinsic flaw in what Stathis is suggesting?  It's the ambiguity of what is meant
in each sentence by the word "you"!   Note that Heartland must read the same paragraph as

>
Suppose God tells you that you either die and are pseudo-resurrected every moment, /* COMMENTED OUT or you have continuous life of 
the sort you describe*/  or there is a succession of totally different people leading the same sort of life as you describe.  /* 
COMMENTED OUT You have to guess which is the case...*/    These different people subsequently have to guess whether they are the 
same person or not.  Say God reveals that this was in fact the case, but offers to give you a week of continuous life so you can see 
how you like it. At the end of the week, you have to admit that it doesn't [TO THE PARTICULAR SLAWOMIR INSTANCE] actually feel any 
different to what continuous death felt like. I imagine that as a matter of principle, [THE LAST PERSON IN THIS SEQUENCE] would 
still express a preference for continuous life, {no, that new Person, having Slawomir's beliefs, would not!}
<

Do you see how you beg the very question that's bothering Slawomir?  This is one reason
that the arguments go around and around without resolution. (Alas, there are other more
general reason that they do, such as the fact that people seldom, seldom change their minds
in real time---it takes at least months, most often years,  for other beliefs to finally sneak in
and supplant wrong ones.)

Eugen makes *exactly* the same mistake:

From: "Eugen Leitl" <eugen at leitl.org>

> I wonder what would happen if we'd anaesthesize [a particular and special
> individual who happens to have Slawomir's memories] in "his" sleep,
> induced a heart arrest and waited a couple minutes after resuscitation.
> Or merely sedated both his hemispheres, making them transiently electrically
> silent (a much softer approach).
>
> Then, after several months and years we'd tell "him"  (I.e. the last person in
> sequence of people who is stuck with the Heartland memories and beliefs).
> What would be [the reaction of this last instance be]?

OF course, the reaction of the last instance---from Heartland's belief system
---would be that he is lucky to be alive and that all those previous unlucky
individuals are totally dead and gone.

Lee

P.S. I believe that Slawomir's concept of these different people---being as
they are somehow independent in their constitutions from their memories---
is identical to a calculus of souls.  Each time a flat EEG is reached, the old
soul is discarded, and a new one instantiated.  After all, there is nothing
*physically* (according to the last three hundred years of science) different
about the resuscitated individual that is of any moment.