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

[Lee Corbin]

To defend John Clark (who needs defending about as much as
a sting ray needs a BB gun), I must comment on Randall's remarks.

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Randall Randall" <randall at randallsquared.com>
Sent: Friday, April 27, 2007 12:30 PM

> It is, after all, your position that two instances of John
> Clark with completely different histories can somehow
> share identity, not his.

Completely different?  Completely different histories? 
To me that sounds as though there is very little memory
overlap. Now Tom Delay and I have completely different
histories, not John and a very recent copy of John.

Now, yes, John (I think) (and certainly I ) believes that 
people can have slightly different *recent* histories
and still be the same person. That is, I mean literally
that I and my recent duplicate share the same self. My
duplicate objectively has all the things about me that
I want to preserve. So if this one (pinches cheek)
dies and that instance of me over there lives, then I
still wake up tomorrow morning, not someone else
masquerading as me. I even look forward to waking
up tomorrow in this case, just as much as I would if
no harm was to come to this instance.

> What else but a soul could explain this psychic linkage
> which makes them the same person, as you assert?

It's not a psychic linkage at all.  There aren't such things
so far as we know. The linkage is similarity of structure
to an extraordinary degree.

> Now, it's clear to me that you don't really think
> that there's a soul.  You're just using the word
> "person" to mean "type of instance",

Right.

> in the same way that two copies of _The Spike_ are
> often said loosely [sic] to be the "same book".

Loosely?  That *is* the common way of speaking, and
if I say that my fiancee and I found upon meeting that
we had read the same book, no one would suppose
that we merely read the same particular copy.

The book analogy is pretty good actually.

Lee