[extropy-chat] What should survive and why?

[Lee Corbin]

Stathis writes

> On 01/05/07, Lee Corbin <lcorbin at rawbw.com> wrote:

> > > After all, mind uploading involves teaching a computer to believe
> > > it is you, and the computer ostensibly has less in common with
> > > you than you have in common with a madman.
> >
> > Well---if that is going to be the case, [then] I do not want to be uploaded, 
> > because it would not constitute survival.  A [genuine] upload machine
> > would [should] not need God-like knowledge of what to fiendishly include
> > (just enough to fool people) and what to omit. [In practice] I would settle
> > for a fairly mechanical process that made an electronic version of me that
> > passed insofar as everyone I know.
> 
> I don't really understand your objection here. Taking a general
> purpose computer and programming it to be Lee is equivalent
> to taking some person off the street, wiping his mind, and
> programming him to be Lee, isn't it? Whether these procedures
> are technically possible is a separate question. 

Now that, I agree with, provided that those processes capture all
my memories. What I object to is someone just using the criterion
"Well, lessee, it claims to be Lee, it passes some cheap tests that
aren't very thorough, and we believe that it's telling the truth when
it says it remembers being Lee.  So okay, it's Lee.  If someone now
shows us evidence that in *reality* it only has enough of Lee's
memories to superficially resemble Lee enough to fool people,
and that in *actuality* huge amounts of Lee are missing---well,
that don't matter none.  It's still Lee because (a) it remembers
being Lee (b) it claims to remember---and on some of the things
we can check really does remember---all Lee's shit,  so the
subjectivity requirement is satisfied. Case closed."

You see that that "subjectivity requirement" is quite vapid?
Even irrelevant?  Besides, being a "subjectivity" requirement
is on the face of it immeasurable and highly suspicious
anyway.  I won't settle for anything less---when they haul
out the uploading apparatus---than a well-nigh invincible
guarantee that *all* my memories (or---okay, 99.99999%
of them) will be captured by the process.  No "subjectivity"
requirement is acceptable to me.

> > To summarize, I disagree with your extra or alternative criterion
> > expressed in your remarks to Heartland: 
> > 
> > > Because that's how people define survival, as in not dying. If someone
> > > did claim that sleep was death, the response would be, "No, I went to
> > > sleep last night, and I don't feel dead; so whatever evidence you show 
> > > suggesting that everyone does die when they fall asleep, that just means
> > > your definition of death is wrong,
> > 
> > Don't you agree that in truth that would be an inadequate response?
> > Would it not---as you wrote to me later---have to be accompanied 
> > by better evidence than that, namely objective knowledge that the
> > memories of the yesterday person were incredibly similar to the
> > today person (as in actual fact in daily life they really are)?
> 
> The objective evidence would rapidly impinge on the subjective evidence,
> if the two did not match. If everyone recognised you, things were in the
> same place you put them yesterday, letters you wrote years ago are as
> you remember them, and so on, then you can say you have survived.

Well, if *everything* along those lines works as you say, then yes. But
this is hardly the "subjectivity" requirement that I thought that you and
John Clark were pressing on  Heartland. After all, the new being
that is supposed to be me  may artificially suddenly "remember" old 
letters I wrote, as sometimes in dreams we seem to remember having
seen absurd situations before, or we are not startled by clearly bizarre
things.  Just because this imposter claims to be me and says he remembers
every old artifact of mine that you show him is not sufficient.  We need
objective evidence that he has all my old memories.

> I think this much would be evident within moments of waking up.

And I say that the new creature may be deluding himself as well as you.

> The alternative situation is to have memories removed and false
> memories implanted while you are asleep. If this were to happen
> to a sufficient extent tonight, then it would be equivalent to death.

Yes, of course.

> So you could physically die but survive mentally, or physically
> survive but die mentally. It doesn't matter what happens to your
> body as long as your mind continues. 

That much is right.  But it has to be the real McCoy.

Lee