[extropy-chat] What should survive and why?.

[Stathis Papaioannou]

On 02/05/07, Eugen Leitl <eugen at leitl.org> wrote:

If personhood refers to isomorphisms in the person pattern, of course
> such trajectory segments can belong to the same person. If you define
> personhood by static frames, then every single trajectrory frame
> is a brand new person (an even more extreme view than Slawomir's).


The fact that personhood seems straightforward is just a contingent fact of
the world we evolved in: we are born, grow old and die, and at each point in
time there is only one of us. The situation would be very different if
copying, merging and splitting were commonplace. We would be forced to
define a person by name(s), attributes, timestamp and perhaps a tree diagram
just so that we know to whom we are referring. What this would mean
subjectively for survival, anticipation, responsibility and so on would add
another layer of complexity which our (unmodified) sense of self would
struggle to cope with.

-- 
Stathis Papaioannou
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