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

[Stathis Papaioannou]

On 03/05/07, Lee Corbin <lcorbin at rawbw.com> wrote:
>
> John writes
>
> > That pretty much sums up the absurdity of [Heartland's] position, the
> idea that I
> > need objective proof in order for me to believe I am having a subject
> > experience.
>
> Here I have to agree with Heartland a little more than I agree with
> you:  Yes, you have to believe in your subjective experience as real,
> and indeed, the most real thing that there is. But you may be
> simply mistaken about the way that things *seem* to you subjectively.
> It may be that you are *not* the same John Clark as the world knew
> yesterday.  You're clever enough that I don't need to spell that out
> in a thought experiment.
>
> So subjectivity---just as he says---is a quite *useless* social concept,
> quite useless to throw around in intelligent discussion with other people
> who have no access to your subjectivity.  Hell, for all I know, John
> Clark may be a Giant Lookup Table and not be conscious at all!  I
> am the only thing in the universe that I know for sure is conscious,
> although it would be stupid to bet against other people being so.


The main reason you are interested in objective facts about yourself is so
that your subjective experiences can continue in the same manner as they
always have. It wouldn't be very good if you objectively behaved like Lee
but in fact were a zombie (assuming such a thing is possible). On the other
hand, it wouldn't be so bad if your subjective experience survived in a rich
virtual reality environment, encoded in such a way that no external observer
could prove that it was in fact you.

-- 
Stathis Papaioannou
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