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

[John K Clark]

"Lee Corbin" <lcorbin at rawbw.com>

> Would not Heartland instantly agree that each second he loses and gains
> billions of atoms?

Ask him. I'm the one who first brought up that point but I never got a
coherent response from him over it.

> Who, besides you, gives a ---- about your subjective experience?

Nobody, but you care about your subjective experience and want it to
continue, that's why you jump out of the way when a car is coming toward
you. And I believe the missing word is "fuck".

Me:
>>what matters to you is not continuity of process but continuity of atoms;

You:
>I still don't understand why you persist in making this claim.

Even Heartland admits that you could stop a mind and then start it up again
there would be no way for it to know anything had happened unless it could
observe the outside world. There would be continuity of the subjective
process, however Heartland insists that is not important, that is to say
subjective experience is not important to subjectivity, the important thing
is that the atom's behavior has not been continuous. And that is why he is
High Priest of the Unique Atom and Sacred Original Cult.

> BUT  ISN'T  IT  PATENTLY  WRONG  TO  KEEP
ON  SAYING  THAT  FOR  HIM  IT'S  ALL  ABOUT  ATOMS??

No it is not. For well over a year we exchanged post after post with him
talking about space time trajectories of atoms and Bose Einstein
Condensations trying to convene me that atoms are unique and they somehow
confer that property to human beings. To this day he has not retracted one
word of it. And I'm supposed to pretend that never happened? I don't think
so.

On May 9 2006 I listed 11 very specific objections I had to his ideas, he
never responded.

1) Mr. Heartland says having someone tomorrow who remembers being you today
is not sufficient to conclude you have survived into tomorrow, he says more
is required but he never explains what or why. This leads to rather odd
conclusions, like anesthesia is equivalent to death and you may have died
yesterday and not even know it. Mr. Hartland thinks your subjectivity is an
"illusion" (illusions are a subjective phenomena by the way) created by a
copy of you, Mr. Hartland says he hates this and thinks it is a great
tragedy, but even if true he never explains why this is supposed to be
upsetting.

2) Mr. Heartland says atoms are what makes us unique, but he ignores the
fact that our atoms get recycled every few weeks.

3) Mr. Heartland says atoms are what makes us unique,  but science can find
no difference between one atom and another. Mr. Heartland points out, quite
correctly, that subjectivity and consciousness are what we should be
concerned about, but then he says particular atoms are what makes our
consciousness unique. It's true that the scientific method can not
investigate consciousness directly so nobody will ever be able to prove the
idea is wrong, nobody will ever prove that there isn't a difference between
atoms that the scientific method can't detect, but theologians since the
middle ages have been making the exact same argument about the existence of
the human soul. It seems a little too pat that the only difference between
atoms is something the scientific method can not see but nevertheless is of
profound astronomical importance, it's just like saying atoms have souls.

4) Mr. Heartland says the history (or if you want to sound scientific brainy
and cool "the space time trajectory") of atoms are what makes atoms unique;
but many atoms have no history and even for those that do it is not
permanent, the entire record of an atom's past exploits can be erased from
the universe and it's not difficult to do. This is not theory, this has been
proven in the lab and any theory that just ignores that fact can not be
called scientific.

5) Mr. Heartland insists his theory is consistent and logically rigorous but
he is unwilling or unable to answer the simplest questions about it, like is
A the original or B. Instead Mr. Heartland thinks informing us that A=A and
B=B is sufficient.

6) Several times Mr. Heartland informed us that location is vital in
determining which mind is which, but he never explained why because mind by
itself can never determine it's location. Also Mr. Heartland never explains
the position relative to what as we've known for over a century that
absolute position is meaningless.

7) Mr. Heartland, wrote "This "self" concept is too overrated in a sense
that it has no influence over whether my subjective experience exists or
not" and then he wrote "My copy" is not me". This would seem to belie Mr.
Heartland's claim of rigorous logical consistency.

8) Mr. Heartland wrote "Mind is not a brain" and he was absolutely correct
about that, but when I asked him if mind is more like a brick or more like a
symphony he said mind "is definitely more like a brick, a 4-D object". This
would seem to belie Mr. Heartland's claim of rigorous logical consistency.

9) As noted above Mr. Heartland thinks mind is a "4-D mind object", but he
is unable on unwilling to give the  4-D coordinates of  the vital things the
constitute mind, like fun or red or fast or logic or love or fear or the
number eleven or my memory of yesterday.

10) Mr. Heartland wrote "creation of two identical brains, like writing
identical number types "1" twice, would produce two separate instances of
the same brain type" but if so he never explained why two calculators that
add 2 +2 would not produce answers that were profoundly different; and if
they are profoundly different he never explained how it is possible to do
science.

11) Mr. Heartland insists that if two CD's are synchronized and playing the
same symphony then two symphonies are playing, but a CD is just a number
thus there must be profound differences even between the same number, and 9
is not equal to 9. If true Mr. Heartland is unable to explain how it is
nevertheless possible to do science.

  John K Clark