[ExI] What should survive and why?

[Eugen Leitl]

On Thu, May 03, 2007 at 07:38:31AM -0700, Lee Corbin wrote:

> Notions such as "maybe we die every instant" or "maybe we die
> whenever our EEGs go flat", are misconceived, and very harmful

But this is precisely what Slawomir is saying. Flat EEG lacunes
are literally death, to him.

> for understanding.  Let's get serious!  You can't get out of paradoxes
> by making up definitions!

People have been known to produce paradoxes by sticking to the
wrong kinds of definitions.
 
> 
> > That would mean that you could have a test and be informed that, even though you don't realise it, you died in the last hour (with 
> > the appropriate adjustment to the pronouns that that would entail).
> <
> 
> Why isn't that *theoretically* possible?  Why isn't it *possible*
> that this could have happened?  I can imagine being suddenly

It is possible, but it is relatively demanding technically, and
it would be a pointless prank practically.

> shown overwhelming evidence including video tapes of Lee's
> behavior over the last weeks---how in some ways it resembled
> how I act today and in some ways not, and have to conclude
> that by some TREMENDOUS agency beyond our present
> unassisted human ability, the old Lee had indeed been replaced

You can say that again.

> by *me*.  (One easy way is to show that Lee actually commited

Which means you're a synthetic, brand-new person. Perhaps only
loosely modelled upon the orignal Lee, if at all. Making up new
people from scratch is not very easy.

> moral crimes of which I am incapable.)

Endless fun ensues when you're to prove that to the judge.
 
> I agree that in all *practical* situations that have come up, and
> will even come up in teleportation and uploading, you are entirely
> correct.  We need to nail down the thing that, as you say, people
> have traditionally been worrying about.  That's why Heartland
> is out to lunch entertaining conjectures that an EEG going flat
> for a tenth of a second is *necessarily* death, just because his
> arcane definition says it is.  Clearly, we cannot treat life and death

I'm glad we're on the same page here.

> as 1 and 0, as well you and I already know.

For some reason, many still subscribe to the boolean notion of identity.

-- 
Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://leitl.org">leitl</a> http://leitl.org
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