[ExI] What should survive and why?

[Lee Corbin]

Stathis writes

> On 04/05/07, Lee Corbin <lcorbin at rawbw.com> wrote:
> 
> > Again, one could be shown some videos that would make one
> > doubt that he was the same person he was even an hour ago, or 
> > a few minutes ago.  Do you agree with this:
> > 
> >        Were objective scientific means of measuring approximately
> >        how much memory change was going on, then we would
> >        be the same person from moment to moment if and only if 
> >        the objective facts were that our memories had undergone
> >        only the usual small quotidian changes to which we are
> >        accustomed to (or we think we are familiar with) in daily life.
> 
> One would like the objective and the subjective evidence to match up,
> but if they don't, what basis is there for choosing one over the other?
> If your brain has been tampered with as expertly as you propose isn't
> it also possible that the objective evidence in the form of video tapes,
> other peoples' testimonials and so on, has also been tampered with? 

We are fast approaching the problem you describe in the courtroom.
These days, just how reliable can pictures (and soon videos) be?
The solution---advocated by David Brin, I believe---is that testimony
from real, live, 3D people must be provided, or at least via networks of
reliability.

Believability then becomes a matter of Bayesian statistics, sort of like
it always has been  :-)   

*Assuming* that right now your brain is not being tampered with, and
*assuming* that you are not living in a temporary simulation, then it
is possible to gingerly reach out and begin establishing reliability 
footholds. We do it in science all the time, for example, say, in gathering
astronomical data. And so did they who first dared to try to quantify
"hot" and "cold" on a linear scale.

They had to constantly go back and forth between the objective and
subjective, until things began falling into place, and they could begin
building instruments more reliable than their own senses. 

So it could turn out with brain science. We now postulate that we
are conscious, and that the higher animals are also, presumably,
conscious, but not quite at the human level. Already comparisons
between subjective accounts and objective brain scans are made
by researchers. And so forth.

So we assume when describing thought experiments, that the reality
is as we describe it in the hypothesis. Remembering that nothing can
be certain, that knowledge is always conjectural and contingent, we
proceed slowly but surely.

Lee