[ExI] Technical Uploading Difficulties

Lee Corbin lcorbin at rawbw.com
Sat Mar 8 15:42:01 UTC 2008


Stefano writes (sorry for previous misspellings)

> > But to *emulate* you means that something really is you, just as one
> > operating system may emulate another. I didn't make this distinction
> > above when I first wrote, due to shortage of space.  A successful
> > upload emulates you perfectly, has your thoughts and feelings (or,
> > perhaps the ones you may have tomorrow), and your genuine
> > internal experiences.
> 
> Sure. But I wonder whether after all the simulation in the first sense
> could ever be "perfect",

It need not be perfect, just enough to be me. Consider the set of all
transformations that might be applied to me. "Slapping" (a common
desire on this list), "enriching", "depriving of sleep", "uploading",
"teleporting", and so on and on.  All of those things may change me
a little---but that's okay, I'm still me.  Only if I'm drafted into an army
for five years, or you remove enough of my brain, or do anything else
sufficiently drastic, do I lose my identity and become someone else.

Henrique wrote

> But with an emulation, the uploading proccess is some kind of "make a copy 
> and destroy (probably) the original".

Right.

> Then the uploaded me would not be me. 

Well, quite a few people differ, and as you've gathered, most of us,
even me, are too weary to debate it a whole lot. Sorry. You might
like my story http://www.leecorbin.com/PitAndDuplicate.html
and two essays I have about it. (See below.) But they probably
won't help convince you that a physically identical copy differs
in no way whatsoever from the original. People's views on these
matters always seem pretty entrenched.

First is  Continuity of Identity: The Last Refuge of the Soul
http://www.leecorbin.com/LastRefuge.html

The second is titled, quite confidently "Duplicates are Self: A proof"
http://www.leecorbin.com/dupproof.html

Lee




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