[ExI] Cryonics a theory or belief?.

[John K Clark]

John Grigg wrote:

> John, your humility about your views is
> nearly overpowering!

Yea, there be some punks out there who is think they is more humble
than me but they don't know nothing, they is conceited next to me!
I am the king of humble, nobody else even come close! I be the
humblest man alive and damn proud of it!

> I'm not so sure people and machines
> with memes like yours will out-compete
> beings with memes like me.  I do like
> the idea of upgrading/copying/uploading myself

Then the uploaded you will realize that he feels just fine and all your
previous fears were unjustified. The uploaded you will now have no reason
not to engage in pedal to the metal upgrading. After a very very long time,
millions perhaps billions of nanoseconds in fact, you will look back at your
old meat self and it will be as if you are looking at a flea. Perhaps you
will be embarrassed by your primitive self and squash it flat, perhaps you
will be amused and treat your old meat self like a pampered pet,
there is no way of knowing what the astronomical intelligence you have
become will do, not even you can know that even though you are the
genesis of that massive super intelligence.

> A century from now I will say to you, "this is my
> mind family, we are pleased to meet you," and
> you will reply with, "I/we are here, greetings.

I think you are a nice fellow and in the very unlikely event that I survive
the Singularity I'd like to think that the above scenario is how I'd treat
the meat being that was once you, but I can't promise it. I really don't
know what I'd do if my mind was a million smarter and a billion times
faster than it is now. And even if I had nothing but benevolence toward
you it would be optimistic to the point of madness to expect that none
of the super minds that abound in that period would not consider you
a nuisance and a waste of recourses and deal with you accordingly.

> The self-circuit has not been permanently
> broken when you go under anesthetic and
> then regain consciousness.

The self circuit, that idiot self circuit that I've heard about for 20
years! You believe in the self circuit, I can only conclude that you agree
with Christian Fundamentalists and you do not believe in Darwin's
Evolution idea, the single best idea, I believe, any human being has ever
had.

You said an exact copy of you would not be you, so something must be
missing, something must be not so exact after all, it can only be this
screwy "self circuit". The "self circuit" coveys no adaptive advantage to
the possessor, all it does (and you admitted your copy looks and acts just
like you) is generate a sense of self, and if something without a sense of
self can look and act just like you then there is no way, absolutely no way,
this mythical  "self circuit" could have evolved. If the "self circuit"
exists then Darwin was wrong, absolutely positively 100% dead wrong.
I do not think Darwin was wrong.

By the way, do you also think your radio needs a "Beethoven circuit"
to play Beethoven?

 J ohn K Clark