[ExI] Uploading and selfhood

ben benboc at lineone.net
Mon Mar 31 22:31:32 UTC 2008


Damien wrote:

> (b) will you be convinced that the mapping over there is you, so that
> you'd now be very relaxed about being obliterated, whichever one you are?



"So that"?

Well, no! The one thing doesn't imply the other, no way!

Why would being convinced that the "mapping over there" is you, lead to
being relaxed about the other you, over here,  being obliterated? This
makes no sense (to me. See below).

I don't see why people who make statements like this think they are 
saying something reasonable. "If you get copied EXACTLY, then one of the 
copies won't mind being killed" !?!?!

Why on earth would anyone think this?

I do think that an identical copy of my mind would be me, ('a me', if
you like), and i'm sure that none of the me's would be happy (or
relaxed, or indifferent) to be killed.

I remember reading a short story in which people start committing
suicide after the discovery that the multiple-worlds interpretation is
in fact true, and everyone has an infinite number of versions of them in
an infinite number of universes. I also remember thinking that this
story _makes no sense_. Would YOU commit suicide just because you knew
for a fact that there was another you somewhere? It's just a daft idea.

This whole thing has had me puzzled for a while, and i've come to the
conclusion that the various people who take part in these arguments
don't necessarily disagree as much as it seems. I think that they simply
don't understand each other.

It seems that the concepts involved are inherently confusing, and so
when i say that an exact copy of me is me in every way, someone else who
hears that, understands something different to what i understand by it.
Possibly some of this is due to the Dualist vs. Materialist
polarisation, but i think that there's more to it than that (despite the
fact that some people who claim to be materialists turn out to be
'crypto-dualists', as though they don't really 'get' what materialism
actually is).

I know that this is a tired old subject for this list, but i think it
bears saying that maybe we have a situation like two
differently-colourblind people discussing a painting. They both look at
the same object but they're actually seeing two different things.

ben zaiboc




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