[ExI] Immortality, Absolute and Potential

[Lee Corbin]

Stuart asks Max one good question:

> Max wrote
> 
>> The second point I would make is this: According to the view of 
>> personal identity that I favor, one individual can exist over very 
>> long periods of time (from a human perspective), even over a 
>> potential infinity. At the same time, that individual can undergo 
>> enormous change (so long as it is continuous rather than disrupting 
>> the essential continuity of self). What interests and matters to an 
>> earlier stage of a person may not interest and matter to a later 
>> stage of the same person. The person may exist throughout a potential 
>> infinity but the person-stage not. That introduces another reason for 
>> a potentially infinitely-long lived person to have a sense of urgency 
>> and time-wasting.
> 
> So you think there might be some sort of gradual replacement of
> identity that may occur in some potentially infinitely long-lived being?

I'd like to see Max's take on that too!

And here is my objection that separates me from Ralph Merkle
and so very, very many people (as testified to by recent 
discussions of PI here).  Namely, about the "enormous change"
that you speak of above---is there no limit to it before we must
conclude that the original person has failed to be immortal, i.e.,
that the original person is "dead"?

My proof is simple:  suppose that over many eons you gradually
adopt all the beliefs that Steven Pinker has, and incidentally also
changes in your values and habits cause them to become identical
to Pinker's. Were these transformation to continue---you may
assume some catastrophes to help it along---to the ultimate point
that you become physically identical with Steven Pinker, then
isn't Max More dead, and aren't there two Steven Pinkers?

So mustn't we conclude that too much change can be dangerous?

Lee