[ExI] Coherent vs. Incoherent Fears of Being Uploaded

[Stefano Vaj]

2010/1/18 Lee Corbin <lcorbin at rawbw.com>:
> The central question, of course, is whether one would
> *survive* the uploading process.

I am under the impression that this betrays a more general fear which
probably originates from the inapplicability of evolution-encoded
reactions to novel scenarios.

For instance, does one survive entire material destruction? The
evolution-encoded answer to that, by extension from massive bodily
harm leading to death, is "obviously not", irrespective of various
consolatory religious theories to the contrary.

But what about teleport? The truth is that the death of the original
individual and the birth of a copy, or the continued existence of the
former, are both plausible ways of describing an hypothetical event
the nature of which does not change in the least depending on our view
thereof.

Another classical Gedankenexperiment: what about an operation where my
neurons are replaced one by one by other, functionally equivalent,...
carbon-based neurons, until none remains? Do I die? And when?

This is why I think that the curious idea that the interesting thing
in organic brains would not be the kind of information processing they
perform and their performance in such task, but some other, undefined
and elusive, quality, is a matter of fear which cannot be overcome
with rational argument.

-- 
Stefano Vaj