[ExI] simulation as an improvement over reality.

[Stathis Papaioannou]

On Thu, Jan 6, 2011 at 2:59 AM, Damien Broderick <thespike at satx.rr.com> wrote:
> On 1/5/2011 6:11 AM, Stathis Papaioannou wrote:
>
>> Although you acknowledge that you still think there is something
>> special about one copy rather than the other, so that one is "you" and
>> the other is not.
>
> The way you choose to express this reveals a confusion. As I've argued
> previously, the original (by definition) is NOT a "copy". It is an instance.
> The copy is also an instance, but it is a copied or emulated instance, not
> the original instance. Does this make any practical or legal or moral
> difference to either of them? That's a judgment call. If it's necessary to
> obliterate or disassemble the original instance in order to transport a
> snapshot of its configuration elsewhere in space or time, then build a copy
> emulating the original's functions, I see no stake for the original in this
> process. You and many others on this list disagree. John Clark tells us he'd
> do it in a heartbeat. Okay. There is a disagreement over what seems
> self-evident and there the discussion has to stop.

The "original" could be defined as being a copy since its composition
and structure changes over time, but you choose not to define it as
such. The reasoning here deserves close analysis. At first glance it
may appear that you consider it self-evident that in ordinary life you
are the original rather than the copy, and therefore that you survive
as the same person from moment. But I think that the actual sequence
of reasoning is as follows: you consider it as self-evident that you
survive as the same person from moment to moment, and therefore
conclude from this that you must be the original and not a copy. So
whatever information is presented to you as evidence you are *not* the
original is dismissed by ad hoc adjustment of the definition of what a
copy is. That is, instead of saying that you survive because a copy
lives on with your mental qualities you prefer to say that since you
self-evidently survive in ordinary life you can't really be a copy.
This would not be so problematic if applied consistently, but it is
not. In the case of destructive teleportation the sequence of
reasoning is reversed: the self-evident belief is that you are a copy,
so it follows that the belief that you have survived must be false.


-- 
Stathis Papaioannou