[ExI] Destructive uploading.

[Adrian Tymes]

2011/9/2 john clark <jonkc at bellsouth.net>

> On *Fri, 9/2/11, Adrian Tymes <atymes at gmail.com>* wrote:
>
> "The original what?"
>
> "The biological pattern"
>
> The biological pattern of an animal is the ordered arrangement of cells,
> and the biological pattern of a cell is the structural framework of a system
> of atoms; so biological pattern is a function of information on where to
> place things.
>
> Information can be duplicated, information can be uploaded, and its
> meaningless to talk about an original bit of information.


What's proposed to be emulated is the intelligence, not necessarily the
animal
itself.  Further, an emulation of a thing is, by definition, not actually
the thing
that is being emulated - even if a single identity may span from original to
emulation, and even if the instances are identified by the same name.

Thus, the silicon and wires that run the informational pattern are not the
same
as the biological network that originally ran that same informational
pattern.
"The original", in this case, refers to that biological network, which is
replaced
by the silicon and wires - even if the informational pattern is maintained
during
the transition from one to the other.


> what's so original about this mythical beast called "The Original" if every
> single bit of it has been replaced many many times? I have asked this
> question often over the last decade on this list but have never once
> received a straight answer or even the hint of one.
>
>
It is akin to a forest.  What is a forest, if not the combination of all the
trees
within?  But what if every tree is, one by one, replaced - is it the same
forest?

More practically, what about a ship, whose every part is replaced - again,
one
by one - over decades?  Almost all people will identify it as the "same"
ship.

You argue for and perceive a three dimensional snapshot.  This is where you
err.  This is why you are frustrated: you insist that these things are only
that
which exists in one moment in time - but they are not.  They exist in all
four
dimensions.  They are collections of things *and* their coherence through
time,
which allows the parts to be gradually replaced - and, by the same token,
does
not allow all the parts to be replaced at once.
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