[ExI] Destructive uploading.

[Stefano Vaj]

2011/9/3 john clark <jonkc at bellsouth.net>
> What's proposed is the emulation of what we fear loosing when we die, not our left kneecap but our intelligence, our memories and our emotional behavior.

2011/9/3 G. Livick <glivick at sbcglobal.net>
> Going on to assume the central dogma, there is a dilemma that arises with uploading, made the more interesting if the process is not destructive; which mind contains the individual identity that goes forward, if the upload goes onto two computers at the same time?

What we really "fear losing when we die" is not our "intelligence"
(say, somebody else's ability to make use of our neurons to add
integers...)  but our personal identity. Now, identity is not a
"thing", it is just an evolutionary artifact. This is most obvious
when speaking of collective (eg, "national") identities, but it is by
no means different for individual ones.

Mind, I am not saying that we should not care (by the way, I am also
jealous of my ethnocultural identity and I have a deep emotional
involvement in its destiny). Only, we should not think of it in
"essentialist" terms. Rather, we should be aware of what we are
speaking of here is a "gene whisper" which is or is not accomodated by
such scenarios depending on the metaphors we choose to adopt to
"comprehend" them.

Therefore, the question of where the individual "continues" in a
double, or non-destructive, uploading does not have any real meaning.
You have a string of consistent phenomena where in one's entity stead
you end up finding two, immediately diverging and both experiencing
perfect continuity across the process. Exactly in the same fashion of,
say, individuals multiplying every Planck's time unit in Everett's
multiple universe quantum mechanics interpretation.

--
Stefano Vaj