<div dir="ltr"><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:comic sans ms,sans-serif;font-size:small;color:#000000"><br></div><div class="gmail_extra"><br><div class="gmail_quote">On Thu, Apr 9, 2015 at 9:00 PM, Stathis Papaioannou <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:stathisp@gmail.com" target="_blank">stathisp@gmail.com</a>></span> wrote:<br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex"><span>On 10 April 2015 at 07:05, William Flynn Wallace <<a href="mailto:foozler83@gmail.com" target="_blank">foozler83@gmail.com</a>> wrote:<br>
><br>
><br>
> On Thu, Apr 9, 2015 at 2:32 PM, Anders Sandberg <<a href="mailto:anders@aleph.se" target="_blank">anders@aleph.se</a>> wrote:<br>
>><br>
>> John Clark <<a href="mailto:johnkclark@gmail.com" target="_blank">johnkclark@gmail.com</a>> , 9/4/2015 6:18 PM:<br>
>><br>
>><br>
>> On Wed, Apr 8, 2015 William Flynn Wallace <<a href="mailto:foozler83@gmail.com" target="_blank">foozler83@gmail.com</a>> wrote:<br>
>><br>
>> > Is there now or will there ever be a perfect hard drive/storage device?<br>
>> > No. Then, no perfect copy.<br>
>><br>
>><br>
>> If perfection is required then "you" become a completely different person<br>
>> every time "you" drink a cup of coffee and the entire idea of personal<br>
>> identity, as well as personal pronouns like "you", become meaningless.<br>
>><br>
>><br>
>> Bateson said "Information is the difference that makes the difference". A<br>
>> lot of questions about whether two things are the same can only be answered<br>
>> by looking at what makes a difference.<br>
>><br>
>> Also, thanks to Shannon's work on coding theory, we know that information<br>
>> can be transmitted down noisy channels in ways that result in it having<br>
>> arbitrarily low probability of being distorted. We do not need perfect hard<br>
>> drives to make storage that doesn't lose a single bit over the history of<br>
>> the universe. RAID for the win.<br>
>><br>
>><br>
>><br>
>> Anders Sandberg, Future of Humanity Institute Philosophy Faculty of Oxford<br>
>> University<br>
><br>
><br>
> Even Mother Nature doesn't make identical twins genetically identical, and<br>
> it does make a difference, though the idea that drinking a cup of coffee<br>
> makes me an entirely different person is a bit over the top, isn't it?<br>
><br>
> <a href="http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/identical-twins-genes-are-not-identical/" target="_blank">http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/identical-twins-genes-are-not-identical/</a><br>
> bill w<br>
<br>
</span>You're different from moment to moment and yet you still feel you are<br>
the same person, so any duplicating device would just have to match<br>
the level of fidelity of ordinary life.<br>
<span><font color="#888888"><br>
--<br>
Stathis Papaioannou<br></font></span></blockquote><div><br><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:comic sans ms,sans-serif;font-size:small;color:rgb(0,0,0);display:inline">I think the idea of 'you can't cross the same river twice' applies here. Any copy of you is a unique slice of time that will never be completely the same again. As for what you feel you are, well, humans are the poorest judges of themselves, as we have found. Can you really say that you will or will not do something until the moment arrives? Sgt. York - pacifist. Experiments show that a person is a poor predictor of what they will or won't do. So many therapies (not to mention Socrates and others) devote tons of time to 'getting to know yourself', 'getting in touch with your inner self' and so on. And that's not to say that the therapies are successful in doing those things. Maybe we are just under the reinforcement contingencies of the therapist. We do like people to agree with us, and so we say and maybe even feel, those things the therapist urges. Is that our 'true' self? Or maybe there isn't one at all. "I would never do that" - wrong. "I wish I'd never done that. That's just not like me." Etc. <br><br></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-family:comic sans ms,sans-serif;font-size:small;color:rgb(0,0,0);display:inline">Bill W<br></div></div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex"><span><font color="#888888">
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