A view on cryonics (was Re: [extropy-chat] Bad Forecasts!)

Slawomir Paliwoda velvethum at hotmail.com
Sun Sep 19 00:46:22 UTC 2004


> > Now, think of the overall process and all the positions mapped by all
points
> > of matter whose flow in space-time leads to the emergence of a mind.
Unless
> > you find a way to make A and B's matter flow exactly within the same
> > location AND time, I will always be able to verify their identities by
> > investigating A and B's recorded trajectories in space-time.
>
> Aha!  But if you're tracking spacetime coordinates on such an extremely
> fine grain, what you're actually doing is tracking every element of the
> entire computation.  No longer can you point to two different people on
two
> sides of a room, and know complacently that they shall always be distinct
> for they are separate lumps of matter.


Why not? I'm not sure how the last sentence follows from the previous one.
Reading the entries in the log for the positions of all matter flowing as
part of the mind process in space-time is exactly how I'll know the location
of the original.


> In particular, to establish
> continuity, you will need to track chains of causality through that
complex
> skein of computation - not just the fact that an electron was here and
then
> moved there, but the fact that it bumped into another electron which
bumped
> into another electron and so on.


My definition of identity is quite precise, I think, because it defines it
as a uniqueness of a mind process in space-time which means that it focuses
exclusively on the set of processes that are mind processes (as opposed to,
say, computer memory retrieval processes). It already assumes to have all
the knowledge needed to differentiate between mind and non-mind processes. I
imagine this knowledge to include all the causal links of the flow of matter
that leads to the emergence of a mind.

Slawomir



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