[extropy-chat] Probability of identity - solution?

Heartland velvethum at hotmail.com
Sat Oct 14 20:11:00 UTC 2006


> Rafal writes
>> ### Lee, we [happen to] agree in our respective definitions of self (i.e.
>> "Rafal"
>> and "Lee") but I don't agree with you that only our brand of definition is in
>> some
>> rigorous way objectively correct.

Lee Corbin:
> However, for what constitutes a *person* in our daily usage, we do have something
> pretty close to "objectively correct".  If someone claims to be Napoleon, he is
> simply wrong, and if ten days from now I claim not to be Lee Corbin, then either
> I
> am objectively wrong or I have undergone extensive brain damage.

Anything that is not an integral part of Y is not Y. So yes, there exists an
objectively correct (no quotes) way to determine whether person A is/isn't person
B.

Lee Corbin:
> We are discussing to what extent a duplicate is you. Opinions do differ.
> But in my opinion, it is simply erroneous to contend that you are not
> the same person today as you were yesterday just because someone
> made a duplicate of you while you slept and killed the original. That's
> simply wrong.

Well, the reason why a duplicate isn't the original is because the duplicate
doesn't extend the original's ability to access reality after original is dead.

To put it in the context of your story, "Pit and duplicate," Yevgeny in the pit
will always stay in the pit. He will never see the city again because his ability
to process reality is stuck in the chunk of matter that is, in turn, stuck in the
pit, and will not be extended beyond the pit by those Yevgenys who reached the
city. In reality, the paradox of "the same" Yevgeny inside and outside of the pit
does not exist because it is logically impossible for two separate and unconnected
chunks of matter to implement a single entity. Yevgeny inside the pit does not
survive by virtue of other people continuing to exist outside of the pit.

Lee Corbin:
> I'm fond of how I described it a few days ago:
>
>      In the end, it matters whether one embraces most closely a higher
>      level concept of who you are (your values, your beliefs, your
>      memories) or the lower level aspects of who you are (your current
>      sensations, your current moods, and your current thoughts).

That's a good way of looking at it.

S.




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