[ExI] What should survive and why?

Lee Corbin lcorbin at rawbw.com
Thu May 3 15:22:35 UTC 2007


Heartland writes

>> Yikes!  Are you kidding?  I would "estimate" that maybe around
>> age 17 the legal entity known as Lee Corbin had 50% of the
>> core memories that make me who I am.  To be summarily
>> replaced by a 17-year old version of me would be, in my calculus,
>> like dying by about one-half.  From "moment to moment" is a
>> very rough period of time, but the idea is that I should remain
>> very much the same person for years and years.
> 
> The rules of this calculus are all arbitrary, subjective (thus unverifiable) and
> messy.

Of course.  But they're the best I have when between Scylla and Charybdis.
On the one hand, I'm confident I'm the same person I was last month, and
on the other, I am not the same person I was at age 2.  So, while obviously
a gradual process, I *clearly* was intermediate somewhere when I was 17.

>  I really don't know why you keep asserting there is such a thing as
> "degree of death," and implying this assumption is unassailable. My usual
> response to such statements is, "Can you be little pregnant too?"

No, you cannot be a little bit pregnant.  But do you really believe
that there was a *point* in time, an exact second, in which you
became alive?  How could that possibly be??????????
Why do you refuse to accept that it's on a continuum? 
It's driving you to say silly things like

> Of course there are. Life and death *is* like 1 and 0. There's no such thing as
> "degree of life" either. A small flame or an inferno is still fire.

Until we get past this point, there is no point in further discussions with
you about this topic.  Sorry---I have enjoyed it, and thanks.

Lee




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