[ExI] Yesterday's Mashed Potatoes

[Keith Henson]

On Sat, Apr 19, 2008 at 4:08 PM, Rick Strongitharm <godsdice at gmail.com> wrote:
> I appreciate the input.  I'm not a newbie to this list.  I've followed the
> relevant discussions of "self", "consciousness", uploading, etc. but my
> question was still bouncing around.

That wasn't the way you started this thread.

> Suppose a person is, bit by bit, replaced by prosthetics including his
> brain, hypothetically, of course.  At some point that person would lose
> memory and something that, up to that point has been absolutely subjective.

Here you make an entirely unwarranted assumption which shows you do
not understand information as a concept.  While information has to be
embedded in matter, the particular material is not important.  It the
pattern of information that makes one person different from another,
not the particular atoms.  As a thought experiment, every atom in your
body could be exchange for other atoms and it would make no
difference.  Good prosthetics would be the same.

> I have a number of cool hints to explore from the leads provided in the
> above replies.

These kinds of discussions are either obvious and silly like the above
or they are a complete waste of time because the subjects are
intractable.  Those questions are such total wastes that I kill file
any threads that mention them.

> I have a tremendous amount of respect for the contributers to this list, and
> will find other places to ask questions.

There are extremely serious problems that face us in the very near
future, and even worse ones slightly further out.  I would like to see
more serious discussion, but it doesn't happen very often.

Keith Henson