[ExI] Continuity of experience

[Spencer Campbell]

BillK <pharos at gmail.com>:
> Ohhh. Such difficult questions.........
>
> Try Google
> "clinic seed" henson

Right. Yes. I knew that.

I was... being polite! Yeah, that's it.


Ben Zaiboc <bbenzai at yahoo.com> wrote:
> Indeed.  But we're not concerned with dead and decaying brains, just ones that have been suspended via cryonics or some chemical preservation, etc.
>
> I'd say that such brains aren't currently 'doing mind', because they are not changing state, being unable to, and that when/if they become able to (and assuming no damage has occurred in the meantime), the mind will resume.

I would agree with you if the brain itself was reactivated later on,
or "resurrected" if you prefer, but this is not the case in a classic
uploading scenario. After freezing or plasticization, the brain is
just a block of data. A three-dimensional photograph, describing the
mind to be reconstructed in another medium.

Still I would not be bothered, except for the fact that a multi-clone
scenario is perfectly plausible here. There are many other immortality
gambits in which that is not a possibility, perhaps including a few
that have a hundred-year-plus gap in activity, and in general I don't
have any problem with them.


Ben Zaiboc <bbenzai at yahoo.com>:
> The gap is in the square where nothing changes, not between adjacent squares. If square A has a certain state, and so does square B, but C is in a different state, there is a time gap between entering state A and state C.  Imagine the square B, with no change from A, being carried forward into C,D,E... to the many-multi-gazillionth square, a few years or centuries or millennia, hence.  Then the state changes in the next square, which will be exactly the same as if it were still C.

Ohh, now I get it. Okay. Yes. That is a definite gap in activity.
However, I would not call it a definite gap in mind.

If I have a mind in square A, and square B is identical to square A,
then I also have a mind in square B. Looking at it that way, minds
persist *in spite of* activity more than because of it.

Technically, C has a different mind from A or B. The brain is doing
something different in C. For some reason or another, M makes the leap
from A to B to C, skittering across many different minds over time.


Ben Zaiboc <bbenzai at yahoo.com>:
> If Keith hasn't told you in the meantime:
> http://www.terasemjournals.org/GN0202/henson.html
>
> It's a short story written by him.  Not bad at all, imo.  Part of a larger work called "Standard Gauge":
> http://www.terasemjournals.org/gn0401/kh1.html

Well, joke's on you Ben, I already googled it! Get with the times already.

(Thanks though.)