[ExI] simulation as an improvement over reality.

[Damien Broderick]

On 1/1/2011 10:34 PM, John Clark wrote:

> No, you are entirely incorrect. Even the original can't distinguish the
> copy from the original, nor can the copy, nor can any other part of the
> universe

John, you keep skittering off into abstractions that have nothing to do 
with the cases that were stipulated. For the seventy-leventh time: the 
question is NOT "will the copy feel as if it's me?" Everyone agrees that 
a good enough copy must by definition feel, think, act like me (until 
our experiences-in-the-world differ sufficiently).

The strongest form of the evaded question remains: if you, here and now, 
have to be destructively scanned in order to build a replica who will 
feel just like you, will you happily agree to dying in order that this 
copy will go on afterwards?

This can be via a Star Trek transporter or through the ablative scanning 
of a vitrified cryonic brain. And the question to answer is: what is MY 
stake in being destroyed in order that HE will be created?

I realize that your extremely reductive scientism will reply that this 
is a meaningless question because all hydrogen atoms are identical, blah 
blah, and I can only gaze at this specious response with astonishment 
and a bit of indignation.

Incidentally, it seems to me likely that your libertarianism might have 
something to do with how you abstract away from any social context to 
your thought experiment. Your spherical cows seem to inhabit a world 
empty of any history, honesty, trust, reliable records, mutual 
observation, any of the practices by which real humans recognize each 
other diachronically and tell each other apart, even if they are 
identical twins whom other people have trouble distinguishing.

Damien Broderick