[ExI] Destructive uploading.

john clark jonkc at bellsouth.net
Fri Sep 9 16:49:16 UTC 2011


On Fri, 9/9/11, The Avantguardian <avantguardian2020 at yahoo.com> wrote:

"There is an assumption there that identity is a property of matter moving through the system."
Yes.
 "Matter is fungible"
Yes.

"the configuration state of the system"

The word for that is information.

 "is not."

What?? Of course it's fungible! Saving a Word document to your hard disc and then complaining when you retrieve it that its not the same information but only a copy would be as silly as depositing a dollar in a bank and complaining when you withdraw it the next day that its not the same dollar bill. When you sent me your message you did not use the postal service, you did not send me paper or any matter at all, you just sent information and if it wasn't fungible there is no way I could even be discussing it. 

 "In your example, there was something both physical and continuous about you despite the turnover of matter in your body over the year. "

Yes, and that is the part that is saved in a successful upload. 

"That something was metabolism, a continuous complex chemical reaction" 

Complex yes, that is to say it is made of many parts, but if the interaction of the parts (you) are not to act in a random incoherent way some order must exist between the parts. A part must have some knowledge of what the other parts are doing and the only way to do that is with information. But maybe communication among the parts is of only secondary importance and the major work, the generation of the soul or sense of self, is done by the parts themselves. But that is complex behavior so the parts must be very complex and be made of sub parts. However this nesting of parts and sub parts and sub sub parts can not continue forever because eventually you will come to the simplest possible part, a part that can change in only one way, say on to off, or zero to one, and that can be recorded on a computer hard disc. 

"The water in Niagra Falls continuously replenishes itself every second. That doesn't mean it is no longer Niagra Falls."

If we disassembled Niagara Falls atom by atom and then reassembled it just as it was before would it still be the same Niagara Falls? This analogy would be valid only if we knew what the opinion of the newly rebuilt Niagara Falls itself was on this matter, if we knew if it still felt like it was Niagara Falls; but we don't so it isn't.  

 John K Clark 


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