[ExI] teachers

[Ben Zaiboc]

On 25/08/2023 20:11, Darin Sunley wrote:
>
> An important component of what a lot of people want out of immortality 
> is not so much continuity as it is not-experiencing-discontinuity [And 
> no, they're not the same thing].
>
> If I'm dying of cancer, and you do a brain scan, the resulting upload 
> will remember being me, but /I'm/ still gonna experience a painful 
> death. And no, killing me painlessly, or even instantaneously, during 
> or in the immediate aftermath of the brain scan doesn't solve the 
> problem either.
>
> If "me" is ever on two substrates simultaneously, you may have copied 
> me, but you haven't moved me, and a copy, by definition, isn't the me 
> I want to be immortal.

So this 'me' that you are talking about, must be something that, when 
copied, somehow changes into 'not-me'. I don't understand this. If it's 
an exact copy, how is it not exactly the same? How can there not now be 
two 'me's? Two identical beings, in every way, including their 
subjective experience, with no discontinuity with the original singular 
being?

When I hit 'send' on this message, everyone on the list will get a copy, 
and I will keep a copy. Which one is the real message? If they were 
conscious, why would that make any difference?

You say "you may have copied me, but you haven't moved me". But how do 
you move data? You make a second copy of it then delete the first copy. 
So destroying copy 1 when copy 2 is made would be 'moving me', yet you 
say it wouldn't. Can you clarify why? I can't see (short of a belief in 
an uncopyable supernatural 'soul') how this could be.

This is a crucial point, for those of us interested in uploading, so I 
think we should really understand it, yet it makes no sense to me. Would 
you please explain further?

Could you also please explain the comment about continuity and 
not-discontinuity not being the same thing?

Ben