X-Message-Number: 13650
From: 
Date: Thu, 27 Apr 2000 13:41:22 EDT
Subject: Re: to Robert Ettinger on uploading

> >My own opinion is: "live first" If I have after some methaphysical 
> >questions well, that implies I am living, even as a copy. 
> 
> This begs the question. If someone (natural, artifical, or a hybrid)  is 
> living, then that person can refer to himself as "I," but that does not 
> address the question of whether the new "I" is in some appropriate sense 
the 
> same as the old "I." It does not address the question of whether the 
original 
> survived. We just don't know enough yet to deal with this, and those who 
> think they do are kidding themselves.
> 
I think an electronics copy is the nearest thing to the original. For me, we 
are
 information and nothing more. A QND reader can get as near as we will from
 any quantum defined state of an object and two objects with identical quantum
states are indistinguishable, even in theory.

Even an imperfect copy will be better than anything else. Such a copy would be
motivated to recover the missing information and so is the best insurance
 for getting it, in uploaded form or nano repair if this is possible.

> He also says that uploading will come before biological nano-repair, 
because 
> both require the same information but it may be easier to use that 
> information for electronic emulation than for biological repair.
> 
> There is a great big gulch here. For starters, we KNOW that, now and for 
the 
> foreseeable future, a simulation or emulation will NOT be fully faithful to 
> the original. The reason is simple. The simulation must be based on current 
> information about natural law, and our information is incomplete and 
probably 
> in some respects just wrong. 

 The natural laws in brain are electro-chemical ones, they rest upon
electromagnetic field and quantum mechanics. Both subjects are
 well known (even if there are arcane interpretations of quantum mechanics).

So I think we can indeed conceive a fairly good simulation.
There is another problem: I don't think reanimation probability
grow with time. Too much problems can destroy a frozen body.
The sooner you get out, the best, even in an electronics device
linked to a biological "interface" having nothing in common with
the human species.

Yvan Bozzonetti.

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