X-Message-Number: 14982
From: 
Date: Tue, 21 Nov 2000 10:29:03 EST
Subject: Corbin, brief comments

Lee Corbin (#14971) writes, in part:

[Ettinger]>>The "emulation" supposedly consists of eventual production, from 
time to 
>>time, of sets of numbers corresponding (within uncertainty principle 
limits) 
>>to the quantum states of a person and (part of) his environment and 
history, 
>>past or/and future.

[Corbin]>I don't think that's accurate.  It's not the _sets_ of numbers,
>per se, as one would infer from this paragraph, but the computations
>that produce these numbers that is critical.  

and

[Corbin]>we [uploaders] believe in an isomorphism between the usual physical 
>actuality and the computer physical actuality, i.e., processing.  Not "sets 
of >numbers". 

Well, that wouldn't answer all the questions, but in any case you DON'T get 
that kind of isomorphism with a digital computer. MOST of the work in the 
computer does NOT directly or even closely reflect physical processes, only 
mathematical contrivances (additions and subtractions, for example) intended 
somewhere down the line to produce a result (set of symbols) similar or 
isomorphic to the physical result. 

Lee (in various posts) also appears to agree that time is so mysterious that 
it's hard to be sure of anything yet, but he insists on live action and 
continuity, as opposed to a succession of "frozen" states, whether the 
"freezing" is in the cryonics sense or in the sense of discrete quantum 
states. He also insists on causal relationships between sucessive states as 
opposed to accidental confluences that might produce emulations or models of 
states of a person. These questions remain open.

Robert Ettinger
Cryonics Institute
Immortalist Society
http://www.cryonics.org

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