X-Message-Number: 16100
From: 
Date: Sun, 22 Apr 2001 14:21:57 EDT
Subject: space and time

Kennita Watson says "identity" questions are largely irrelevant, partly 
because in practice you will necessarily act as though--at least--you do 
survive over time in the course of ordinary living. I disagree somewhat, as 
indicated below.

First, Lee Corbin reiterates his opinion that it is just as easy to believe 
in the possibility of being in two places at the same time as in two times at 
the same place. This is clearly wrong.

First, while space and time are both mysterious, time in some ways is much 
more mysterious. In any event, they certainly have sharp dissimilarities. For 
one thing, you can go in either direction in a space dimension, but only one 
way in time, as far as we know. It is in fact somewhat misleading to call 
time a "dimension," even though that has mathematical conveniences. (The 
possibility of extra space dimensions, and extra time dimensions, is far 
beyond our scope here.)

Secondly, although custom and "common sense" have limited value, in practice 
nobody regards space and time in the same way. Even an electron at a 
different location is regarded as a "different" electron. (Well, Feynman 
played with the idea that there is only one electron, which is in many places 
at once because it zig-zags through time as well as space.) 

Thirdly, it is interesting that the uploaders and other proponents of 
duplicates-as-self themselves make a sharp distinction between space 
isomorphism and time isomorphism. I.e., they think an evolving description of 
a person (as in a computer simulation) would "be" the person; but a static 
description of his evolution in time (pages in a book, the Turing Tome) would 
not qualify. A clear inconsistency here--isomorphism is good enough not only 
for space but also for matter, yet not for time.

Can these issues possibly be resolved, and can they have personal relevance 
either before or after resolution? I think "yes" on all counts, although we 
will not know for sure for some time, perhaps a long time.

For the moment, I can only reiterate that most writers have missed the 
centrality of qualia or the "self circuit"--the physical nature of subjective 
experience. Awareness must surely bind space and time--it could not exist at 
a mathematical point in space (if there is any such thing), nor at an instant 
in time (ditto). (This is not about quantum uncertainties, but about the 
feeling of something happening.) 

Since "you" are tightly bound to your subjectivity, if not identical with it, 
you overlap your past and future selves, distance in time usually being 
correlated with distance in identity. Hence the near future is more important 
than the distant future, other things equal, but in any case the future does 
have logical importance to the individual.

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

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