X-Message-Number: 16115
Date: Mon, 23 Apr 2001 23:58:40 -0700
From: Mike Perry <>
Subject: Survival and Consciousness

Lee Corbin writes:

>Suppose that you are taken into the next room where a
>frozen duplicate of you, made five minutes ago, lies
>encased in ice.  There is a briefcase on top the ice
>cask containing ten million dollars, and you may either
>(a) choose to have your duplicate and the money be
>disintegrated, or (b) choose to be disintegrated
>yourself.  If you select the latter, then the duplicate
>is defrosted and gets to deposit the money.
>The question is, given that you are to make the most
>self-interested decision you can, for the benefit of
>the person you consider yourself to be, would you choose
>(a) or (b)?

To me, (b) is equivalent to simply accepting a brief period of memory loss 
for a financial reward. I don't like sacrificing bits for bucks this way, 
but if, say, we assume a record was made of what transpired that I (my 
thawed double) could later incorporate into my (its) memory, I'd have no 
problem at all. Or, *if* the five-minute period can be considered 
insignificant, again no problem.

Robert Ettinger writes:

>...
>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.

I resolve this problem with a frame-of-reference argument. An evolving 
description, in a sense, is what I am too, and another one, of a conscious 
being, in my universe, is something I can accept as conscious *in my frame 
of reference*. A portion of a static record is, reasonably I think, not to 
be considered conscious in my frame of reference, though perhaps conscious 
from another frame of reference which itself may be defined within the 
record. One might still raise the question whether consciousness within 
some frame of reference implies consciousness in a more absolute sense that 
would be frame-independent. An interesting question.

Mike Perry

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