X-Message-Number: 16747
Date: Fri, 29 Jun 2001 00:32:51 -0700
From: Mike Perry <>
Subject: Reply to Epstein #16586

I've been away on vacation, then came back to discover problems with my 
email, which necessitated retrieving some Cryonet messages from the 
archives. With time constraints from other commitments, I'm still a bit 
behind, but I wanted to comment on one particular point, starting with my 
posting #16567:


 >> ...I hope to become more than human. Being human is a stage of my 
existence,
 >> that's all, rather like being a small child, which I still remember with
 >> fondness, but do not want to repeat. In particular I do not have the same
 >> body now as then. In the future I will, no doubt, be expressed in a still
 >> different physical medium. The physical medium to me is not so 
important as
 >> what is happening at the informational level, which includes remembering.

Louis Epstein responded:

 >You do have the same body you
 >had as a small child,which has
 >matured.

To me a reasonable case can be made otherwise. My present body is different 
both in form and substance (the atoms in particular are different, at least 
in the vast majority of cases). Isn't that enough to call it a *different* 
body?

 >You have not replaced
 >it,it has continued to develop.

Semantics. It's different now, ergo the old one has been replaced. The 
process of replacement might be gradual rather than sudden.

 >An "uploadee" would have left
 >the body.Ceasing to be human.
 >
Not necessarily ceasing to be the same person in my view. Uploading to 
something better than a human body, assuming this is possible, could be a 
benefit. More generally, I find it hard to believe that being human is as 
good as you can get. I noted that the human brain is finite and fragile. 
Eventually something must augment it if you want immortality (as I conceive 
it, which must avoid the Eternal Return that a finite memory space would 
lead to). Perhaps you could get by with strict augmentation, carefully 
preserving the original tissue somewhere. But I don't feel that kind of 
sentimental (or whatever else) attachment to my present gray matter. As 
long as it's the best available for the task it performs, I'll stick with 
it. But if something else were to seem clearly better, I would see no good 
reason not to consider a changeover.

Mike Perry

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