X-Message-Number: 21256
From: 
Date: Mon, 24 Feb 2003 14:54:13 EST
Subject: re: Identity

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hmmm... All this talk of identity has jogged me to think about it a bit.  I'm 
hooked on a new TV show called Everwood.  It's well done, but with a 
hackneyed plot... but relevant to the question(s) of identity. There was a 
teenager in a coma, his girlfriend sat by his side for months.  Finally a 
famous neurosurgeon operates, and after a few weeks the coma kid wakes up... 
but his memory is wiped.  He can speak, and eat, but has severe memory loss 
and problems learning.  After many months of rehab, he returns to school, and 
tries to cope with everyone who expects him to remember everything he used 
to.  He behaves differently, befriending the geeky kid at the high school he 
probably would have shunned previously.  

Is he the same person?  Everyone on the show seems to wrestle with this idea- 
and its illustrated in many ways. There's a woman in love with a man who 
travels all the time... so she is falling out of love with him.  The 
neurosurgeon is dealing with the tragic loss of his wife, so his regrets 
force him to behave differently.  The geeky kid is uprooted from manhattan to 
colorado, and has to deal with that and change for it.  
There's an old woman on the show whose husband has died, so she marries the 
school bus driver.  The girlfriend of coma boy succeeds in her quest to 
revive her boyfriend, but loses because he doesn't remember her, and she 
struggles to forge a new bond with him.  

So I've decided after thinking about these little dramas that I know the 
answer to the question.... are any of these people the same?  Do they have 
the same identities?  The answer is no.  Life is change... and we strive for 
some continuity, but there is constant change - some very discontinuous. 

But I do think it worthwhile that they revived coma boy, and he has a chance 
at life again, even with the loss of his memory.  I like the character.  If 
cryonics results in the loss of all my memories, but they can revive my body 
in a similar situation to coma boy, I would think it worthwhile.  And even if 
the future me can't remember the present me, I think he would like the chance 
at life offered to him.  It would be me, I think, but a very changed me.  Not 
the same me.

Consider the other side of memory as identity.  If you were revived, and they 
were able to not only restore you current memories, but make it so you could 
remember EVERYTHING that ever happened to you, would you be the same person?  
No.  Access to everything that ever happened to you would certainly be a 
significant change.  

What if you woke up and found you could play the piano like a virtuoso, never 
having played in your life?  That would be a different you.  Would you 
welcome the change?  Wouldn't that be cool?  probably, after you got over 
being pissed off they messed with you without your permission first.  

What if you woke up in a T1000 body?  Would that be the same you?  Most 
assuredly not.  

What about if you were uploaded into a quantum computer?  That certainly 
would be different.  

What if you woke up and found out that you were the third version of you that 
had been revived?  That they had earlier put you in a quantum computer 
artificial reality, and a clone of you without your memories existed, and now 
they finally were able to revive you as a human being with all your memories 
intact?  Are you the same person - identity - as the other two earlier 
revived versions?  No.  But were they all worth it?  Yes. 

It seems that we worry about loss of continuity more than anything.  We worry 
about catastrophic  memory loss, but we don't keep detailed journals of where 
we ate breakfast on a certain day, and if we had maple syrup on our pancakes, 
and what the waitress said to us.  And it doesn't seem to bother us that we 
forget that sort of detail... so it must the the sudden changes that scare 
us.  

So I guess that even if I end up not the same, I might still be me, depending 
on your point of view.

Mike Donahue

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"No, Kitty!  This is my Pot Pie!!!"  - Eric Cartman

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