X-Message-Number: 25084
Date: Thu, 18 Nov 2004 08:26:48 -0500
From: Thomas Donaldson <>
Subject: CryoNet #25064 - #25082

Hi everyone!

I have lots more to say but it's now after midnight and I must go to
bed. 

Basically, Richard, you haven't answered my questions. If our qualia-
experiencer is not part of our brain, then what is it? And why is
it that this Q-Exer cannot be destroyed without the person losing
all their senses? Is it separate from our senses or somehow containing
them? If you say that it's distributed through our whole brain, then
WHAT is distributed and how do we know it is? And again, just why is
a perfect copy followed by destruction of the original different 
FOR OUR QUALIA-EXPERIENCER than the kind of slow change we all
undergo? It's not enough to simply say that it is.

And finally, not for Richard but for Yvan Bozzonetti: I never said
that uploading was impossible, I simply said that the machine/creature
/device into which we uploaded would have to be very different and
work more biologically than any existing computer. Nor would such 
uploading be as simple as reading off a tape or a computer memory:
you'd have to change the neural mapping of the recipient device 
(and number of neurons etc) into one matching the original. Yes, if
we want to build very small devices doing this is a very small way,
then that's more or less "easy". But for a whole human being the 
magnitude of the problem increases a great deal.

I'm not metaphysically opposed to uploading, I just think it's 
unlikely to be a way to save ourselves in any relatively naar
future (say a few hundred years).

             More later, and best wishes and long longlife for all,

                 Thomas Donaldson

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