X-Message-Number: 25116
From: 
Date: Sat, 20 Nov 2004 10:28:15 EST
Subject: the potentiality problem etc

  "Inside every piece of marble is a beautiful sculpture. All the sculptor 
has to do is remove the covering."

  This more or less parallels RBR's argument that arrangements of matter can 
be interpreted to represent different analogs, and that computer data require 
interpretation to qualify as people or as anything in the "real" world.

  A partly similar argument against the "pattern" view of personhood notes 

that--if the universe is large enough or old enough--somewhere there are or were
or will be people arbitrarily similar to you. (In fact there is mathematical 
proof, given certain reasonable assumptions, that any closed system must 
eventually return arbitrarily close to any previous configuration.)

  In any case, the pattern view (especially, but not only, as a computer 
program) has at least five basic defects:

  First, if it relies on the "identity of indiscernibles," there are no 
indiscernibles. Any "two" systems necessarily differ in some way--otherwise we 
would not say "two." In the typical case, the only known difference is in 

location, e.g. two electrons. But difference in location is a difference, and 
will 
also NECESSARILY entail other differences, including but not limited to 

differences of quantum entanglement. Among other things, the gravitational field
or the 
local curvature of spacetime (if there is such a thing)  will generally be 
different.

  Secondly, you can't have it both ways on the quantitative issue. If the 
"same" people or systems must be absolutely identical in all respects, then no 
two systems can ever be the same. If we settle for the quantitative view--that 
"sameness" is always a matter of kind and of degree--then any two animals are 
partly the same, and every person is partly you.

  Third, if the pattern is capable of more than one interpretation, then it 
is a mere mathematical metaphor--which a computer program basically is in all 
known cases--and cannot be given a presumption of life.

  Fourth, for the foreseeable future, every computer program will be KNOWN to 
be unrealistic. There remain unknowns in the laws of physics, so any computer 
program necessarily incorporates faulty "laws" in its metaphors, ensuring 

that uploaded "people" will not behave as real people. (The differences might be
minor or might not.)

  Fifth, if my hypothesis of the "self circuit" and the nature of qualia is 
correct, then a person IN PRINCIPLE cannot be computerized--a restatement of 

the old, "The map is  not the territory." No representation or description of a
physical system can capture or embody ALL of the elements of the physical 
system. (If you try to counter this by saying that only the descriptive or 
abstract aspects are important, this is a mere assertion and not a known fact.)

  The basic question is seldom addressed--viz, what OUGHT we to want, or what 
survival criteria ought to satisfy us? What are the criteria for criteria?

  As far as I can see, my remote predecesors (a fish ancestor, "myself" as a 
one-day embryo, or "myself" as a one-year infant) and remote successors 

are--and ought to be--of very little interest to me. While recognizing that new

information and new ideas may change the choices, I see only one rational way of
ascribing value to the future (and past), as I have said many times:

  It seems likely that a quale (the essential person, the experience which is 
also the experiencer) has extension in space and time, hence you (in the 

present) overlap your predecessors and successors spatially and temporally. This

tends to validate placing an interest in your past and future--but we don't yet
know how to calculate relative values very well.

Robert Ettinger


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