X-Message-Number: 33458
Date: Thu, 10 Mar 2011 21:00:29 -0700
From: "Eric" <>
Subject: Uploading

This is the kind of nonsense you can expect to get
with a generation raised on transporters, programming,
and mathematics without a grounding in logic - an
inability to distinguish between an abstract and
a concrete.

Over here in the real world, there's no such thing
as "identical." Identical is what's known as an
abstract. It plays nicely with other things that
are also abstracts - like numbers, concepts, ideas,
patterns. In the real world, not even two electrons
are "identical." If you destroy one, well then the
universe is down one electron. A little different
than trying to destroy the number "four." (This is 
also true when you really, really emphasize it by
saying *identical* and IDENTICAL.)

How about you rephrase all of your uploading
arguments using more accurate descriptions like,
"very similar" and see how they sound?

What's particularly annoying about a lot of uploaders
are their attempts to slur non-uploaders with some
sort of accusation of being "mystical" for thinking
there's something "magic" about a particular manifestation
of a pattern - when they're the ones thinking that
abstracts are something that actually exist and
have these nifty magic properties in the real world.

Unfortunately, each of us is manifested in a particular
piece of meat. Nothing special or magical about
it - you could say the same thing about a rock. Now
you can go ahead and make as many "very similar"
copies of your meat as you want. Have a ball. They
can even be so darn good that they think they're
you, and everyone else thinks they're you. But if
you blow your brains out, well then the universe is
going to be down one uploading advocate.

Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=33458