X-Message-Number: 3685
Date: Sat, 14 Jan 1995 10:12:31 -0800
From: John K Clark <>
Subject: SCI.CRYONICS
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I agree with Bruce Zimov" <> that the novel
"Software" by Rudy Rucker is an excellent book, unfortunately
there's not much more I agree with.
> THAT Cobb's subjective circuit was about to terminate.
His "subjective circuit"( I prefer the word " brain") would
terminate but his subjective experience would continue assuming
his backups were current.
> In other words, at that point, there was NO causal link
>between Cobb and his copies.
I don't see what a causal link has to do with identity but if it
bothers you there is a causal link, he made the copies, if he
were different the copies would be different; that's the very
nature of copies.
>Yes, the information stored may be the same, but there is NO
>causal link.
Our identity can't be in matter because we constantly
incorporate new atoms, and science can find no difference
between one hydrogen atom and another. If you're correct and
information is not the source of identity either, then the only
thing left is a soul inaccessible to science. If religious
people are right then Cryonics is not needed.
>your body and brain are a causal link, in fact, there
>are the ideal storage medium!
If it was ideal it wouldn't disintegrate after just a few
decades, If it was ideal we could easily add storage and
remember a simple 20 digit number, or even square it, something
even the cheapest calculator can do with ease.
>I don't agree with those that say that behaviour is the only
>test necessary to identify whether or not a "black box" has an
>operant subjective circuit.
If you've found a better test I'd love to hear about it. If you
can show how your test or any such test can be proved or
disproved, by the scientific method, to work ( even in theory ,
ignoring practicality) I'll concede defeat and hail you as the
greatest philosopher who ever lived.
> we might wrongly conclude that tape recorders or films had
>subjective entities that experienced things everytime the
>recording was replayed since the behaviour test passed!
A movie passing a behavior test ? What on earth are you talking about?
In another post Robert Ettinger drew an insightful distinction between
self awareness and consciousness. He is wise to do so because as
virtues go, self awareness is greatly overrated. In the first
place we have very little of it and in the second place it's a
good thing we don't have more. If we understood how our mind
worked nobody would study computer science in school because it
would be too trivial, we'd all know instinctually how to make an
AI. For the things the mind does best ,creativity, language
recognition, depth perception , pattern identification ,muscle
coordination ,we have no self awareness at all. It's only in
things that were lousy at ,like solving differential equations,
that we become aware of our mental activity. We only become
aware of mental processes when were confused. People always
asked creative men like Feynman how he came up with such
brilliant ideas ,but he didn't know ,all he could say was things
like "the idea just popped into my head". If he could really
answer that question then we could just follow his instructions
and we'd all be as smart as he was.
Deep self awareness would be dangerous and addictive. We could change
our emotions to anything we wanted, alter modes of thought, radically
change our personalities, swap our goals as well as our philosophy of life
all at the drop of a hat.
John K Clark
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