X-Message-Number: 8107 Date: Fri, 18 Apr 97 23:58:56 From: Mike Perry <> Subject: CRYONICS Re: CryoNet #8095, #8100 Bob Ettinger, #8095, wrote >Of course, the info folk could answer that a simulation is >a simulation only while it is a valid simulation, so my >question is irrelevant. But that is not quite right. Since >they claim that simulated events are just as "real" as the >original, it becomes necessary to explain what events in >our world correspond to any possible events in the >simulation OR IN AN IMPERFECT SIMULATION. We info-folk might claim that "simulated events are just as 'real'" in a *valid* simulation. What happens outside that domain ("imperfect simulation") is another matter, to be judged on a case-by-case basis. >Perry indicates that personal preferences cannot be >attacked or confirmed as right or wrong. I repeat that they >can--right or wrong from the standpoint of what values >the individual WOULD hold if he applied rigorous logic >to well established premises (concerning natural law and >his own biology and personal history). The only >exceptions would be cases where risk/reward >considerations reveal no clear advantage, so it's a toss-up. What I meant was that personal preferences cannot *always* be attacked or confirmed as right or wrong (i.e. as a "general principle"). A person might "prefer" to leap from a bridge (or not be frozen at death, say) thinking that will be better for them, yet be quite wrong, from their point of view. In this case it is reasonable to say they were, simply, wrong. But other cases do not seem so clearcut, i.e., whether "risk/reward considerations" reveal a clear advan- tage is *itself* a matter of personal preferences. To me, for instance, it seems right that I should value my memories, and plan never to jettison the information (the important information at least) about earlier versions of myself. In that way those earlier selves can survive in the continuer of them that I will become--and I right now will survive in that way too. But there are people who clearly don't see it that way at all--by indications Bob is one of them. They don't seem to particularly value their memories, and one can raise the question if this is right or wrong. Such a person presumably wouldn't care if those past selves--and the present self too, were eventually obliterated or jettisoned. So Bob, I see your longterm survival (as I view survival) in jeopardy, unless you change your values. We can ask, Is your atti- tude or value system "right" or "wrong"? If it's what you want, believe in, are comfortable with, etc.-- by those standards it's "right." By the same token, people of today who reject cryonics, not on religious grounds but simply because they don't want to come back (a close relative of mine has expressed this view) are "right" if this is what they really want. In another sense though it doesn't seem "right"--I wish they would reconsider (and you too, though your case is less urgent). To elaborate a little further, I can see someone, who is sure they don't want to survive, developing later into a more advanced version of themselves (continuer) who will be glad they survived--but they have to survive to do this. Do you withhold a suicide pill from a person, who really is most unhappy and wants to end it all now, though if you did withhold it they might develop further and be happy they were alive? Or do you grant their wish now? We are geared to granting wishes, for adults at least, when people stand on their rights and do not infringe on others' comparable rights. (This attitude is true of individualists at any rate, including most cryonicists.) I'm not advocating we should not grant rights in this manner, but the question of whether values, and views and choices based on them, are "right" or "wrong" seems a tough one to me, one that may not be resolved just by "more knowledge." Bob also wrote (#8100) >It seems a bit ironic to me that info folk typically seem to >think of themselves as materialists, yet believe we are >essentially immaterial, being at core just patterns of >information and processing of information. A good point to make. That is indeed how I think of my- self, "patterns of information and processing of information," and "essentially immaterial," and yet I consider myself a scientific materialist too. This I justify because the information processing, as I see it, must happen through interactions of matter (or particles), not by some mystical means. But at heart it is information, not matter, that seems more sub- stantial and "real" to me. >...Dr. Perry e.g. believes it isn't enough for information to >be present in order for a simulation to be a person; the >information must also be actively PROCESSED in an >appropriate ongoing way. This seems reasonable to me--if I understand you right. In a sense a person "on hold"--in suspended animation, unconscious, or stored as information--would not be fully a person, but more a "potential person." Clearly a person, to have feeling, must be conscious (or partly conscious), which implies some ongoing brain activity, and similarly, a computer, whatever one thinks of its states while it's running, does not possess or support feeling when execution is halted. (At least it dosen't seem it could have *very much* feeling --maybe pico-pico-amounts from the vibrations of atoms? And this--if you allow it--is not from the usual computation but something else entirely.) On the other hand, I don't have the full answer (or very much of a detailed answer) as to exactly *what* activity must be ongoing, in a brain, computer or whatever, for feeling to exist--but think there is an answer, that we'll work out in due course. Mike Perry Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=8107