X-Message-Number: 9238 Date: Tue, 03 Mar 98 16:58:30 From: Mike Perry <> Subject: Re: CryoNet #9234 Bob Ettinger writes, > > A reminder of a rather strange omission by Perry, Strout, Donaldson and others > who emphasize the importance of memory: WHETHER OR NOT memory is important, > surely survival of the physical basis of feeling is essential! It is not > possible to have memories in the full human sense without feeling, but > certainly an automaton (lacking feeling) could have at least our "historical" > memories. Which would be closer to "you"--an automaton with most of your > memories, or a person with few of them? > To me the emotional content of memories is an essential part, at least with some memories. An automaton or construct that lacked this emotional ingredient but had other features would not necessarily be "me" any more than one that lacked the other features but had the emotions (however that would be managed). But include all information relevant to my states of consciousness, in a suitable ongoing process, (a finite amount of information, at most) and it ought to be me. In any case I think that "I" could, in principle, be emulated on or in a digital device. This conclusion seems fairly solid, based on quantum mechanics and the idea that, in effect, the whole of reality seems equivalent to a very large (hopefully infinite or unboundedly large) digital device. Future discoveries could change the picture, but that can be said about almost anything.The "digital" hypothesis is an important underpinning for some of the conclusions reached in my book, and a long chapter is devoted to it. An interesting, relevant discussion will be found in a recent book, *The Fabric of Reality*, by David Deutsch, where he notes that a quantum-mechanical analogue of the Church-Turing thesis seems to hold. Mike Perry Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=9238