X-Message-Number: 9283
From: Ettinger <>
Date: Sat, 14 Mar 1998 14:38:22 EST
Subject: erratum; story telling

First, I misspoke (or miswrote) myself in a post yesterday, saying Donaldson
noted that parallel processors are better than sequential processors for
recursive functions. Actually, he said that recursive functions must be
handled sequentially. But the main point was that Turing computers are
sequential, hence tend to be slow and unable physically to do more than one
thing at a time.

[Actually, I can think of ways in which parallel processors could handle at
least some types of recursive functions with improved efficiency, but that is
not the main point.]

But my main reason for writing today is to suggest another rather striking
scenario at odds with the info paradigm.

Once more, the info folk claim that an emulation of you (and your activities
and environment) in a computer would BE you (and your world). Never mind that
the computer may only be a Turing tape, with nothing happening physically
except a tape jerking along with marks made and unmade on squares of the
paper. Because an isomorphism or correspondence can be shown between the marks
and their changes on the one hand, and you and your changes of state on the
other, the "information paradigm" requires that the tape "person" be
considered just as real--just as conscious and feeling--as the flesh and blood
person.

For many  readers, this info faith is so ridiculous as not to require any
counterargument, and these readers will wonder why sensible people even bother
to talk about it. Part of the answer is that the paradigm does have some
plausibility and some very bright people believe it. I don't even claim to
prove it is wrong--only that it is highly suspect, not to put too fine a point
on it.

Now my new (?) analogy or slightly different attack tack. "A picture is worth
a thousand words." But are a thousand words--or a million--as good as a
picture? Would a lot of appropriate words, taken together, CONSTITUTE a
picture?

Surely I could, in principle, look at a photo or painting and then,
laboriously, describe it in words, in as much detail as desired--as much
detail as the eye and brain can discern.  I could write down this description,
or I could just say it aloud. Would my description BE the picture? 

Now jump from the photo to a video, and then to an actual living person and
his environment. In each case, in principle, a sufficiently powerful being
might describe the person or scene and the action in as much detail as
desired. The realization of this could be the usual super-computer, with the
"description" being the successive internal states of the computer; or it
could be words on paper; or it could be words spoken in the form of a story.

Story telling! If I could tell your story with enough detail and fidelity,
that story would BE YOU and your experience, according to the info paradigm.
And then I could change the story, or embellish it, give it happy or tragic
twists, by changing the environment. And YOU [according to the info folk]
would enjoy or suffer those experiences! At least, you would do so in the same
sense [with just as much reality] that a flesh and blood construct, initially
just like you, would have those experiences in those environments.

This reductio ad absurdum seems pretty devastating to me, so why don't I claim
it is a proof that the info paradigm is wrong? Because there remain unresolved
"philosophical" questions about the nature of reality and criteria of
survival. We just don't know enough yet. But I think we do know enough so it
should be recognized as foolhardy to commit to the info view. 

Note: I have cut off the discussion without getting into certain features some
may consider important, such as the distinction, in a computer, between
emulation of the laws of physics and emulation of arbitrary data or specific
scenarios or personas. Perhaps an info person might claim that the emulation
is the person only if we include the full emulation, including the laws of
nature. I don't think this invalidates my example, but enough is enough for
now. 

Robert Ettinger
Cryonics Institute
Immortalist Society
http://www.cryonics.org

Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=9283