X-Message-Number: 9295
From: Ettinger <>
Date: Mon, 16 Mar 1998 10:39:31 EST
Subject:  hydrogen

Would a Turing tape emulation constitute a person and his environment and
activities?

Mike Perry (#9287) says yes, period (as best he can currently guess). Good for
him. He doesn't try to squirm out by saying the tape is too slow and
impractical; and he doesn't drag in the red herring that other things
previously thought "absurd" have proven true; and he doesn't indulge in
irrelevancies such as you-might-be-in-an-emulation-right-now. The Turing tape
emulation could work in principle, and he stands by his conclusion. He might
even be right; as I have reiterated many times, I don't claim to have proven
the contrary--only that there are strong reasons for doubt.

Joe Strout (#9289), responding to my question as to whether a description of a
picture (in words) would BE a picture, says yes--in the sense that it COULD be
transformed into a conventional picture, just as a scanned photo, stored as
bits in a computer, can be restored from the bits into a picture. That isn't
news, and doesn't really answer the question--but then, I didn't really frame
the question very well. It was mainly intended as a lead-in to the questions
about emulation of a person and his environment and activities. In what sense,
and to what extent, is a STORY the "same" as an actual happening?

Let's try yet again, with something much simpler, and get away from the
complication of consciousness and worries about accuracy etc.

Using appropriate quantum terminology and spacetime coordinates, I describe a
hydrogen atom, far out in intergalactic space, in its lowest energy state;
then I describe a photon coming along and exciting the atom. This might be
done on a Turing tape; or I might just use words spoken aloud. Have I, in some
sense, created a hydrogen atom? When I stop talking, or the tape stops moving,
does the atom go back to oblivion? 

Unless an info person claims that my story does indeed constitute the PHYSICAL
CREATION of a hydrogen atom (even though one of a different sort, in a
different "universe"), he must recant on the person emulation thesis.

I don't see any unequivocal answers to such questions--even if we ignore the
fact that our understanding of physics is incomplete and possibly partly
incorrect, and hence any story we tell is bound also to be
incomplete/incorrect and therefore possibly not a "good enough" emulation. 

Incidentally, the questions about TIME are much deeper and more puzzling than
acknowledged in these exchanges. One respectable view is that our sense of
time is an illusion, and spacetime is a "block" whose slices are moments, all
coexisting and "pre"determined.

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

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