X-Message-Number: 9339
Date:  Mon, 23 Mar 98 15:03:48 
From: Mike Perry <>
Subject: Re: CryoNet #9336

Andrew S. Davidson, #9336, writes


> So, my difficulty is that if the mind is independent of the substrate then 
what is to stop it

> latching onto other substrates across space and time?  Perhaps this is 
happening all the time

> but our real world thread is just not aware of the spawned copies - something 
like the
> many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics.

This is related to my view, except I would say "we" are "aware" of 
the "spawned copies"--because they are us too! I think reality probably 
includes a multiverse where many happenings are duplicated, including 
instantiations of persons.  (By "instantiation" I mean "equivalent
emulation," i.e. a process that can be considered the same at an appropriate, 
informational level.) "You" are not one process in the midst of 
these, but "you" extend over all your instantiations, more or less 
equally, or more accurately, weighted by the relative probabilities.
One way to justify this is that, by definition, 
"you" have no way of knowing which of your instantiations "you" 
really are--so I submit that "you" are not just one of 
them but all. But surely probabilities do play a part
in this. Some of your instantiations are 
more likely than others, and can thus be taken more seriously. Thus, 
though in theory I think people could be emulated in Turing machines 
running on long 1-dimensional tapes in some universe like ours that 
allows for more usual processing in 3 dimensions, it has
a very small likelihood and thus is very rare, though not unknown,
in the multiverse. We are "probably" not such emulations, 
but "more likely" the real thing, though the other 
possibilities have to be given at least a small weight too.

Mike Perry

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