Re: QTI & euthanasia

From: Brent Meeker <meekerdb.domain.name.hidden>
Date: Thu, 30 Oct 2008 15:58:53 -0700

Kory Heath wrote:
>
> On Oct 30, 2008, at 10:06 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
>> But ok, perhaps I have make some progress lately, and I will answer
>> that the probability remains invariant for that too. The probability
>> remains equal to 1/2 in the imperfect duplication (assuming 1/2 is
>> the perfect one).
>> But of course you have to accept that if a simple teleportation is
>> done imperfectly (without duplication), but without killing you, the
>> probability of surviving is one (despite you get blind, deaf,
>> amnesic and paralytic, for example).
>
> This is the position I was arguing against in my earlier post. Let's
> stick with simple teleportation, without duplication. If the data is
> scrambled so much that the thing that ends up on the other side is
> just a puddle of goo, then my probability of surviving the
> teleportation is 0%. It's functionally equivalent to just killing me
> at the first teleporter and not sending any data over. (Do you agree?)
> If the probability of me surviving when an imperfect copy is made is
> still 100%, then there's some point of "imperfection" at which my
> chances of surviving suddenly shift from 100% to 0%. This change will
> be marked by (say) the difference of a single molecule (or bit of
> data, or whatever). I don't see how that can be correct.
>
> -- Kory

But there are many ways for what comes out of the teleporter to *not* be you.
Most of them are "puddles of goo", but some of them are copies of Bruno or
imperfect copies of me or people who never existed before.

Suppose it's a copy of you as you were last year - is it 100% you. It's not
100% the you that went into the machine - but if you're the same person you were
last year it's 100% you. Of course the point is that you're not the same "you"
from moment to moment in the sense of strict identity of information down to the
molecular level, or even the neuron level.

Brent

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Received on Thu Oct 30 2008 - 18:59:03 PDT

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