On 01 Apr 2009, at 12:39, Stathis Papaioannou wrote:
>
> 2009/4/1 Bruno Marchal <marchal.domain.name.hidden>:
>
>>> A
>>> historian could come along and argue for one reason and another that
>>> the Middle Ages should not be considered to have ended until the
>>> year
>>> 1800, and although we might disagree with him we can't say that he
>>> is
>>> wrong in the same way he would be wrong if he claimed that the
>>> British
>>> landed in Australia in 1066. Similarly with personhood, we could
>>> come
>>> up with a definition, eg. that a person consists of the series or
>>> person-stages such that each person-stage shares some memories with
>>> the preceding and succeeding person-stage, but you wouldn't be wrong
>>> if you rejected the definition, in the way you could be wrong
>>> about a
>>> matter of fact concerning a particular person-stage.
>>
>> I don't understand the analogy, because something like "Middle Ages"
>> is not supposed to have an inner subjectivity. And we have to put the
>> probabilities on the possible inner expectations, when trying to
>> extract physics from computer science.
>
> The subjective experience of an observer moment is not problematic.
> What is problematic is the *relationship* between separate observer
> moments: are they different stages in the life of a particular person
> or not? The answer to this question seems to me to be ultimately
> arbitrary, in the same way that it is ultimately arbitrary to say
> whether 1400 AD was in the Middle Ages or not.
There is a part of arbitrariness, but the whole difference and
relative difference are not arbitrary. Bu UDA the laws of physics
would be aritrary.
>
>
>> I am not sure. Unless you identify death and amnesia. But that is
>> what
>> makes the trouble for extracting physics from numbers.
>> What is your opinion for the "Alzheimer" problem I just asked to
>> Quentin.
>
> I would say that if you are at a fork where one version of you loses
> all memories and another does not, then you will find yourself going
> down the no memory loss path.
At which point? Also, why is it that we din't survive them to the
continuation where we don't ever mage very weird (amnesic) dreams.
We would not survive salvia at all.
> It is more complicated if the memory
> loss is gradual or partial: you might find yourself fading away and QI
> won't save you.
If you survive, in Quentin ways, with your perfect memories, you will
have to develop an infinitely growing brains. I think comp allows much
more variate forms of immortality, related to the arbitrary part
mentioned above. But it is not really arbitrary, it generates
different sort of comp practice, especially the digital medicinal and
funeral practices. Nothing is simple here, imo.
Bruno
http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/
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Received on Wed Apr 01 2009 - 19:42:59 PDT