Re: Many Pasts? Not according to QM...

From: <daddycaylor.domain.name.hidden>
Date: Tue, 14 Jun 2005 11:50:06 -0400

Tom wrote:
> Now if continuous consciousness is not necessarily required for immortality, then why are you
> waiting around for copying? Won't cloning come far sooner? What is it about
> copying that is better than cloning.
 
Stathis wrote:
> Why do you say that continuous consciousness is not necessarily required for immortality? It seems to > me that this is the one thing that *is* required, which is what makes it different from cloning or having > children.
  



 
To answer your question, Stathis, I was picking up on something Hal wrote:
>Our attempt to make these novel situations fit our conventional
>expectations don't work because we currently have an implicit assumption
>of mental continuity which is violated by copying experiments. There
>really is no meaningful and non-arbitrary way to map our current ways
>of thinking about the future to a world where copying is possible.

In fact, you (Stathis) recently responded to the above with:
> It isn't really any different than the impression of a single continuous history we get at present if the
> MWI is correct...
 



 
I'm trying to understand, bit by bit, where you all are coming from and where you are going with this stuff (no pun intended). Are you putting forth copying as a theoretical means of creating an "impression of a single continuous history"? To restate my original question in a "corrected" manner, what is different about copying that creates an impression of a single continuous history" any more than cloning or having children, or communicating some of ourself to another person? How much of us is needed to be propagated in order to be considered an "impression of a single continuous history"? I think this is a little of what Hal was getting at: what's so sacred about our current expectations of continuous consciousness? Like my "far away galaxy" copy, an impression of a single continuous history can lead to something very undesirable. It seems that there's something to quality of life that is far more important than quantity of life. Perhaps quality vs. quantity is wha!
 t the "torture" thread is really struggling with. Perhaps it cannot be dealt with purely on a quantitative level.
 
 
Tom

 
Received on Tue Jun 14 2005 - 12:01:03 PDT