Harvey Newstropm wrote:
>Darin Sunley <darin25@hotmail.com> wrote:
>> Further to someone's point eariler that there are two points of view
>> involved here, mine and my double's:
>>
>> Is it meaningful to speak of two POV's when we have two, carefully
>> synchronized virtual worlds happening here?
>
>But these two virtual worlds are about to diverge. One virtual
>experience ends in death. The other virtual experience continues
>indefinitely. Which of these different experiences will you choose?
>The two programs are going to execute radially different commands very
>shortly.
Given a choice, I would of course choose to continue to exist. Both of "us" would. The point I was trying (inexpertly) to make, was that the shutting off of an emulation is neither morally nor practically equivalent to "death". It's something deeper. Maybe more to be feared, maybe less, but certainly different. From the point of view of a virtual being that knew it was going to be deactivated, I would be less anxious then I would be over impending physical "death" within the context of a continuing virtual world. Perhaps it's a hind-brain egoistic bias, or the fact that an instantaneous shutdown promises A) lack of pain, B) lack of perception/comprehension, and C) a promise of at least potential resumption of processing.
In answer to Mr. Finney's question, No, I do not believe that having one's universe-process suspended counts as death. Facetiuosly, prove that your universe-process hasn't been suspended for better then 200 (years?) between the moment you opened this email and when you started reading it.
Darin Sunley
darin25@hotmail.com