Re: [UPLOADING] Is the original alive?

Hal Finney (hal@rain.org)
Wed, 15 Jul 1998 14:29:31 -0700

harv@gate.net (Harvey Newstrom) writes:
> Hal Finney <hal@rain.org> wrote:
> > I would say that the consciousness of "the person" resides equally in the
> > copy and in the upload (so long as they are synchronized; once they get
> > out of sync they are not the same, of course). Hence stopping one of
> > them does not stop the consciousness of the person.
> >
> > So in your example, I'd say that the body and brain is alive, but that
> > killing it does not kill the person, because the person encompasses more
> > than that body.
>
> You didn't answer the question. You said before you shoot it, the body
> and brain are alive. After you shoot it, are the body and brain still
> alive?

No, after you shoot it, the body and brain is not still alive. However the person is still alive.

As a somewhat misleading analogy, we could say that a person's finger is alive, and if you cut it off, it is not still alive, but the person is still alive. A better example, based on my earlier discussion, is that a program is running on a redundant system, and when you eliminate part of the redundancy, the program continues to run.

Hal