<snip>
> > Personally, I would
> > take the 1000
> > rather than the 50 but I can't say that I have no attachment
> > to the present
> > set of molecules. I would probably take 999.5 years with the
> > present set as
> > opposed to 1000 as a doppelganger, which probably means I am
> > not as pure a
> > functionalist as I could be, but I am not sure how much more
> > I would be
> > willing to sacrifice.
> >
>
> Why not go a step further?
>
> For each of us, chances are that the following statement is true:
> There exists person X, who's utility to society* is greater than yours
> (given that
> we have some magical metric for measuring such).
>
> Which of the following would you (as a functionalist) do. Which would you
do
> as yourself? Why?
>
> 1 - Live out your 3 score & 10.
> 2 - Be replaced** tomorrow by your exact (enough) replica, who will live
> 1000 years.
> 3 - Be replaced** tomorrow by an exact (enough) replica of person X, who
> will live 1000 years.
>
> * Insert your personal favourite subset of all people; Nation? Village?
> Family? The guy at the video shop?
> ** By replaced, I mean what non-functionalists would understand as "die".
As a functionalist, the obvious choice (supposing I understand the
definition of functionalist correctly) would be (2).
As myself (and the Stockholm clique of transhumanists probably already know
this :-) the choice will be (2); I most definitely follow a functionalist
reasoning whenever the discussion closes in on this subject...
> Emlyn
// Mikael Johansson
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b30 : Sat May 11 2002 - 17:44:24 MDT