> > >> If I have two printers printing out the same novel and I smash one is the book
> > >> destroyed ?
> >
> > >Well, the one you stopped certainly is.
> >
> > I don't care because nothing irreplaceable has been destroyed.
>
> Well, no, but is that what really matters? Is a promise to
> record the positions of every atom in your brain sufficient
> to make your death palatable? I would say not, even though
> nothing irreplaceable has been destroyed. The point seems
> to be not whether you can be replaced, but whether this
> iteration of you ends.
Trying to think about this problem from an evolution point of view -> One given set of genes or memes really does care if a perfect copy of it is being destroyed or not.
After all, we are all examples of such bodies of genes or memes that have managed to copy (read reproduce, if only partly) themselves...
Now here is a funny problem, why wouldn't a particular set try very hard to use cloning or uploading to make huge copies of itself. Once it starts, it can use its power as a group to do anything it wants, that is copy itself. What is to stop it? Other reproducing sets??? :-)
Turning now to singletons advocates (elli?), how do you make sure it just doesn't end up in that kind of direction? Eating up all universe information into what we would today consider a dead end, if not a threat...? Particularly if you think we can not imagine what is after transcendence?
Manu.
(madison's road was on tv tonight. I feel in a great mood, too bad I got to go to sleep and work tomorrow. Just wanted to share)