Re: Stories (was Retro humor)

Sean Stickle (stickle@cfed.org)
Fri, 3 Dec 1999 11:14:45 -0500

> >Never, never, never sacrifice the stories. In the final analysis
> >all we've got that makes us unique is collections of good stories.
> >(Our skills we can change, our appearence we can change, the underlying
> >genes and even the hardware we run on we can change, but the stories
> >remain our own.)

Actually, they don't. Make a copy of yourself that includes memories, and whadya got? Two of you, which is by definition non-unique. Big deal. The idea that psychological continuity somehow defines a unique person in rubbish. I can come up with half-a-dozen ways to create a psychologically continuous person that is not you (which I would steal from Derek Parfitt's devastating analysis in "Reasons and Persons") and yet, is you. If all you want out of uploading is immortality, think again. Hell, you aint even the person that you were ten years ago (and I don't mean that you've grown, I mean you are as different from that person as you are from me, ethically speaking).

Anyways, that's my two bit of reductionist philosophy for the day.

--
Sean Stickle
Technology Systems Manager
Corporation for Enterprise Development

stickle@cfed.org
202.408.9788 x 215