>From: Joseph Sterlynne <vxs@mailandnews.com>
>
>The real problem (which you might have been referring to) is the notion
>that
>we want our consciousness to feel continuous during the upload procedure.
>So that you feel like you have actively migrated to the upload computer,
>not
>like you're still sitting in the operating room watching your new copy run
>off having a great time. The soft slow replacement method that Mike
>mentioned would appear to give us the former. A scan of some sort would
>seem to result in the latter.
>
>The problem, though, is this: does it matter at all. If a brain is scanned
>and the process which is consciousness is the same in both brains then both
>will consider themselves to be the same identity. Both will claim to have
>been (and one will claim to still be) in the original body.
It will matter to me. Although my megalomania drives me to reach for
immortality, it does not drive me to create numerous identical consciousness
clones of myself. If you scan my brain and upload the neural patterns of my
personality into a computer, that will not mean beans to me. *I* want to
transform. Simply copying me, while it may be great for the copy, won't do
a thing for me. And no, I don't think it will make me feel any better if
you offer to kill me immediately after the upload is done so that there is
only one me left. That software in the computer might think its me, but you
know, and I know that will not be me.
I'll definitely opt for the gradual brain replacement method, thank you.
-Zero
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This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Thu Jul 27 2000 - 14:04:10 MDT