From: Lee Corbin (lcorbin@tsoft.com)
Date: Sat Jan 04 2003 - 23:16:42 MST
Hal writes
> [My] analysis predisposes a notion of identity similar to what
> I have described above, where I can consider what might have
> happened if I had been born as, say, George Bush, with his
> genetics and upbringing.
Why, I had always suspected that this had happened! When God
was assigning souls, Hal was supposed to get #131,214,226,110
and George Bush #131,241,226,110, but there was a stupid mix-up
at the factory. Sorry you got the rotten deal, and that that
Hal Finney type got to be president.
This must be so, because the Soul ID# is the only other thing
not included in the genetics and environment. Right?
But Hal more than makes up for this gaffe with
> Lee Corbin asks, in another thread,
>
> > What is bad about Dolly's arthritis? Who is it bad for?
> > Would it have been better for Dolly if cloning had been
> > forbidden? Would Dolly be better off dead?
> First, while I think there may be people and animals who are better
> off dead, I think that would mostly apply only in extreme cases.
> If someone is in terrible, constant, unrelievable pain, they might be
> better off dead. But just having arthritis or diabetes or some other
> sickness that limits quality of life would not be enough to say that
> someone is better off dead.
Yes, thank you for the clear statement of WHAT SHOULD BE COMMON SENSE
VALUES FOR EVERYONE. (Sorry, but this is a little exasperating.)
> On the other hand, it's possible that Dolly had another alternative.
> Her choices were not between being born defective and not being born
> at all. From a certain perspective, Dolly might have been born whole
> and well.
Good point. I had forgotten that for an animal, as opposed
to a human being, identities are not nearly so individual.
For example, we universalist immortalists wish to use technology
if it becomes available to go back and resurrect every human
being who ever lived. Why not? But animals? When you've
brought back one goldfish, you might very well have brought
back them all.
So I may be willing to concede that Dolly, especially as a clone
but perhaps just as a member of a particular kind of sheep, is
only getting additional run time by being cloned, and is not
a separate individual rescued from non-existence.
> The obvious difficulty with this perspective is that it raises the
> question of who is Dolly? How much of her life circumstances could
> be changed while still allowing us to think of her as the same person?
I suggest that the answer may be different for animals than for
people, accepting that it's of course all a continuum anyway.
> Conventionally we draw a line and say that minor changes would preserve
> identity - if I had had a different breakfast today, I would be the
> same person. But sufficiently large changes would commonly be said to
> change this - I would have been a different person if I had been adopted,
> or if I had a different set of siblings.
Yes, since identical twins are found by the people who
know them to be different people---something that would
not be true of me and my duplicate---then we should say
that such early influences would for sure have made you
someone else.
> However for some purposes we need to adopt a more inclusive position where
> even large changes can be considered to preserve identity. From this
> point of view, the name is like a label or token which would apply to a
> different entity in each possible world.
Here you (and perhaps Robin) have completely lost me.
This sort of identity is very cheap. We re-label the
actual entities, or in computer-speak, create other
pointers to them. So if in the Bronx there is another
Lee Corbin, who even has my social security number due
to a snafu, and is often confused by people with me,
it does NOT change the reality in any way. How can
you suggest this?
> As long as we can come up with a consistent naming scheme that
> applies the labels to entities across the worlds, we can consider
> the entities carrying that name to be the same identity.
How positively weird.
> We saw some examples of this in our discussion of some of Robin Hanson's
> "agree to disagree" economic results a few years ago. Part of his
> reasoning required considering the possibility that pairs of individuals
> were born with circumstances and predispositions exchanged, in order to
> analyze rationally when people should disagree. This analysis predisposes
> a notion of identity similar to what I have described above, where I can
> consider what might have happened if I had been born as, say, George Bush,
> with his genetics and upbringing.
Well, perhaps some peculiar economic argument might be
advanced by these suppositions---one does in fact find
that many times clear and absurd simplifications allow
new insights or are computationally expedient, but this
doesn't so far seem to have any applicability here.
> So we can disapprove of Dolly's creation without necessarily saying that
> she would have been better off dead. We could say that she would have
> been better off healthy.
Oh, yes, right. Exactly so! In another thread I described a
preference relation ">" and suggested something similar to
healthy > unhealthy > null
which I think made the distinctions clearer for some people.
Sometimes mathematical notation, besides inveigling us to
give something greater credence than it deserves, can also
simplify main ideas.
> The question remains though as to whether any sheep would have been born
> to take Dolly's place if she had not been cloned. And this arises even
> more for human cloning, where at least in the early days the technology
> seems likely to be applied mostly in cases where people are unable
> to reproduce otherwise. If the alternative to the cloning is to have
> no one born, human or sheep, then we really are back to the situation
> raised by Lee, where you have to claim that the clone is better off dead
> in order to condemn their birth.
You seem inarguably right on this point. How can people want
to deny having offspring to people who won't be able to obtain
them? HOW CAN THEY BE SO DAMNED INVASIVE AND MEDDLING ANYWAY?
sorry
> Summing up, if cloning allows for more people to be born than would be
> possible otherwise, it is hard to object unless the clones' lives are
> so terrible that they all commit suicide as soon as possible to end
> their agonizing existence. But if there are alternatives to cloning
> that still allow just as many people to be born (including adoption of
> healthy babies birthed by others), then we could say that the cloning
> is wrong if it creates people who are less healthy than would have
> been born in the alternative.
Yes, that's so. But we don't know for sure that such a tradeoff
would materialize, and it may indeed be that cloning is a positive
gain in the number of people. Besides, the technology must of
course be opened up in order that we explore the future. Not to
rant again about the nasty, stupid, hyper-cautious, restrictive,
freedom-denying, meddling passage of new laws!
> At this point it looks to me like the second circumstance holds,
> that cloning will not substantially increase the number of human
> beings in the world, so this suggests that it is proper to condemn
> cloning if it leads to unhealthy babies.
Why wouldn't a mature cloning technology substantially
increase the number of people? Why, I myself would go
get two or three new clones of me alone. Besides, the
"unhealthy babies" will be a mere transition effect,
not to be even significant at all in comparison to the
years of delay of the advent of millions. Moreover,
you yourself gave excellent arguments that these
relatively unhealthy babies are THEMSELVES better off
in most cases. As for the other cases, there is always
youth in Asia.
Lee
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