From: Lee Corbin (lcorbin@tsoft.com)
Date: Sun Jan 05 2003 - 12:22:06 MST
J. Hughes writes (and fails to appropriately attribute Eliezer)
>> *Before* the fact, and only before the fact, a parent has a
>> responsibility to give birth to the best possible child, with
>> the highest potential and greatest probability of happiness.
> Your position is perfectly consistent with the majority of bioethics.
> The only people who argue for equal rights for the unborn are
> (a) Catholics who argue on the basis of potential for personhood
> (b) the disability rights hardliners who implicitly argue that any
> selection against disability... is a crime against those future
> disabled people.
Here it is the Catholics who had it right. The "disability rights"
hardliners maintain that if the choice is between a disabled person
and a non-disabled person being instantiated, then they prefer the
former. Personally, I disagree with them, but it may come down to
who should decide, and whether a disabled person should have the
legal right to conceive another disabled person. At moments like
this I tend to lose my temper and shout WHOSE BUSINESS IS IT ANYWAY?
That patterns already exist is something which doesn't come
easily to even most 21st century people. Greg Egan, in
"Permutation City" raised consciousness on this topic as
so often science fiction writers are the first to do. With
his "Theory of Dust", he helps to prepare minds for the idea
that whether a pattern exists on in computer memory, or on
disk, or on paper cards, or in a biological organism, or at
certain places in intergalactic space in the form of dust
particles, doesn't matter a whit. Patterns are forever.
To illustrate, consider the integer
8051212150013250014011305000919001205050003151802
09140000002505190009000113000114000914200507051802
21200013250016012020051814000919002008012000150600
01001805011200160518191514000524091920091407151400
05011820080000000000000104000000090001130012051919
00200801140001000715150712050012151407022120001920
09121200011900251521002309121200190505002008051805
00091900141500041521022000200801200900011300080500
00000900080122050008091900041401000008091900130513
15180905190000080919000205120905061901140400160518
19151401120920250004091916151909200915141900000003
15141921122000200805002305090708202520010212050015
06000315142005142019000409180503201225000615121215
23091407...
which by a most transparent cipher reads
"Hello my name is Lee Corbin. Yes I am an integer
but my pattern is that of a real person existing
on Earth 2003 AD. I am less than a google long
but still as you will see there is no doubt that
I am he. I have his DNA, his memories, his beliefs
and personality dispositions. Consult the weighty
table of contents directly following..."
A particular integer of this class exists as certainly
as does the number 17, and like 17 has many objective
properties. That this integer is not as *manifest*
to human intelligence as the number 17 doesn't change
the reality.
Why should some strings such as the above get run time
and not others? More importantly, who should decide?
The answers are clear if you cast away ancient prejudices
and try to be logical.
Lee
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