RE: Duplicates are Selves

From: Lee Corbin (lcorbin@tsoft.com)
Date: Fri Apr 04 2003 - 01:16:12 MST

  • Next message: Reason: "debate science, get paid"

    Damien writes

    > Lee Corbin claims of teleportation:
    >
    > >if someone had ten experiences of that, I'm sure that
    > >he or she would come around to agreeing with me.
    >
    > This is a really rotten basis for deciding whether something is the case or
    > not. If Lee had ten experiences of whatever Samantha goes through during
    > her mystical union with the divine, he might well be convinced that he'd
    > been in contact with deity. He'd be wrong, almost certainly, but hey.

    Very good point. I have overestimated the utility of experience
    to be a reliable guide to behavior. Unfortunately, I now no longer
    have a good understanding of exactly when experience can be trusted,
    or is advisable to obtain, thanks to you. ;-)

    At first one might say of a particular person's spiritual beliefs,
    "well, those are not publicly verifiable, so let's throw those
    out---they're unscientific".

    But then, what about the "experience of being addicted to X", where
    X is some substance such that if you sample X then nothing else is
    ever important to you again besides sampling more X?

    So now it's "if (a) the experience is publicly verifiable and
    open almost to anyone, and (b) the experience does not noticeably
    alter you, then undergoing the experience is a good guide as to
    its value", but that's getting pretty unwieldy.

    So, I'll just go back to my former claim: if you believe physics
    with all your heart, and so don't suppose that the particular atoms
    that you are composed of have anything to do with who you are, then
    you won't mind teleporting, because the pattern of atoms will be
    the same after as before.

    Lee
     



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