From: Robert J. Bradbury (bradbury@aeiveos.com)
Date: Fri Apr 04 2003 - 22:44:37 MST
Harvey and Lee raise some very interesting points vis-a-vis whether
teleportation has to use the same atoms.
I think Harvey may have said:
> > I think this is true. I am not sure I know of anyone who objects to being
> > teleported in this manner.
And I think this was assuming the atoms didn't matter -- it was
the organizational pattern of the atoms that was important.
I think Lee then said:
> I was astonished early last year to learn that some highly
> intelligent and thoughtful list members will not teleport.
> That is, on my "Seven Levels of Identity", they are at level
> one or two.
My conclusion is that Harvey & Lee know diffferent sets of people.
Lee then added a *very* useful hierarchy -- that should get written
up so we don't have to rehash these topics every year or so.
> (The seven levels are
>
> 1. Will travel by space warp, but won't permit disassembly of atoms.
Space warp is "magic physics" at this point in time so I think we can
set it aside until Amara, Anders or GTS come up with some more "wierd"
papers out of the LANL preprint archive.
> 2. Will permit teleportation, but only if the same atoms are used.
Very hard (bordering on highly improbable) -- you have to turn matter
into energy, transmit it across a distance then convert it back into
matter. If possible it seems likely to be *very* expensive.
> 3. Will teleport, unless there is a delay.
Can't get around the delay unless you intend to violate speed-of-light
constraints. (So seems to lead back to the "magic physics" realm.)
> 4. Will teleport, but finds backups to be useless.
That is plain stupid and equivalent to signing ones own death
certificate -- I asserted this at Extro3 -- one needs distributed
replicated intelligence to survive the natural (or even engineered)
hazard function.
Now how one connects, utilizes, activates, etc. the "distributed"
intelligence remain open questions (and one people may have personal
preferences about).
> 5. Finds backups acceptable, provided that they've had no run time.
Ok, this seems reasonable assuming some type of upload or teleportation
(atomic pattern copying) technology becomes feasible.
> 6. Anticipates future experiences of duplicates, but only one in
> particular.
It seems hard to "anticipate" future experiences. It seems to suggest
that one can predict the future and that seems unlikely. I think this
point needs reframing.
> 7. Logically, but not necessarily emotionally, anticipates all
> experiences of all duplicates past or future, near or far.
One obviously (if one adheres to speed-of-light limits) has a problem
with the availability of data to "reintegrate" the experiences of
duplicates in "real-time".
I think one problem with these levels is that they seem to presume
the retention of the current concept of an "individual". In a
Jupiter Brain or a Matrioshka Brain one's "individuality" may become
so interconnected with the "collective" that it becomes relatively
difficult or impossible to teleport an individual at all.
How many people on the list would deny themselves the opportunity
to have "instant" access to the knowledge base of the other list
members? Hell -- I'd seriously consider standing in the line
to have my arm broken ten times to get high bandwidth access
to many list members knowledge bases. Once we open up that door
our current concepts of "individual" are going to become somewhat
"fuzzy" (IMO).
Lee continues:
> I claim that this decision rests with owner of the resources,
> perhaps just the owner of the atoms involved. For example, if
> someone came to me and wanted to be teleported to New York, and
> insisted that he would permit me to gratify his wish only if I
> also arranged for the destruction of the original, I would
> reluctantly agree.
>
> But it *is* a dumb waste, isn't it?
No, not if its Lee -- one copy is *completely* sufficient.
:-)
> The core problem is that most people do not realize that they
> are both the original and the copy, in a peculiar way that
> evidently we haven't been prepared by evolution to understand
> intuitively. Duplicates are self.
Yep. This is the heart of the problem. We just don't have a
frame of reference for dealing with copies of ourselves.
Perhaps Damien could provide a summary of the SciFi literature
that has attempted to deal with this in some way.
> (The fool probably is afraid that the original is going to go
> home and sleep with his wife. What is the emoticon for utter
> exasperation?)
Oh, with "copies" you are into much more complex problems than
that -- who has the right/obligation to go to ones job in the
morning, who is contractually obligated to make the mortgage
payments, etc. etc. It is a *REAL* mess.
> Yes, although I suspect that a totally consistent value system
> would not be compatible with the result that an intricate and
> rather marvelous assemblage of atoms (such as the original)
> should be destroyed without a good reason.
Not clear Lee -- the problem is that "assembling" (or disassembling)
atoms is now difficult. But my read of what it seems like robust
nanotech enables is that it need not be that way (there are limits
but it seems like they involve ability to deliver energy and remove
heat). But the probable rates would make most individuals eyes
pop out of their heads. So the "value" of an individual (as
a physical entity) becomes much lower. It is the information
content (as a description of a pattern of atoms) that is valuable.
It is a very different world and I don't think most people are
anywhere near ready to deal with it (emotionally).
Robert
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