RE: Duplicates are Selves

From: Robert J. Bradbury (bradbury@aeiveos.com)
Date: Fri Apr 04 2003 - 22:44:37 MST

  • Next message: Ramez Naam: "RE: manganese SOD and CR"

    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



    This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Fri Apr 04 2003 - 22:51:35 MST