From: Mike Dougherty (msd001@gmail.com)
Date: Mon Dec 26 2005 - 18:36:02 MST
[Remy Webb] If all energy/matter is recycled, reborn, and reused then
tautologically speaking how is a more complex lifeform which replaces us
inherently wrong in destroying us?
the concept of "inherently wrong" is unqualified. Is "survival of the
fittest" inherently wrong? Is the sum of the angles of a triangle equal to
180 degrees inherently wrong? (imo) No, the animal kingdom has operated
without our moral judgement of right or wrong long before we had an opinion
(or awareness of it) - and the topology of the surface in question will
determine the possible angular measure of any set of triangles.
if "destroying us" is conceptually similar to a database record deletion,
then it may be a naturally occurring feature of the larger system in which
this event takes place. There may be transaction logs that still record the
insert and update events which could be used to reconstruct the life cycle
of that record. Similarly a "more complex lifeform" may have the resources
to arbitrarily resume "us" at any point along that lifecycle - effectively
undestroying the state of information which records our existance. (think
of a backup restore after a system crash) It does not matter whether this
happens or not because we would have no influence over its 'right or
wrong'-ness in either case.
[Remy Webb] What phase are we in within this consciousness organization
modality?
I don't believe we are necessarily all within the same organization any more
than every employee of a large company is within the same department or at
the same level of the org chart. Some individual conciousness encompass a
wide/shallow range, while others are narrow/deep. If the question attempts
to measure the mean consciousness of humanity, then I would ask you to bound
the ranges of lowest and highest measures - Is the mere conceptualization of
"angels" or "demons" with their supposed 'supernatural' powers over the
affairs of mere mortals within the realm of humanity due to the fact that
they have been conceived of by mankind? Or are we talking about the
"everyday" version of human v1.0 who goes to work everyday, in which the
readers of this list are a possible exception? Or are "we" specifically the
readers of this list? I'm sure the "phase" would be depend on your
intention.
[Remy Webb] In context, is there truly such a thing as death?
death as an end of information, or the end of a particular viewpoint of
processing information? If the hardware currently running my
personality/perspective software is destroyed without a backup copy of that
software, then the record of experience probably continues as a ripple of
cause and effective throughout the medium of this universe - but the ability
for new information to be processed by the sum of my neural net programming
is lost as surely as the current state of my computer's RAM is lost if I
unplug the electricity. Is my current sense of "self" merely a node in a
more vast network of rendundant storage? (either parallel universes in
quantum flux, waiting for the collapse of a wave equation, or one of many
serialized instances of a base object class) Again, in either case my
current working knowledge is not impacted by the "reality" of the underlying
implementation. Referring back to the "more complex lifeform" may require
the belief in a 'soul' or some other containing object to manage state
between instances or across redundancies. Referring back to the notion of
"phases" of conciousness, the meaning of death would be dependant on the
context of consciousness being extinguished or removed from the
computational resources in question.
BTW, is there a preference on this list for top or bottom posting? Or is it
normal to mix quotes and replies throughout the body of a post? It seems
easier to mix in a multi-question thread than to lump together many out of
context responses.
fwiw: no "join" post - I figured I'd just jump in and get to know everyone
through interaction.
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