From: Lee Corbin (lcorbin@rawbw.com)
Date: Sat Mar 08 2008 - 21:58:24 MST
Stathis writes
>> If Tuesday takes place in a galaxy far, far away, and the initial
>> configuration of Tuesday arises by chance, say, (or from a
>> record of a previous execution), then there is only an infinitesimal
>> loss of consciousness: namely, the instant between Monday and
>> Tuesday.
>
> If the programmer saves the end of Monday on a USB key, walks over to
> the computer a few metres away, loads the data and starts up Tuesday,
> is there still a loss of consciousness?
No. No loss of consciousness. Good question, I think, because
the incredibly tiny loss of consciousness I was talking about
occurred because some state was uncomputed from any previous
state. That is, is in some faraway place all the Tuesday computations
begin, and the first Tuesday state arose by chance (or from some
irrelevant backup), then one iota of consciousness was lost.
But you are taking the last state of Monday and using it to start
Tuesday. So no loss.
Lee
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