From: Andrew Hay (andwhay@gmail.com)
Date: Tue Feb 03 2009 - 17:44:09 MST
"all sufficiently indistinguishable versions of myself are me" seems to be a
rather strong statement without the required strong evidence/reasoning
backing it up.
Not that I'm helping, because I don't know the answer. Perhaps it is a fault
at 'indistinguishable'? in any case, I can't be safe to assume that unless
we have a good understanding of what the meaning behind "me" is.
On Wed, Feb 4, 2009 at 12:24 PM, Charles Hixson
<charleshixsn@earthlink.net>wrote:
> Matt Mahoney wrote:
>
>> ....
>> What's not so clear is whether the outcome is good or bad. It is like
>> asking whether you benefit from a teleportation device that makes a copy of
>> you at your desired destination and slowly crushes the original to death. It
>> depends on how you define "you".
>>
>> -- Matt Mahoney, matmahoney@yahoo.com
>>
> Why in the world "slowly"? Unless there's some required reason, then any
> device that slowly tortures someone, anyone, to death *HAS* to be considered
> unethical. It doesn't matter whether it's you or not.
>
> P.S.: From my point of view, all sufficiently indistinguishable versions
> of myself are me. Note that before I enter the transporter, both resulting
> copies will be "me". Afterwards, each of them will be me to itself, and the
> other will not. But the other will be an "extremely close blood
> relation"...closer than either a parent or a sib. Me is the entity that
> can control the peripherals that I can control. An example might be a hand,
> but it might also be a car that I'm driving. (If I can't control it, I'm
> not driving it.) This is (part of) the basis of the phantom limb problem.
>
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