From: Petter Wingren-Rasmussen (petterwr@gmail.com)
Date: Tue Feb 10 2009 - 14:29:14 MST
On Tue, Feb 10, 2009 at 1:43 AM, Filipe Sobreira <warlordbcm1@yahoo.com.br>
wrote:
> Well, since English is not my native language, and typing anything really
> meaningful takes LOTS of time for me, I'll just paraphrase someone whose
> opinion is exactly the same as mine. He managed to express incredibly well
> his viewpoint on this subject, and since we think the same, I've decided
> that I could be more successful using his terms than my own. His name is
> David Jackson, and he usually posts on another list I lurk. So here we go:
I agree with your quote of Jackson on most parts, but I think you both miss
two important points:
1. Subjectively all living things are not of equal value.
I value any human being more than a potato.
I value any of you who participate on this list more than a person that i
have never had any contact with at all.
I value my family more than any of you.
Now, if a copy could be made of myself, through uploading or any other means
- that new identity will know me better than anyone and i will know it/him
equally well. Our opinions will be the same regarding every subject and I
think the value of this new identity for me will be equally valuable as my
closest family, probably even more so (in the sense that I´d rather
testament everything to him than to anyone else).
>From this perspective uploading becomes meaningful, but not risk-free and
not something worth sacrificing everything else for.
2. I *believe* the continuation of self to be an illusion. I am not the same
person now that i was a second ago. The only thing that connects us is my
current memory of being that person one second ago.
If I am copied perfectly, both the resulting versions will be new and none
of them will be a continuation of my old self, they will only have that
memory.
This is just a belief, and not a particularly strong one, in my current
version of self. Right now I wouldnt sacrifice my life for an "eternal"
upload.
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Wed Jul 17 2013 - 04:01:04 MDT