Re: [sl4] Re: Uploads coming first would be good, right?

From: John K Clark (johnkclark@fastmail.fm)
Date: Fri Feb 13 2009 - 11:35:15 MST


On Fri, 13 Feb 2009 "Krekoski Ross"
<rosskrekoski@gmail.com> said:

> I find it hard to buy that quantum effects will
> not diverge two minds fairly quickly, even if they
> are in a symmetrical room (Which as we've discussed
> cannot be perfectly symmetrical in a real universe).
 
This getting rather silly, now even the room must be quantum perfect?!
Obviously the room only needs to be good enough so that any
imperfections are below the threshold of unaided human senses to detect.
And even that is vast overkill. Are you really claiming that you’d be a
different person today if the bus bench you sat down on just once when
you were 6 didn’t have that quarter inch scratch in the paint in the
upper left hand corner?

> There are two possibilities-- either our brains are
> quantum computers or they're not. The former possibility
> has no evidence aside from the odd circumstantial
> observation, so we can ignore it.

OK fine, then brains more like regular old computers. But if computers
are that susceptible to chaos why is it that your computer and mine will
almost always come up with the same sequence of digits when we ask our
machines to calculate the value of Pi?

> Even if our brain is describable in classic terms,
> it is still a fairly chaotic system

Then why don’t we change our philosophy of life a hundred times a day?
Why is our personality so stable? Why subjectively do we feel there is a
“me” if it’s all that ephemeral? I know I've asked a lot of questions
but none of them are rhetorical, I’d really like answers.

> Your statement about being reborn a million times a
> nanosecond is, I'm assuming, tongue in cheek.

Nope, if you’re right then your life expectancy is less that a
nanosecond. I don’t think you’re right.

> The information structure doesnt change since you can't destroy information.

Huh? First you say every time a nat farts a new you is born, then you
say nothing changes.

 John K Clark

-- 
  John K Clark
  johnkclark@fastmail.fm
-- 
http://www.fastmail.fm - Or how I learned to stop worrying and
                          love email again


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