From: Stathis Papaioannou (stathisp@gmail.com)
Date: Sat Dec 05 2009 - 19:20:59 MST
2009/12/6 Matt Mahoney <matmahoney@yahoo.com>:
> If a copy of you is made by some means then there will be two people who claim to be you. If one of them is killed then one of them is killed.
>
> I don't understand why this is such a difficult concept.
>
> You ask which copy will be you? What will you experience? These are not well formed questions because "you" is not a well defined concept in a world where minds can be copied. The question only has artificial importance because of this evolved belief in this nonexistent thing that people so desperately want to preserve, sometimes called a "consciousness", "qualia", "experience", or a "soul" that has absolutely no effect on behavior. So why even talk about it? If you taboo the words "you" and "I" then there is no controversy whatsoever.
You're quite right. If we stick to the facts of the matter there is no
dispute. Still, it's interesting to speculate what our atavistic
psychology will make of the facts.
> Really, this whole discussion is getting tedious. I could go through the SL4 archives and find a dozen more just like it if I didn't have more important things to do with my time.
Many people on lists similar to this one seem to get annoyed when the
personal identity discussions come up, but others find it an endless
source of fascination.
-- Stathis Papaioannou
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