[geeks] [rescue] consciousness immortality [was: Sun Sparcstation 20 hard disks]

[Mouse]

>> But, that aside, yes: I'm arguing that you may have a "one person
>> goes in, two come out" process in which the two that come out are
>> basically indistinguishable, so that neither has a stronger claim to
>> being the original than the other.
> one ought to still be organic while the other is solid-state...

Oh, if your target substrate is different technology from the input's,
then yes, it is easy to tell which is "the original".  When talking
about distinguishing copies from originals, I've been assuming that the
destination body is basically identical to the source body.

>> (Unless that turns out to be how it happens to work, of course, but
>> I don't think we're talking about single-shared-mind scenarios
>> here.)
> since twins don't exhibit any sign of single-shared-mind, i think we
> can rule that out...

Identical twins come close enough for me to have some doubt.  (Watching
Henrik and Daniel Sedin play hockey is an example.)  Remember, we're
talking about entities substantially closer to identical than ordinary
"identical" twins, who carry identical genes but have otherwise been
distinct, and thus evolving differently, since the
small-number-of-cells stage.

Or at least I am.  It's possible that silicon-substrate and
protoplasm-substrate bodies will exhibit single-shared-mind - but it
strikes me as relatively unlikely.  (At this point, we actually don't
even know whether silicon-substrate bodies can support anything we can
reasonably call a mind at all; I think that will be a necessary first
step.)

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