Subject: [extropy-chat] Re: Engineered Religion

From: ben <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 23 Mar 2005 21:53:26 +0000

Re: Engineered Religion:

> So, do you regard yourself as completely lacking in a sense of humor
> all the time, or just when your anti-catholic bigotry is showing?
> John's post was pretty funny. Too bad you are too dogmatic to
> appreciate it. Funny that, for an atheist...

Hey, who you calling an atheist?

A humourless, bigoted one, at that.

I refuse to rise to such trollery.

Interesting concept, actually, 'anti-catholic bigotry'.
It /sounds/ like one of those logical conundrums, but maybe it isn't.
Rather like being intolerant of intolerance.
I'm going to have to think about it.

Joseph Bloch:
>I've gotta say, I agree with Mike (it's night here, so I can't tell if
>the sun has stopped in the heavens, but I'm sure I'll know come morning).

I can do miracles!

Pretty good going, for an 'atheist'!

OK, OK, maybe i hadn't had enough caffiene, and if i took a joke from
John C Wright the wrong way, i apologise.

I still think they are good questions, though, even if i didn't put them
very well.

The thing that really does puzzle me is WHY are people so happy to
abdicate responsibility?
I know that people are basically lazy (me especially!), but letting
someone else decide what's right and
wrong for you is just taking things too far. What's the point of even
being alive if you're going to do that?

 From Jeff Medina:

>To Mike & Joseph:

>You might note that Ben's e-mail reply quoted john-c-wright in the 
following manner:

>"[email-masked] schreibt"

> 'Schreibt' is German, and having it as his default e-mail setting
> indicates English is a second language. So we might want to lighten up
> on his misreading of John's humor. ;)

Nein! nein!

Das ist nicht wahr!

Englisch ist mein first language!

Na, none of this is true. I just like the look of 'schreibt'. See, i
can't even say "first language" in German.

Thanks for the consideration, Jeff, but you can join the others in
savaging my lack of humour and my
rabid atheism if you like. Me speak english plenty ok.

ben

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---

From: ben <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 23 Mar 2005 21:53:31 +0000

Damien wrote:

At 10:49 PM 3/23/2005 +1100, Brett wrote:

>>Would it be accurate to characterise your position then Damien as being
>>that you could derive no further confidence in the rightness of your 
position
>>on this issue from any third-party judging process so it would be 
pointless
>>to explore the composition of such a judging process?

>Precisely. I know Eugen and others are equally adamant that the 
contrary is
>true and self-evident, which I find incomprehensible. It keeps coming 
back
>to this: if someone persuades me that in a trillion years or so, random
>recurrence will generate an exact equivalent to me as I am at the moment,
>hould I feel okay about someone blowing my head off right now? After all,
>"I'll" be alive again (or still alive, or something) in the remote 
future.
>Bullshit, sez I. Blow your own damn head off.

>Given this assessment, how could *any* gathering of judges convince me
>otherwise?

>This rejection is not necessarily to be conflated with a cryonics 
procedure
>that recovers me from vitrification, perhaps even by making cell-by-cell
>copies in situ. I do see the slippery slope here, which is why I'm not
>altogether persuaded of the merits of most cryonics-style programs. True,
>it will be wonderful for everyone *else* to have a copy of me around, :)
>but what's in it for *me*?

This seems to be an argument about what constitutes "me".

Is "me" a particular configuration of information-processing processes,
together with a particular set of memories, or is it a mysterious,
nebulous, indefinable essence? (is there another possibility? I don't
think there is, but i'd like to hear any opinions)

If you accept the former, then yes, the 'identical copy' IS you.
Completely and utterly you, so long as it is an *identical* copy (in
terms of the information processes, memories, etc., that is).

If you assert the latter, then - well, sounds pretty much like a
classical soul to me, so you are a cartesian dualist.

And, yes, i know that this leads to the problem of who is who if you are
copied, with the original still existing after the copying process. I
don't actually think there is a problem. You are both you. Two you's.
Both equally and completely you.
Does this make no sense? Only, i think, to a dualist. It might be
difficult to grasp, but so's quantum mechanics. That doesn't make it untrue.

ben

---

From: Jef Allbright <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 23 Mar 2005 14:13:23 -0800

> difficult to grasp, but so's quantum mechanics. That doesn't make it 
Ben -

While I fully with you regarding the identity of copies, please be 
warned that this topic has been argued extensively and repeatedly in the 
past and you may be expected to read the archives before reinitiating it.

- Jef

---

From: Jeff Medina <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 23 Mar 2005 17:14:26 -0500

Damien,

How is being cryogenically frozen and awoken in 20 years different
being frozen and awoken after 1 day? How is either different (in some
sense that is relevant to identity considerations) from the way you
'disappear' when you take a nap or go under anaesthesia for surgery
and later reappear?

Jeff

---

From: Damien Broderick <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 23 Mar 2005 16:24:21 -0600

At 05:14 PM 3/23/2005 -0500, Jeff wrote:

>being frozen and awoken after 1 day?

It's not.

>How is either different (in some

It's not, assuming that no disruptive intervention is required such as 
burning the frozen brain to a gas of atoms while compiling a copy across 
the room. Maybe this is a superstitious prejudice on my part--it certainly 
has *nothing* to do with dualism or souls, the customary boring retort--but 
proximate continuity with replacement (what we have now) is somehow the key.

But as you told Ben, this topic is all done-to-death-and-back-again archive 
material. I'm not interested in making a copy of it. :)

Damien Broderick

---

From: "Brett Paatsch" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 24 Mar 2005 10:07:51 +1100

Damien Broderick replied to Jeff Medina:

> But as you told Ben, this topic is all done-to-death-and-back-again 
> archive material. I'm not interested in making a copy of it. :)

It was Jef Allbright who said (effectively) that the topic is all done to 
death.

Its very hard to get a meta discussion relating to this topic going that 
explores
aspects that haven't been done entirely to death because, quite naturally, 
people
on this list are interested and they will ask the questions that interest 
them. Then,
its hard not to be rude to them when their interest is genuine. These meta
discussions have a lot of trouble achieving escaped velocity.

I'm not sorry for bringing this up and trying to get meta, (to look at 
issues
of judging with respect to idea futures and the nature of degrees of 
certainty
in different domains and whether it is possible to resolve certain types of
disagreement) but I'm sorry that getting meta is so hard to do, and I've
almost dragged you into it Damien. And you are so very good at not
getting dragged into it :-)

You are right, I would be pleased to have a copy of you around even if
it wasn't you. But that's me being selfish.

"Alas, poor" Broderick, "I knew him, Horatio", .... 'good thing *I* have
his upload or *I* might have suffered some sort of loss'.

Brett

---

From: Damien Broderick <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 23 Mar 2005 17:33:52 -0600

>It was Jef Allbright who said (effectively) that the topic is all done to 

Oops. But then "Jeff" is just the logician's way of abbreviating 
"Jef-and-only-Jef".

Damien Broderick
[iff only]

---

From: Jef Allbright <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 23 Mar 2005 16:10:22 -0800

Damien Broderick wrote:

>> It was Jef Allbright who said (effectively) that the topic is all 
>> done to death.
>
>
Actually, this topic is particularly interesting to me, mainly due to 
the way it touches on the nature of self, which I see as essential to 
development of rational ethical theory.

Another reason I find this fascinating is that it's one of the few 
topics where I find myself in sharp disagreement with Damien, who is 
otherwise quite thoughtful and open to concepts that go against our 
evolved biases.  ;-)

I'd be happy to discuss this, IFF we have new information or a new approach.

- Jef

---

From: Dan Clemmensen <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 23 Mar 2005 22:48:28 -0500

> Oops. But then "Jeff" is just the logician's way of abbreviating 
Damienn, is that youu?