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TheOtherDave comments on Are multiple uploads equivilant to extra life? - Less Wrong
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If it turns out that my various components, upon being disassembled by a bullet, cannot function independently as distinct people, then the implicit analogy fails.
I don't think the analogy fails, but I do see a couple narrow objections.
1) If you believe that in being tasked with simulating you, the other people are made unable to live out their lives as they wish, then we may be saving them through your death. In this case, I would say that it is still death, and still bad in that respect, but possibly not on balance. If those people are there by their own free will, and feel that simulating TheChineseDave is their calling in life, then the morality plays out differently.
2) If you pause the experiment but do not destroy the data, such that people (the same or others) may pick up where they left off, then it is closer to cryonic suspension than death. To make it truly analogous, we might require destruction of their notes (or at least enough of them to prohibit resumption).
Aside from those, I cannot see any relevant difference between the components making up TheChineseDave and those making up TheOtherDave - in both cases, it's the system that is conscious. Is there anything you think I have overlooked?
Nope, that's pretty much it. #1, in particular, seems important.
Important to whether it is murder, but not to whether something was killed, unless I am missing something.
I suppose "bullet" may have been a poor choice, as there may be too many cached associations with murder, but bullets can certainly take life in situations we view as morally justified - in this case, defense of others.
Agreed that bullets can take life in morally justifiable ways.
I'm not sure what you're responding to, but I'm pretty sure it's something I didn't say.
Your original comment implied an analogy between disassembling the team implementing TheChineseDave on the one hand, and a bullet in your brain. I replied that the implicit analogy fails, because disassembling the team implementing TheChineseDave frees up a bunch of people to live their lives, whereas a bullet in your brain does not do so.
What you seem to be saying is that yes, that's true, but the analogy doesn't fail because that difference between the two systems isn't relevant to whatever point it is you were trying to make in the original comment.
Which may well be true... I'm not quite sure what point you were making, since you left that implicit as well.
My point was, "I don't see any way in which it is not 'killing', and I think turning the question around makes this clearer." A bullet in my brain doesn't destroy most of my constituent parts (all of my constituent atoms are preserved, nearly all of my constituent molecules and cells are preserved), but destroys the organization. Destroying that organization is taking a life, whether the organization is made up of cells or people or bits, and I expect it to be morally relevant outside extremely unusual circumstances (making a backup and then immediately destroying it without any intervening experience is something I would have a hard time seeing as relevant, but I could perhaps be convinced).
The fact of the act of killing is what I was saying was preserved. I was not trying to make any claim about the total moral picture, which necessarily includes details not specified in the original framework. If the people were prisoners, then I agree that it's not murder. If the people were employees, that's an entirely different matter. If enthusiasts (maybe a group meets every other Tuesday to simulate TheChineseDave for a couple hours), it's something else again. Any of these could reasonably be matched by a parallel construction in the bullet case; in particular, the prisoner case seems intuitive - we will kill someone who is holding others prisoner (if there is no other option) and not call it murder.
Ah, gotcha. Thanks for clarifying.
I'm glad it did, in fact, clarify!