Eliezer “This is a black hole that sucks up arguments. Beware. I'll deal with this on Overcoming Bias eventually, but I haven't done many of the preliminary posts that would be required. Meanwhile, I hope you've noticed your confusion about personal identity.”
I look forward to the posts on consciousness, and yes, I don’t feel like I have a super coherent position on this. I struggle to understand how me is still me after I have died, my dead body is frozen, mashed up and then reconstituted some indefinite time in the future. Quarks are quarks but a human is an emergent property of quarks so interchangeability doesn't necessarily follow at a macro scale. (A copy of a painting is not equivalent to the original, no matter how good a copy). This is why I don’t invest in cryonics. To me there should be better continuity to qualify as transference of consciousness, but I can't be explicit on what I mean by better.
...on signing up for cryopreservation with the Cryonics Institute.
(No, it's not a joke.)
Anyone not signed up for cryonics has now lost the right to make fun of Paris Hilton,
because no matter what else she does wrong, and what else you do right,
all of it together can't outweigh the life consequences of that one little decision.
Congratulations, Paris. I look forward to meeting you someday.
Addendum: On Nov 28 '07, Paris Hilton denied being signed up for cryonics. Oh well.