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Mark_Friedenbach comments on Continuity in Uploading - Less Wrong Discussion

7 Post author: Error 17 January 2014 10:57PM

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Comment author: [deleted] 18 January 2014 09:41:39AM *  0 points [-]

What about if your mind is uploaded, then downloaded into your clone previously grown without any brain functions? Would you consider the new meat you as "you"?

Why would he? I predict he clearly would not, since he was already dead. What point are you trying to make?

Comment author: Error 20 January 2014 05:43:38PM 1 point [-]

Upvoted for correct prediction.

Comment author: shminux 18 January 2014 09:24:24PM 0 points [-]

My next question would have been about what Error feels about star trek-style transporters (which temporarily convert a person into a plasma beam).

Comment author: Aleksander 19 January 2014 05:21:50PM *  0 points [-]

And he in turn might respond by asking how you feel about thinking like a dinosaur.

Comment author: Error 20 January 2014 05:46:33PM 1 point [-]

I would not be enthusiastic about Star Trek transporters, no. And yes, I would like to know how shminux feels about thinking like a dinosaur; that does seem to capture my intuitions rather well.

Comment author: shminux 20 January 2014 07:17:50PM *  -1 points [-]

First, I would like to acknowledge that ready access to a cloning tech would require a significant reevaluation of metaethics.

Second, dealing with lost ACKs is the least of the worries, and the show's premise resulted from a poorly constructed communication protocol. So this particular issue can be solved technologically. For example: mandatory induced unconsciousness similar to general anesthesia, for the duration of transport and success confirmation process, to prevent the subject from anxiously waiting for positive confirmation if the initial ACK is lost.

Just to have a taste of the real ethical issues of cloning, note that many forms of utilitarianism mandate immediately creating as many clones as possible as long as their lives are at least "barely worth celebrating", in Eliezer's words. Another issue is cloning the most useful individuals at the expense of the quality of life of the least useful. Refer to your favorite transhumanist sci-fi for more details and examples.

I recall a humorous one of the Lem's Ijon Tichy stories (can't find a link ATM), where on one of the planets under constant heavy meteorite bombardment the mandatory logging and cloning tech was used as a routine way to revive the victims, replacing fatalities with minor inconveniences.

Finally, yours and Mark_Friedenbach's aversion to radical versions of suspended animation is so foreign to me, I have trouble steelmanning your position.

Comment author: Aleksander 20 January 2014 11:50:03PM 2 points [-]

I recall a humorous one of the Lem's Ijion Tichy stories (can't find a link ATM), where on one of the planets under constant heavy meteorite bombardment the mandatory logging and cloning tech was used as a routine way to revive the victims, replacing fatalities with minor inconveniences.

It's the Twenty-Third Voyage in Star Diaries.