In the thought experiment you describe, they’ve preserved the data and not the patterns of interaction (that is, they’ve replaced a dynamic system with a static snapshot of that system), and something of value is therefore missing, although they have preserved the ability to restore the missing component at their will.
If they execute the model and allow the resulting patterns of interaction to evolve in an artificial environment they control, then yes, that would be just as valuable to me as taking the original living people and putting them into an artificial environment they control.
I understand that there’s something else in the original that you value, which I don’t… or at least, which I haven’t thought about. I’m trying to understand what it is. Is it the atoms? Is it the uninterrupted continuous existence (e.g., if you were displaced forward in time by two seconds, such that for a two-second period you didn’t exist, would that be better or worse or the same as destroying you and creating an identical copy two seconds later?) Is it something else?
Similarly, if you valued a postage stamp printed in the 1800s more than the result of destructively scanning such a stamp and creating an atom-by-atom replica of it, I would want to understand what about the original stamp you valued, such that the value was lost in that process.
Thus far, the only answer I can infer from your responses is that you value being the original… or perhaps being the original, if that’s different… and the value of that doesn’t derive from anything, it’s just a primitive. Is that it?
If so, a thought experiment for you in return: if I convince you that last night I scanned xxd and created an identical duplicate, and that you are that duplicate, do you consequently become convinced that your existence is less valuable than you’d previously thought?
I guess from your perspective you could say that the value of being the original doesn’t derive from anything and it’s just a primitive because the macro information is the same except for position (thought the quantum states are all different even at point of copy). But yes I value the original more than the copy because I consider the original to be me and the others to be just copies, even if they would legally and in fact be sentient beings in their own right.
Yes, if I woke up tomorrow and you could convince me I was just a copy then this is something I have already modeled/daydreamed about and my answer would be: I’d be disappointed that I wasn’t the original but glad that I had existence.
In the thought experiment you describe, they’ve preserved the data and not the patterns of interaction (that is, they’ve replaced a dynamic system with a static snapshot of that system), and something of value is therefore missing, although they have preserved the ability to restore the missing component at their will.
If they execute the model and allow the resulting patterns of interaction to evolve in an artificial environment they control, then yes, that would be just as valuable to me as taking the original living people and putting them into an artificial environment they control.
I understand that there’s something else in the original that you value, which I don’t… or at least, which I haven’t thought about. I’m trying to understand what it is. Is it the atoms? Is it the uninterrupted continuous existence (e.g., if you were displaced forward in time by two seconds, such that for a two-second period you didn’t exist, would that be better or worse or the same as destroying you and creating an identical copy two seconds later?) Is it something else?
Similarly, if you valued a postage stamp printed in the 1800s more than the result of destructively scanning such a stamp and creating an atom-by-atom replica of it, I would want to understand what about the original stamp you valued, such that the value was lost in that process.
Thus far, the only answer I can infer from your responses is that you value being the original… or perhaps being the original, if that’s different… and the value of that doesn’t derive from anything, it’s just a primitive. Is that it?
If so, a thought experiment for you in return: if I convince you that last night I scanned xxd and created an identical duplicate, and that you are that duplicate, do you consequently become convinced that your existence is less valuable than you’d previously thought?
I guess from your perspective you could say that the value of being the original doesn’t derive from anything and it’s just a primitive because the macro information is the same except for position (thought the quantum states are all different even at point of copy). But yes I value the original more than the copy because I consider the original to be me and the others to be just copies, even if they would legally and in fact be sentient beings in their own right.
Yes, if I woke up tomorrow and you could convince me I was just a copy then this is something I have already modeled/daydreamed about and my answer would be: I’d be disappointed that I wasn’t the original but glad that I had existence.
OK.