indeed. The memory criterion reveals itself to be problematic the moment you consider partial transfers. If you transfer all my memories, we've decided, per the criterion, that I would wake up at the destination. But what if you transferred all but one memory? 75%? 50%? Via the sorites paradox, you'd have to conclude that a null transfer still allows you to wake up in the new body. Or you could conclude there is some critical percentage where you go from not arriving to arriving in the new body, which is absurd. Or you conclude only a 100% complete transfer allows you to wake in the new body. But that's even worse, when we don't consider *gaining* memories equally destructive to identity. Imagine we have a mind M at t0 with a certain set of memories. At t1 it gains a new memory. At t2 it losses that memory. It would mean that M0 = M1, M0 = M2 and M1 != M2.
Instead we have to consider the subjective *illusion* of identity, independent of the question of actual identity. Then the answer is clear. The more memories I transfer the more the new body will believe it is me, the veracity of that belief being an empty question. in the case of a complete transfer the illusion will be total and complete. A partial transfer will create a weaker illusion. If I transfer just a few memories, it will seem to the destination person that they had a dream where they where me, but Zhaungzi will realize he is not the butterfly. Along another line of thought, the social construct of my identity is deeply dependent on my mind being tied to a body that looks very much like the body it had yesterday. The moment that assumption doesn't hold, punishment breaks down. You can no longer tell who you're dealing with by looking. Obvious solution 1 is to tightly regulate memory transfers. If the government can make them effectively impossible to perform then we can stay in dreamland, retaining the social construct of identity. Barring that, if memory transfers are possible, then there is no way to deter *someone* from using them to escape punishment. This is a tenuous point, but i think it follows from throwing out the fact of identity while retaining the illusion. Call it a conjecture. We'll come back to this. Now suppose the government did regular memory scans to track who's who. Memory finngerprinting. Just overlook how this is the most total breach of privacy possible... They would get some sort of similarity measure and use that to track closest continuer subjective threads. The problem is that it's possible to simply make your subjective thread disappear for some time to reappear later. I will use letters to represent bodies and numbers for minds. The dash indicates their association A - 1 B - 2 C - 3 Then 2 splits into 4 and 5. 4 is added to A, 5 is added to C, 3 overwrites the contents of B. A - 1,4 B - 3' C - 3, 5 The operation can be reversed at a later date reconstiting 2. The point im trying to make is that any person can just cease to exist only to reappear later. This is even simpler if we can just write the memories to a hard drive. Then there is no need to hide parts of 2 in other bodies. The second point is that there is always reasonable doubt that you were in control of your body when you committed a crime. A1 kidnaps B2, stores 2 on a drive. B1' commits a crime (say a kidnapping!) 1 and 1' merge in body A. A1 returns 2 to B. You could say that 2 has no memories of commiting the crime so he'll get off. But if that's all it takes for innocence then a criminal can just erase his memories of committing a crime. I mean we could play with this more but I'd rather get to where I'm going with this. I want to say that punishing *people* for what they did (for deterrence or retributive reasons) is simply intractable in this situation. Instead, one has to lower their level of abstraction to memes. A memeplex caused a body to act in a certain way. At the mind On Friday, April 24, 2015, Stathis Papaioannou <[email protected] <javascript:_e(%7B%7D,'cvml','[email protected]');>> wrote: > > > On Saturday, April 25, 2015, Dennis Ochei <[email protected]> wrote: > >> Here's the clincher. >> >> 1. Suppose I erase my body's memories after. Do I go to jail? >> >> 2. Suppose I erase the memories of this body. I find another body (say a >> laboratory synthesized one with no memories) and download my memories onto >> it. Does the new body go to jail? >> >> 3. I commit a crime and then a buddy of mine, who had no knowledge of the >> crime decides he wants to experience my memories. He downloads the entirety >> of my memories while retaining his own. Does he go to jail? >> >> 4. I commit a crime, then I kidnap someone and forcibly download their >> memories onto my brain, retaining my own. I then delete their memories. >> Memory transfer technology is at such a stage that it is not possible to >> transfer or delete selected memories. So it is impossible to remove my >> memories without removing my victim's. Do I go to jail? >> >> 5. I commit a crime, then I kidnap someone and forcibly download my >> memories onto their brain, without erasing theirs. I then delete my >> memories. Memory transfer technology is at such a stage that it is not >> possible to transfer or delete selected memories. So it is impossible to >> remove my memories without removing my victim's. Does my kidnapped victim >> go to jail? >> >> >> At first glance, you want to say no to 1, but then someone could just >> backup their memories, leave themselves a note on where to restore them, >> and then waltz out of the country. Reminds me a bit of the anime Death Note. >> >> You want to say yes to 2, but that seems to entail saying yes to 3-5, and >> you really don't wanna say yes to 5. Even of you evade that entailment it >> seems your answers to 3-5 have to be the same. >> > > > Well, not only is the concept of personal identity, problematic, so is > the concept of guilt and free will. If I kill someone and I did it because > of the way I was born and the way my environment was it's not my fault, and > if I did it due to randomness it's not my fault. So the practical solution > to questions of crime and punishment is to do what will deter crime. In > particular, people should be deterred from using copying and memory > transfer to commit crimes and avoid punishment. > > > -- > Stathis Papaioannou > > -- > You received this message because you are subscribed to a topic in the > Google Groups "Everything List" group. > To unsubscribe from this topic, visit > https://groups.google.com/d/topic/everything-list/xrPfkrIWCWw/unsubscribe. > To unsubscribe from this group and all its topics, send an email to > [email protected]. > To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. > Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. > For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. > -- Sent from Gmail Mobile -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. 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