Whoops, accidentally hit send. As i was saying, at the mind fingerprinting the government has to look for criminal memeplexes and render them inert. For instance let's say a criminal memplex is composed of two major subunits, the desire to commit the crime and the know-how to commit the crime. If the government detects them in the same body then one has to be deleted or modified. Crimes would be attributed to "mind-viruses".
Now, at first glance directly modifying minds seems very 1984ish. But that's what our criminal justice system is supposed to do *now,* render the desire component of the criminal memeplex inert. This is just a more effective version. Basically we move from a model where we punish people for what the did to to a model where we disassemble memeplexes for what they might cause people to do. This effectively means it will be illegal to have certain ideas in your head. Of course there is no way the American legal system will be able to keep up with this, so it's gonna be a field day if and when memory transfers are possible. On Sunday, April 26, 2015, Dennis Ochei <[email protected]> wrote: > 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]> 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 > -- 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]. 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