On Sat, Sep 30, 2017 at 7:08 AM, David Nyman <[email protected]> wrote:
> > Actually there have been some quite interesting discussions outside the JC > echo chamber, I think, Quentin. I don't bother with the troll, > So you believe Quentin's ideas are so brilliant that nobody could sincerely disagree with them and I have written hundreds of posts over the years defending a position I did not believe had any value. Hmm... I bet you voted for Trump. > > although I occasionally read your contributions because the degree of, no > doubt understandable, vitriol you have accumulated towards his attitude to > the discussion is quite entertaining. Entertaining in the way intestinal worms are entertaining perhaps. > > Personally I've never been able to understand all the fuss. In a world > with duplication machines we'd just have to accept that other people might > have a legitimate claim to be the successors of the same predecessor as > ourselves. > If you know there will be more than one successor then asking the predecessor what one and only one thing will happen to that predecessor would be a brain dead dumb thing to do. > > > But that couldn't possibly have any bearing on the necessity of finding > ourselves to be one single individual at any given moment. > No bearing? You just said "finding ourselves" and that's plural, so when you ask "what one and only one thing" what the hell are you asking and who are you asking it of? Some very stupid people, such as those that think Quentin is clever, believe it's like a coin flip, but it's nothing like a coin flip! Today I don't know if the flip will end up heads or tails and the best I can do is assign probabilities, but tomorrow I won't need probabilities at all, tomorrow I can state with 100% certainty exactly how it turned out; however with Bruno's thought experiment tomorrow after its completed everybody still will be as ignorant of the answer as they were the day before because it's still not clear what the question was. > > > I suppose it's just barely within the bounds of possibility that some > poor soul might be incapable of understanding what is entailed in BEING > someone as distinct from DESCRIBING someone. But if that were indeed the > case one could only shake one's head and pass on by. Even in a world with people duplicating machines I have no trouble understanding what *BEING* someone means, and I have no trouble understanding what having *BEEN* somebody means, but I have enormous difficulty understanding what the one and only one person I *WILL BE* means. John K Clark John K Clark > -- 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]. Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
