But the original person will still be dead as a doornail. All that will survive will be a simulacrum. Good for everyone but the original, nonetheless.
What is "original"? And is the concept useful or important? Are you the same person as the creature carrying your name a decade ago? How about a year ago? How about yesterday? Between today and yesterday your consiousness ceased to be for a while overnight (several times, actually). What continuity is there but the memory? Your body renews itself over time, replacing the proteins that make up your cells. The cells that comprise Cam of today are not the same ones that were him some time back. Many have died and been replaced. Your entire structure has undergone revision.
The "original" is an illusion maintained by our conscious memory, which itself undergoes constant change. We feel like one continuous entity when in fact we have a stuttering existence broken every night, and often doing things for reasons we are not even conscious of.
The version of you that awakens to inhabit a virtual universe inside a computer is real. It has the memories, emotions, loves, hates that you had when you were scanned into it. If there is a biological version of you at the same time that continues to live for some years more before dying, then all that can be said is that it is another you. In both cases, the purely electronic one, and the biological one, the original version is no more. What remains are two constantly changing descendants.
Fiction story? For any publication in particular?
Yep, fiction story. For myself. It will be freely available. I intend to turn it into a VR "movie" -- a story which is acted out inside VR, so that the audience can wander about inside the story... like stepping inside a film. It is early days yet. Such stuff will become a multibillion dollar industry in the near future. I expect it will completely replace the film industry. Already the computer games industry makes more money than the movie industry. Computer games are a major step towards VR fiction.
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branchandroot
no subject
Date: 2003-03-10 06:42 pm (UTC)What is "original"? And is the concept useful or important?
Are you the same person as the creature carrying your name a decade ago? How about a year ago? How about yesterday? Between today and yesterday your consiousness ceased to be for a while overnight (several times, actually). What continuity is there but the memory? Your body renews itself over time, replacing the proteins that make up your cells. The cells that comprise Cam of today are not the same ones that were him some time back. Many have died and been replaced. Your entire structure has undergone revision.
The "original" is an illusion maintained by our conscious memory, which itself undergoes constant change. We feel like one continuous entity when in fact we have a stuttering existence broken every night, and often doing things for reasons we are not even conscious of.
The version of you that awakens to inhabit a virtual universe inside a computer is real. It has the memories, emotions, loves, hates that you had when you were scanned into it. If there is a biological version of you at the same time that continues to live for some years more before dying, then all that can be said is that it is another you. In both cases, the purely electronic one, and the biological one, the original version is no more. What remains are two constantly changing descendants.
Fiction story? For any publication in particular?
Yep, fiction story. For myself. It will be freely available. I intend to turn it into a VR "movie" -- a story which is acted out inside VR, so that the audience can wander about inside the story... like stepping inside a film. It is early days yet. Such stuff will become a multibillion dollar industry in the near future. I expect it will completely replace the film industry. Already the computer games industry makes more money than the movie industry. Computer games are a major step towards VR fiction.