mwm@ea.UUCP (11/24/84)
/***** ea:net.politics / wucs!esk / 9:16 pm Nov 20, 1984 */ > Remember, you don't HAVE a body, you ARE a body. > Russ Herman {allegra,ihnp4,linus,decvax}!utzoo!aesat!rwh > You may be a body, but I *have* one. I hope to be uploaded to something > more durable in the future -- > "Protect your software at all costs; the rest is meat." > <mike ( mwm@ea.UUCP ) Russ was right. Software without "meat" is worth nothing. > -- (and off we go into another net.philosophy debate.) Ready when you are! --The untiring iconoclast, Paul V Torek, ihnp4!wucs!wucec1!pvt1047 /* ---------- */ Ok, here we go: Of course software without "meat" is worthless. But "meat" without software has only nutritional value; which makes it worthless as far as this discussion goes. Now, read the last line from me carefully: "I hope to be uploaded to *something* ... ." Key word: "something." I claim that "I" can function on other hardware, be it meat, silicon, plasma, or whatever. [I also claim I can *prove* that that can happen, barring dualism!] Therefore, I can change "bodies" - so I am not a body, any more than I am a house. Both are things that "I" temporarily make use of. Therefore, I "have" a body, in the same manner that I "have" a house. <mike
baba@flairvax.UUCP (Baba ROM DOS) (11/28/84)
(Sotware. Is that a new euphemism for booze?) >From: mwm@ea.UUCP > Now, read the last line from me carefully: "I hope to be uploaded to > *something* ... ." Key word: "something." I claim that "I" can function on > other hardware, be it meat, silicon, plasma, or whatever. [I also claim I > can *prove* that that can happen, barring dualism!] Therefore, I can change > "bodies" - so I am not a body, any more than I am a house. Both are things > that "I" temporarily make use of. Therefore, I "have" a body, in the same > manner that I "have" a house. > less-than-mike Well, thank goodness someone has solved the enigma of personal identity. ;-) Seriously, granting for the sake of the discussion that the state and dynamics of the brain are what define individual awareness (or whatever *your* "I" is), and that a reproduction of the same state and functionality is possible in some other medium, isn't your current fleshmobile still going to die, and isn't your current "I" still going to experience that death, regardless of whether or not your soul-appliance is infected with something that will generate net.news? Approximately-Baba
jtm@syteka.UUCP (Jim McCrae) (11/29/84)
Howzabout this? Your "meat" is the 4-D picture you maintain of yourself. Others "meat" is your picture of them. Actually, the body is more of a symbol, an associative marker in real space (which is not space-time) to give you a place to be with all these other beings like you. And the software is your N-D picture of yourself doing things inside your body, i.e., inside your mind. You can have other pictures of yourself, others and your own processes, but you can't leave you. You're all you've got, quite literally. All the rest is a well-coordinated dream of sorts. If you want backing evidence or religious documents re-stating this position, good luck. I don't know of any. "Feelings without explanation, some things are hard to define... like the sound inside your mind, playing all the time, playing with a heart of steel..." -David Byrne Jim McCrae ...!hplabs!sytek!jtm