What is murder?

[Flyndaran]

Originally Posted by Agemegos

That depends on whether Flyndaran would have the same interpretation of creating meat successor. If his interpretation is the same with meat at both ends the problem is not biochauvinism.

So let's hear it, Flyndaran. Is it still suicide if the information is used to re-create personality in a bioroid? What about in a young, healthy clone?

I agree with your later post. If there were some way to: copy one hemisphere of my brain, hook it up to the other half, allow me some time to get used to it, and then follow suit with my remaining meat all the while maintaining continuity of consciousness, then I would consider the resulting machine me.

[Khoontshdroos]

Originally Posted by Agemegos

Non-destructive uploading clearly does not transfer my mind onto new hardware, it plainly creates a new mind that shares my memories and has a deluded belief that it is me. We know there isn't just one person, because we can sit them side by side. So since non-destructive uploading is not mind transference, how do you figure that destructive uploading is mind transference?

Yes, that's the point. From a non-scientifical point of view, assuming mind transference is assuming transference of something like "energetics" (in a chinese tradition or the like sense); from a scientifical point of view, the question is a non-sense: a copy of something will not become the original because the original get destroyed. At the other hand, we change all our atoms in I don't remember how much time, something like 1 year. Well, everway I'm in deep trouble. Have to think a lot more about that.

[Khoontshdroos]

Originally Posted by Flyndaran

If there were some way to: copy one hemisphere of my brain, hook it up to the other half, allow me some time to get used to it, and then follow suit with my remaining meat all the while maintaining continuity of consciousness, then I would consider the resulting machine me.

I agree with that, but with some reserves. Though, right, the brain plasticity is amazing, then, why not? But it would rather be slowly replacing the brain one small piece after the other, not a full hemisphere in one time. In fact, that's the system continuity & integrity that has to be maintained.

[Nelson Cunnington]

Originally Posted by Agemegos

So now we are halfway through the procedure. Young me say 'Toast the old feeb, I find him embarrassing.' Old me says 'I don't want to die'. But hey, no-one is going to remember saying that after we tap him on the head with a hammer.

See, you're getting the idea: embarrassing. That's why the original gives his consent before the procedure, is aneasthetised during, and euthanised after.

Non-destructive uploading clearly does not transfer my mind onto new hardware, it plainly creates a new mind that shares my memories and has a deluded belief that it is me. We know there isn't just one person, because we can sit them side by side. So since non-destructive uploading is not mind transference, how do you figure that destructive uploading is mind transference?

By what objective test is the new upload not you? He knows the things you know, he loves the same people you do, he has the same secrets, he owes the same money. Because there's another person who claims to be you, too? Maybe they're both you. Why is that such a problem? Because you're used to a single-tracked existence, not the multiple-track existence that non-destructive uploading creates?

A couple of years ago I read a story in which faster-than-light travel was accomplished by scanning a body including the brain, transmitting the information through a wormhole, and then euthanasing the original with a burst of neutrons to the brain. Or if necessary whacking them on the head with a piece of pipe. I wouldn't travel in the thing.

But some people would.

[Flyndaran]

Originally Posted by Agemegos

Not the ones whose job it is to swing the pipe, I bet.

And not the line of people willing to fight to protect the intended victims.

[Nelson Cunnington]

Originally Posted by Flyndaran

And not the line of people willing to fight to protect the intended victims.

They're not victims, they're volunteers. At least in THS, I don't know about your SF story. If they're not volunteers in the story, then it doesn't map on to the situation in THS or the putative situation in a later THS world where non-destructive uploading is possible.

[Khoontshdroos]

They ought to do what they want, some people can even be willing to sacrify his life to his Immortal Fame.
However, you can't say that an exact copy of you is still you, you just can say that the self is a mere illusion, and that what's important (to you) is the informations and personnal behaviour patterns stored in you, and in fact, they still can live without you.
Just everybody will not agree with the self being a mere illusion, or at least that kind of illusion. IMHO.

[Flyndaran]

Originally Posted by Nelson Cunnington

They're not victims, they're volunteers. At least in THS, I don't know about your SF story. If they're not volunteers in the story, then it doesn't map on to the situation in THS or the putative situation in a later THS world where non-destructive uploading is possible.

Assisting suicides is still criminal in the real world, and I just can't imagine any vaguely rational human society that would consider it perfectly acceptable.

Ain't no way in hell that the U.S. would ever allow anything remotely like that. It has taken us over a hundred years to accept birth control, and there is still a significant minority that want to do away with that.

[Phineas]

Well, in THS they've had a hundred years to get used to uploading, and there's still a significant minority who want to get rid of it.

[Khoontshdroos]

Originally Posted by Flyndaran

Assisting suicides is still criminal in the real world, and I just can't imagine any vaguely rational human society that would consider it perfectly acceptable.

Ain't no way in hell that the U.S. would ever allow anything remotely like that. It has taken us over a hundred years to accept birth control, and there is still a significant minority that want to do away with that.

Well, I personaly don't think that helping somebody whose life is a hell and who is clearly willing to stop it, but not physicaly able to suicide, to do it, is criminal. Not that this is an easy matter, of course. And if somebody with his full mind decides to suicide (I mean suicide not determinated by mental illness or depression) and is able to do it alone, you have no moral right to stop him, even if you don't agree with him. Of course, making people believe that they will not suicide but live in a different body... this is a murder! But if they are informed of the whole problem, they make what they want. Just have to testified before that it's what they want...