If you mean that a quantitative merge on a digital computer is generally impossible, you may be right. But the example I gave suggests that
merging is death in the general case, and is presumably so even for identical merges, which can be done on a computer.
For that matter, I fail to see why losing some(many, most) of my atoms and having them be quickly replaced by atoms doing the exact same job should be viewed as me dying at all.
If you have two people to start with, and one when you’ve finished, without any further stipulation about which people they are, then you
have lost a person somewhere. To come to a different conclusion would require an additional rule, which is why it’s the general case. That additional rule would have to specify that a duplicate doesn’t count as a second person. But since that duplicate could subsequently
go on to have a separate different life of its own, the grounds for denying it personhood seem quite weak.
For that matter, I fail to see why losing some(many, most) of my atoms and having them be quickly replaced by atoms doing the exact same
job should be viewed as me dying at all.
It’s not dying in the sense of there no longer being a you, but it is still dying in the sense of there being fewer of you. To take the example of you being merged with someone, those atoms you lose, together with the ones you don’t take from the other person, make
enough atoms, doing the right jobs, to make a whole new person. In the symmetrical case, a second “you”. That “you” could have gone on to live its
own life, but now won’t. Hence a “you” has died in the process.
In other words, merge is equivalent to “swap pieces then kill”. The above looks as though it will work just as well with bits, or the physical representation of bits, rather than atoms (for the symmetrical case).
If a person were running on a inefficiently designed computer with transistors and wires much larger than they needed to be, it would be possible to peel away and discard (perhaps) half of the atoms in the computer without affecting it’s operation or the person. This would be much like ebborian reproduction, but merely a shedding of atoms.
In any sufficiently large information processing device, there are two or more sets of atoms (or whatever its made of) processing the same information, such they they could operate independently of each other if they weren’t spatially intertwined.
Why are they one person when spatially intertwined, but two people when they are apart? That they ‘could have’ gone on independently is a counterfactual in the situation that they are both receiving the same inputs. You ‘could’ be peeled apart into two people, but both halves of your parts are currently still making up 1 person.
Personhood is in the pattern. Not the atoms or memory or whatever. There’s only another person when there is another sufficiently different pattern.
merge is equivalent to ‘spatially or logically reintegrate, then shed atoms or memory allocation as desired’
In the case where the people are computer programs, none of that works.
If you mean that a quantitative merge on a digital computer is generally impossible, you may be right. But the example I gave suggests that merging is death in the general case, and is presumably so even for identical merges, which can be done on a computer.
I fail to see why that is the general case.
For that matter, I fail to see why losing some(many, most) of my atoms and having them be quickly replaced by atoms doing the exact same job should be viewed as me dying at all.
If you have two people to start with, and one when you’ve finished, without any further stipulation about which people they are, then you have lost a person somewhere. To come to a different conclusion would require an additional rule, which is why it’s the general case.
That additional rule would have to specify that a duplicate doesn’t count as a second person. But since that duplicate could subsequently go on to have a separate different life of its own, the grounds for denying it personhood seem quite weak.
It’s not dying in the sense of there no longer being a you, but it is still dying in the sense of there being fewer of you.
To take the example of you being merged with someone, those atoms you lose, together with the ones you don’t take from the other person, make enough atoms, doing the right jobs, to make a whole new person. In the symmetrical case, a second “you”. That “you” could have gone on to live its own life, but now won’t. Hence a “you” has died in the process.
In other words, merge is equivalent to “swap pieces then kill”.
The above looks as though it will work just as well with bits, or the physical representation of bits, rather than atoms (for the symmetrical case).
If a person were running on a inefficiently designed computer with transistors and wires much larger than they needed to be, it would be possible to peel away and discard (perhaps) half of the atoms in the computer without affecting it’s operation or the person. This would be much like ebborian reproduction, but merely a shedding of atoms.
In any sufficiently large information processing device, there are two or more sets of atoms (or whatever its made of) processing the same information, such they they could operate independently of each other if they weren’t spatially intertwined.
Why are they one person when spatially intertwined, but two people when they are apart? That they ‘could have’ gone on independently is a counterfactual in the situation that they are both receiving the same inputs. You ‘could’ be peeled apart into two people, but both halves of your parts are currently still making up 1 person.
Personhood is in the pattern. Not the atoms or memory or whatever. There’s only another person when there is another sufficiently different pattern.
merge is equivalent to ‘spatially or logically reintegrate, then shed atoms or memory allocation as desired’