X-Message-Number: 11155
Date: Fri, 22 Jan 1999 18:50:44 -0700
From: Mike Perry <>
Subject: Duplicates, low-cost cryonics

Thomas Donaldson makes some good points in #11145, among them
>
>I note in Bob's discussion that the cases he discusses always
>involve creation of a SECOND version of you (or a person). There is an 
>essential problem with creation of a second version: it is almost by
>definition impossible to make the experiences of that second version
>match those of you. Even a different location means that it must be a 
>different creature, and even a little thought tells me (at least) that
>as a different creature it will almost instantly diverge.

A "different location" in one sense need not imply a "different
creature"--but clearly it almost always would, barring certain technological
advances. Outside of considerations of parallel universes, the idea of an
exact duplicate doesn't have much physical relevance in our world today
(though it does raise a significant philosophical issue). Instead, even if
you made two persons exactly alike at the atomic level (by nanotechnology,
say, starting at liquid nitrogen temperature where everything is rock-solid
and fixed in place), and activated them, they must quickly diverge, no
matter how similar you made their environments, etc. If you started with a
frozen cryonics patient and made an exact copy and activated both (assuming
they can be reanimated), you would have one person fissioning into two. I
see no particular problems with this, beyond the usual, relatively minor
ones concerning ownership of property, etc. (And I'd rather have to face
these than certain death.)

An interesting possibility for the future, where duplication could be of
more practical interest, would involve uploading. Computers of today are
usually deterministic and predictable (that being how we usually want them
to be). If it became possible to upload people, i.e. emulate them, in a
*predictable* machine of the future, then you could imagine having two
machines running the same program, thus both running the "same" person
through exactly the same experiences, etc., so that  the duplication issue
would become important. Once again though, people do not work this way in
their natural setting. And this may be a tell-tale sign that a classical,
deterministic device will never be able to emulate a person, unless you want
to take an impractical amount of time. On the other hand, I expect that
devices that *can* emulate persons will be constructed--but they too will
exhibit unpredictability comparable to what we find in the natural world,
including our brains (one example already of such a device). Perhaps this is
an inevitable price to pay for whatever "free will" we possess--it remains
to be seen.

For those who responded to me privately on the low-cost cryonics possibility
(see #11139) thanks for your interest, and I should have a personal reply to
each of you soon.

Mike Perry 

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