X-Message-Number: 14187
From: "John Clark" <>
Subject: Identity of indiscernibles
Date: Thu, 27 Jul 2000 11:11:26 -0400

In  #14178   Wrote:


    >two or more objects at different locations (in time or space) are in 
    principle
    >easily distinguishable.


How do you even know you're doing it, if they are identical and switching 
identities
how could you tell?


    >If there are two otherwise identical rocks, one in front of me and one in 
    front of

    >you, only one of us is in danger of stubbing his toe, and we can easily see
    who
    >that is.


Ok, I guess only one of us is clumsy, but would your pain or my observation of 
you

be any different is you stubbed your toe on a identical rock? At any rate I must
say
the idea that human individuality is caused by something special about our own
personal hydrogen atoms is rather silly.


    >As for "instantly" switching the locations of two otherwise identical 
    systems-even

    >if there were such things-that is not possible according to current 
    understanding
    >of natural law.

Not true, happens all the time in the quantum world.

    >The mantra of "identity of indiscernibles" has fatal problems.


Then quantum mechanics has fatal problems because identity of indiscernibles was

used to deduce The Pauli Exclusion Principle, and that is the basis of the 
periodic

table of elements, and that is the basis of chemistry, and that is the basis of 
life.

I explain this and some other stuff in detail in my dialogue  " Waiting For Zed"
at
www.extropy.org/eo/articles/zed.htm

                  John K Clark      

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