X-Message-Number: 17265
From: 
Date: Mon, 13 Aug 2001 15:57:18 -0400
Subject: Re: CryoNet #17260 (Matter Transporters)

Mike Perry:

> I don't have the original atoms I had ten years ago, and you don't > have 
yours either.


Louis Epstein:
>But our current sets of atoms are the organic
>successors to the ones we had then.


Comment: So what? "Organic successors" only means 
that your bodys' ribosomes and other machinery have
chosen some generic atom or string of atoms
out of stuff in your refrigerator, and used it 
replace one that was there in your body before.


Epstein:
>Not at all the same thing as discarding a former body for
>a new one and calling the new body the same person as the old.

COMMENT:
It is, if you do it a piece at a time. Indeed, that very 
thing has already happened to YOU, as Mike Perry points out.

Epstein:
>Even in my wildest fantasies of having a wizardress
>of unfathomable power as a lover,I permit nothing
>to be done to me that would have me having a
>"former body".

But that's easily arranged: if we be sure to 
destroy your old body any time we duplicate 
you. This can be done bit-by-bit,
or all at once. I see no philosophical difference.
I'm not even sure I see a moral difference if you're
doing all this yourself with your own "permission."

It's true that if we let the template body be
conscious during any part of this, he might object--
but the differences there are only between killing
a sleeping man and an awake man. Will you argue
that is okay to kill your own sleeping template
after you've been duplicated, but not if he happens
to wake up first? Is the one suicide and the other
murder? Is the first suicide only if it's done all
at once and not a bit at a time? Would it then NOT
be suicide if you just used a matter disintigrator?
Or deliberately used a "transporter" that 
beamed your atoms in every direction at random?
(possibly muttering "Die, die, die, everybody
die...)


Epstein:
>Nor would I ever use a matter-transporter
>that did not transmit and reconstitute the atoms,
>rather than reconstituting their pattern and
>disintegrating the person who stepped in.


COMMENT
I don't understand why you'd want to use the second
kind, even, if you feel that way about it.

What's the difference between turing the atoms into
generic gamma rays (using antimatter) and 
reconsituting them into new atoms at 
the other end, VERSUS (say) sending each atom by 
Fedex, and reconstituting? Would you use THAT
device (slow though it may be--- times also makes
no philosophical difference)

And if you consent to do it that way,
why label each atom, like a block from
some cathedral? [Purine carbon 3; basepair 103453;
neuron 12315 (see diagram) hypocampus Louis Epstein.

Why not just send email and Fedex 15 Kg of carbon, 
or whatever. If they mislabel mix up your 
spleen and brain carbon atom, what do you 
care, so long as they do the job?

In fact, how about the cheapo option of sending email
only, and telling the other end to use local carbon.
This saves a lot on freight, and I'll bet you can't
tell one carbon atom from another. 

And if you CAN, look into your refrigerator and 
be afraid. Be very, very afraid...

SBH

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