X-Message-Number: 20892
Date: Thu, 16 Jan 2003 18:34:26 -0500
From: Francois <>
Subject: An answer for Christine

>If you are standing in a room, watching a perfect copy
>of yourself being created, once it is done, will YOU
>be looking through two eyes or four? To me, that is
>the most important question. I don't care if
>philosophically, there are two originals of me, if I
>only perceive the world through one me. My conscious
>self exists in the body I am currently in, and that is
>what I want to keep alive for eternity...my sense of
>self and continuity. I find it difficult to imagine my
>consciousness co-existing in two seperate
>bodies/entities or whatever. Therefore, if I am right,
>a perfect copy of me is still just a copy.

This is a problem I have thought long and hard about. I will give you my
conclusions by expanding on your example.

So lets say that I am to be the first human to undergo a perfect replication
procedure. But, that procedure requires that I be put under general
anasthesia. So I lie down on a table and I am put under, at which point the
duplication procedure is performed. You now have two identical individuals,
both under general anasthesia. I will call the one who came to the lab
Francois A and the replicate Francois B.

Both are then taken to a recovery room and put in bed until they regain
conciousness. Being identical, they do so at just about the same time. Now,
someone comes in the room who was given no information as to which is
Francois A and which is Francois B. Will that someone be able to tell which
is which? Of course not, they are identical. They have the exact same
memories, the exact same physical attributes, the exact same everything.
But, what is really relevant here is that neither Francois A nor Francois B
will will be able to tell either because they were unconcious during the
duplication procedure. Both, if asked who they are, will confidently answer
that they are Francois. Both will feel that they are Francois, both will
sense in themselves the full and true Francois identity.

Of course, what Francois A feels, perceives and thinks from that moment on
will not be shared by Francois B, and vice versa. The two will be separate
individuals, but they will both be Francois and, more to the point, think of
themselves as Francois.

It is difficult to wrap one's mind around that conclusion and it took me a
while to do it. One feels a true repulsion when confronting it. But if I
die, am frozen and am revived centuries in the future, the revived me will
be me, not because the same body will have been repaired but because it will
house the same memories and personality it does as I write these words.
Therefore, repairing a frozen body or using recovered information to build a
new one from scratch, atom for atom identical, lead to the same result.
Supposing that Francois A dies before recovering from anasthesia because of
an accident, Francois B could simply be told that the procedure failed after
he wakes up and be sent home. He would never know the difference.

Francois
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No lifespan shorter than eternity is acceptable
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