X-Message-Number: 20949
From: "michaelprice" <>
References: <>
Subject: clarify?
Date: Thu, 23 Jan 2003 08:33:51 -0000

Bob Ettinger continues to make pedantic, linguistic points (which I am not
going to address) whilst missing the implications of the physics involved.

The existence of quantum interference effects (such as Pauli Exclusion
between electrons, which gives atoms their chemical properties) implies that
electrons are identical, and not just identical by all currently known
attributes, but by *all* attributes, currently known and unknown.  Whether
or not two electrons Pauli-exclude each other is a property of electrons;
not a function of our knowledge of them.  If experiments one day revealed
extra structure within electrons *enabling them to be subcategorised* they
would not all suddenly collapse into lower atomic orbitals.  Ergo we are not
talking about what we know about electrons when we say they are identical,
but about whether they really are identical in an absolute sense.

Bob Ettinger mentions electron spin as an historical counter-example of
hidden structure that was later revealed.  Bad example.  Spin was invented
to explain why the lowest orbitals contained two electrons, not just one.
The fact that the lowest orbitals only contain two electrons (with opposite
spins) and not any more, is proof that this process of discovering
wheels-within-wheels has come to an end.  It's not "turtles all the way
down" or infinitely nested Russian dolls/Chinese boxes.  With the electron
and spin (and other fundamental particles, such as the quarks and their 3
colours & spin states) we have to come to the end of their categorisation or
the bottom of the particle hierarchy.  Extra sub-categories left to discover
implies higher electron orbital occupancy numbers than we observe.

This doesn't mean we can't make new discoveries about electron structure
(e.g. string theory), but we do know that these discoveries will not provide
a means of distinguishing one electron from another, i.e. of
sub-categorising electrons further.  So, for instance, also not excluded are
schemes that re-categorise the particles, such as models that treat
electrons and neutrinos as quarks of a 4th colour.

The other point to make (again) is that according to quantum mechanics all
identical objects are swapping locations with each other, even large complex
objects.  Any identity you assign to one object you have to assign to all of
its copies.  In particular this applies to our notions of consciousness or
identity.  If you have the information preserved that enables the physical
reconstruction of someone (at some time) then you also have preserved their
identity (at that time), since that information can be used to create a
perfect copy that must share identity with the original.  Physical
continuity is not required for identity preservation.

Of course physics will change in the future, as Ettinger and myself have
repeatedly stated, but not, which is where we differ, in any fundamental way
to change the conclusions above.  After all, no one expects future
astronomical discoveries to dethrone the heliocentric model, except flat
Earth crackpots.  I regard the Pauli Exclusion Principle as well established
as the heliocentric model.

As an aside, although I wasn't sure why, Bob Ettinger mentioned the
Bekenstein Bound.  The BB provides a formulae for the upper limit to the
amount of information that can be crammed into any region of space,
including black holes.  To my mind this also implies that the
wheels-within-wheels process of discovery has come to an end, since extra
structure implies extra information not accounted for in the BB.  Of course
the BB may be revised at some point; it is only a conjecture anyway.

Cheers,
Michael C Price
----------------------------------------
http://mcp.longevity-report.com
http://www.hedweb.com/manworld.htm

Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=20949