X-Message-Number: 21261 Date: Mon, 24 Feb 2003 21:35:49 -0500 From: Francois <> Subject: Cryonet #21236 For Thomas Donaldson >Now hold on for a minute. If we suppose that the problems of really >producing a true duplicate have been solved and methods to do so >have been implemented, then it will also be perfectly easy to >work out from their history and observing their creation that >one person is a duplicate of another. To say simply that the >problem is purely philosophical and without meaning is simply >wrong. <remaining part snipped> Ok, lets bring that up a notch. You have a vitrified body. A duplicate of that body is made by scanning it at the atomic level and building a second one, with the same atoms in the same place, linked in the same way and with the same distribution of electrical charges and with magnetic domains, if any, oriented in the same way. Now you have two vitrified bodies that are indistinguishable. No experiment, even in principle, can distinguish between the two. Do we agree on that? If we do, then we put the two bodies in a room and we get out. In that room, a robotic system switches them around at random. The robotic system keeps no record of the operation. There is no one in the room to witness the operation. When we get back in the room, we have do idea which body is the original and which is the copy. Nobody knows and nobody can know. We then put both bodies through the reanimation process. Two people wake up. We ask them which is the original and which is the copy. They cannot answer. Both perceive themselves as the person who originally died and was just now reanimated. We can never determine which is the original and which is the copy. Nobody can, even in principle, not even the two persons themselves. Francois --------------------------------------------------------------------- No lifespan shorter than eternity is acceptable --------------------------------------------------------------------- Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=21261