X-Message-Number: 21294
From: 
Date: Thu, 27 Feb 2003 01:00:30 EST

Subject: just when you thought it was safe to go into the cryonet water - more 
duplicates

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Francois wrote:

".........  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."

 You are probably right but this seems to miss the point.  The reason we 
cryonicists discuss duplicates on this forum is because making a copy of a 
frozen body, as you described, may be an option for the reanimation of a 
frozen body.  In fact, it may become the case that the only way a frozen body 
can be reanimated is to disassemble it, measuring the position of every atom, 
and then creating a new body just like the original was supposed to be.  The 
BIG QUESTION we cryonicists want to know is "If that is the only way we can 
be reanimated, is the thing that is reanimated really the exact same person 
that was frozen?"  Or more to the point,  "If this is the way I am 
reanimated, did I survive?" 

So to answer the question "Does anyone know which one is the original?" is 
moot.

The real question is  "Did I survive?"

Just because an observer, or the one (or two in your example) frozen new 
entities, does not know if he/she is the original does not give any evidence 
that the original survived.  I would not doubt that, in your example, both 
people thought they were the original, but I would doubt that the original 
did survive, since neither of them meets the perfect definition of what it is 
that makes a person a person, and makes this person this person.

David

PS: Don't ask me what that perfect definition is.  

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