X-Message-Number: 25586
Date: Wed, 19 Jan 2005 07:37:16 -0500
From: Thomas Donaldson <>
Subject: CryoNet #25577 - #25584

Hi again to all!

The problem of duplication seems to follow the problem of identity (ie
our QE) like a dog. They are not the same. And while I have no problem
at all with the notion of recreating a damaged brain well enough that
its QE will be the "same" as the one before, I would say that if I
were duplicated only one of me could remain as me. Almost by definition,
if you duplicate an identity (a QE?) then at least one of the duplicates
no longer has the same identity. I may even feel that my own identity
has been modified by the creation of a duplicate, though I would not
think of myself as having been destroyed in any way.

At one point in this discussion I pointed out that "continuity" needed
much more scrutiny before we could go off and say that we would be
destroyed if we were read off into an exact record, which was then
much later used to recreate us. In the sense that the QE of that 
recreation was identical to the QE of the original me before I was
read off, there has been continuity between them. The lapse of time
means nothing for this continuity, because it's measured not with
respect to some clock but with respect to the changes taking place
in my QE between its read-off and destruction, and the recreated
QE. Of course, one will consist of different atoms etc, but that 
can hardly cause such continuity to cease... it doesn't when we don't
do that readoff and recreation operation, so why should it occur when
we do?

For Peter Merel:

Instant computing will not change mathematics in any special way, 
because most of mathematics does not concern algorithms at all (I
admit to wondering whether or not mathematics may cease to exist
because of work done in computing, but that's a different question
entirely and does not require any instant computers). I say this as
someone who trained as a research mathematician, moved over into
a branch of computing which could use knowledge of math (parallel
computers, for which the best algorithms in single computers easily
turn out to be worse than others for a parallel computer), and 
even now think of math problems which aren't really computer 
problems at all. There is one major class of math problems which
give a simple example of this phenomenon: working out the asymptotic
behavior of a (complex) function: in short, what happens as you
approach infinity in one or more variables. In particular cases
such math can be and has been used to verify particular algorithms,
though it also has more general implications. Often it's an easy
problem to do, but not always. And it's quite clear that even if
we program a particular function and get a computer to compute
it with larger and larger numbers, we'll never be able to know
from the computer what happens as those numbers ---> infinity.

         Best wishes and long long life to all,

            Thomas Donaldson

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