X-Message-Number: 11069 Date: Mon, 11 Jan 1999 05:57:20 -0800 From: "Joseph J. Strout" <> Subject: Re: which one is you? In message, 11060, Jan Coetzee <> wrote: >Make the assumption you were uploaded and then ten copies were made. >Which one will be you. All of them, of course. They will all be the same person as the original, and the same person as each other. Over time, as they accumulate different experiences, memories, habits, and personality traits, they will gradually become different people (and, of course, less the same person as the original), just as we are not exactly the same people we were years ago. Everybody jumps on personal duplication like it's some kind of philosophical show-stopper, but I think this is just because we have no experience with it. There is no philosophical or logical problem with there being multiple instances of the same person. *Practical* problems abound (illustrated humorously by the movie "Multiplicity"), and I think in general duplication is a very bad idea, but logically there it's no problem at all. Cheers, -- Joe ,------------------------------------------------------------------. | Joseph J. Strout developer: MacOS, Unix, 3D, AI | | http://www.strout.net | `------------------------------------------------------------------' Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=11069