X-Message-Number: 11174
From: Thomas Donaldson <>
Subject: Yet more on duplicates: the practical problems don't go away, ever
Date: Tue, 26 Jan 1999 00:07:13 +1100 (EST)

For Bob Ettinger:
Now really! I said very clearly at the end of my last posting that perhaps
we did not have a complete list of the factors involved in identity. It
seems to me that this is as modest as you can expect, and I feel just a 
little misquoted because you seem not to have noticed that point. I have
not declared that we know all that is necessary.

I will say, though, that whatever may be missing will also be physical
in the sense that brains and their operation is physical, and if we find
what it is and duplicate it too, then we COULD duplicate someone. Other
than by believing in the supernatural, I see no other approach to that
question. 

As to whether thinking about duplicates could settle any questions, you
yourself argue that we need to know more even in order to be assured of
surviving cryonic suspension... especially in cases in which our brains
must essentially be recreated from their remains. If thinking about
duplicates does not answer any questions about whether we continue then
what questions does it answer?

To Mike Perry:
First, a living acting duplicate is not a case of your survival, but a 
duplicate. I too want to survive, but I do not think that includes living
for a while during which a duplicate of me also exists. The question of
whether or not we survive is independent of the possibility of duplicates
with overlapping lives.

As for the future, I'd agree that if someone made a duplicate of you
and cast it out on the world, people would probably be more friendly to
him than now. So he might survive in a better condition than he would 
now. But that omits also the likelihood that everyone will be richer in
many ways, and could easily dispense with the cost of keeping your
duplicate alive --- though still in a restricted, poverty-ridden condition
compared to your own. If you own your own space station, then someone
would have to provide not only a space station but an orbit to put it
in --- and if individual space stations are the latest thing, then no
one will do that. (Yes, if we've had them for 1000 years, then they may
be as easy to make as dirt, and so your duplicate would get one ... 1000
years is pulled out of the air, but I think you get the point). What your
duplicate would not get is the latest things, the expensive things:
a planet of his own? A solar system of his own?

Fundamentally, I'm saying that my argument for a very rapid divergence
will hold into the indefinite future. The only things that will change is
the level at which your duplicate manages to live, absolutely. Compared
to you, he will remain at a low level.

To both Bob and Mike:
Yes, the version of quantum mechanics that postulates a split in the
world every time a particle takes a different path will produce
duplicates. But there is a problem: the duplicates are in another world,
which currently looks inaccessible. The reason why your duplicate would
very quickly cease to be a duplicate comes from the fact that both of
you are in the SAME world. The same may be said of VR etc. If both of
you want to live in VR, no problem except that neither will live in
reality. If one of your wants to stay where he is, then we have the same
problem in a different form.

As for what would happen if we found some way to travel between these
different worlds, we may not have a nightmare but the basic problem
continues. Say your duplicate decides to visit you (assuming that you
will put him up for sufficiently long). He will arrive in a world in
which you have the property, connections, etc. He would have to bring
things from his world to yours to establish himself --- which inevitably
will mean that he will have to do things which you are not doing, and
so become different. 

Basically, it is not at all clear to me that thinking about the
possibility of duplicates which live at the same time as you do (that last
clause is important) answers any worthwhile philosophical questions. We
can consider what might happen if we make (or even bring to consciousness)
a duplicate of you after your destruction. That may at least give us some
idea of the criteria we might have for what is a continuation of you (or
me). But simultaneous duplicates just don't seem to answer anything.

So over to both of you on this issue.

			Best and long long life to all,

				Thomas Donaldson

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