X-Message-Number: 14699
Date: Sun, 15 Oct 2000 20:48:56 -0700
From: Lee Corbin <>
Subject: Duplicates are Self

                Duplicates are Self: A Proof
                       by Lee Corbin

Why is it easy to believe that someone could be in the same place at two
different times, but very hard to believe that someone could be in two
different places at the same time?  The two sound similar, and educated
people today are conversant with a spacetime perspective and the idea
that (in some ways) space and time are interchangable.  So why do they
always find "being in two places at the same time" extraordinarily
counter-intuitive? 

The answer is to be found in evolution. (The answer to almost everything
is to be found in evolution.)  An organism retains structural information
about the distant past, but cannot contain such information about the
distant present.  It is clear that nature will design creatures to have
memories consistent with what has happened to the creature in the past
which means, potentially, only information within the creature's past
light cone.

Even in the distant future, with uploaded programs running in parallel
everywhere, nature will still have a tendency to fashion creatures
who'll have a special regard for events that have happened just within
'their own' past light cone.  So will there ever be any reason for an
entity to identify with 'other' entities presently far away (i.e.,
outside its light cone)? ('Special quotes' explained below.) 

The answer is yes.  Roughly, people will begin to identify with distant
duplicates when they cannot avoid doing so, and this will come about
when experience causes them to anticipate acquiring the memories of
their distant duplicates. 

Let us return to the central question for a moment.  "Why do people find
it so hard to believe that one can be in two places at the same time?"
Logically, there SHOULD be no problem.  For those who believe in physics,
a person is a process like any other mechanical process, and is
executing in some region of spacetime.  When two processes are absolutely
identical (in everything except location, say), we have utterly no
problem deeming them to be the *same* process. 

But let these two processes be someone who is being interviewed and his
remote duplicate, then even people very conversant with these notions
will balk at the idea that the remote duplicate, an identical process,
is really the same person that they are.  They will grasp at any straw
available to avoid making such a concession.  They will claim, for
example, that minor differences accumulated in the last minute are
crucial, conveniently forgetting that the remote duplicate is "closer"
to them than is the person they were yesterday. 

Such people often have little problem conceptually with the duplicates
of *other people*.  If a woman encounters two duplicates of her husband,
she will readily admit that they constitute the "same person", albeit
with slightly different memories.  (Just as this same woman will
naturally view her husband today being the same person as he was
yesterday, even in the extreme case that he's had some amnesia.) 

When will people come to realize that one's duplicate is one's self?
Probably not until the memories of duplicates are available.  Let me
provide an example.

Suppose a duplicate of you has been created, and he or she resides in
your home on Earth for a day while "you" explore the Moon.  Then at the
end of the day, suppose a "merging" process could cause the creation of
an entity which had equal access to the Moon memories and the Earth
memories.  Then this creature remembers being you on the Moon and
remembers being you on Earth... *at the same time*. 


"At the same time" is crucial, but how is it essentially different from
what usually occurs?  In the first place, I remember that sometime last
month I went to a bookstore and sometime last month I had a haircut.  I
do not remember which came first.  I don't even remember precisely on
what days these events occurred.  If you show me indisputable evidence

that these two events *happened at the same time* then it will seem
natural that I was in two places at the same time. 

Next suppose that you have a duplicate in an adjacent room that you are
monitoring on closed circuit television.  You are told that you and he
are the same person.  Naturally, you disagree.  You are then asked you
whether it is preferable that your duplicate receive two minutes'
electrical shock or you receive one minute's.  You reply that you would
prefer that your duplicate receive the two minutes' worth.  ("Better
him than me.")  It is done, but that night a merging process copies
'your' memories of the day into 'his' brain and 'his' memories into
'yours'.  (I must use funny quotes around "his" and "yours" because my
central claim is that ultimately such a distinction is meaningless.)

Now the next day the scenario is repeated.  I ask 'you' whether it is
better that 'your' duplicate get the two minute treatment or that 'you'
get the one minute treatment.  Now you're not so sure.  For you now
*remember* that yesterday you were sitting minding your own business
being monitored on closed circuit television when suddenly out of the
blue there came two minutes' of electrical shock.  You remember this as
being *very painful*.  Nature has constructed you to avoid repetition of
unpleasant incidents.  So you now begin to suspect that 'you' and 'your
duplicate' are the same person. 

You decide (maybe after several more days of "two minute" punishments)
that perhaps it is better to call down upon 'yourself' the mere one
minute punishment.  After that night, when the memories are merged, you
conclude that you made a wise move.  Today's punishment seemed to be less
severe than yesterday's. 

This proves (with just a little more discussion of "merging") that we
*are* our duplicates.  This proves that a person is a *pattern* of
information, and that our scientific judgment that identical physical
processes should in all regards be deemed identical has been validated. 

A key point about the crucial "merging" process is that it cannot happen
between entirely different people.  If you are placed in this same "one
minute vs. two minutes" predicament with some alien reptile from another
planet, the resulting "merged" creature won't be anything like either of
you.  It isn't even clear what merging would mean between different
people.  And the notion of merging has other problems, but none that
can't in principle be overcome so far as this discussion is concerned. 


Formally, if you are the same person you were last month (and it is
sophomoric to deny it), then you must also be the duplicate in the next
room who is a far, far more similar physical process.  Don't get skittish
just because the chonometer says that what you're looking at over the
closed circuit TV is happening "now".  Think of your duplicate who is
quietly sitting there reading as an experience that happened to you last
year... an experience that you've merely forgotten. 

Uploaded individuals who constantly share and merge memories, and who
are accustomed to acquiring and collecting memories from distant points
in space, will also have no problem conceiving of themselves being in
more than one place at the same time.  As long as "individuality" and
"identity" last, a person can only be defined, in the final analysis, as
a fuzzy set of processes (or algorithms) not too dissimilar from one
another. 

(This essay was originally posted on Extropians in 1996.)

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