X-Message-Number: 14777 From: Subject: Re: Copy Chaos Date: Tue, 24 Oct 2000 16:20:40 +1000 This discussion about identity and copies seems to me to be going into unnecessary depth. Perhaps I am missing the point somehow. If an identical copy of me is made, I still retain my identity, the copy has an identity that it feels pretty much the same as I do ie. it wants to live and go on living (a basic primitive genetic preservation mechanism). Nothing has been taken away from me as the original, I am not any more happy to die. The knowledge that a copy of me will continue to exist in another body doesn't deminish my will to go on living - the chemical makeup of my body still drives me to try to stay alive - any decision to die for the sake of the copy has to overcome this and has to be based of rationalised logic - not the easiest thing to overcome. I don't see any need for standing waves or anything exotic, I just want to carry on living same as my copy. Yes my copy could continue for me but it does not take away from me as the original the desire to live - nothing wrong in that! If there is 2 copies made of me, why would the first copy be any more willing to die than the second or me the original for that matter. This is why uploading to a computer is not really ok for me as it doesn't change my original state - my memories and personality may be in the computer but I still exist and still have the desire to go on living. It seems to me that my sense of self comes from a complex circuit in my brain that has a mechanism that attempts to preserve itself and therefore to preserve the physical me. How this circuit works and its exact characteristics may be unknown to us but it does not make it any less real. I don't see any justification as to why some strange force must be at work. This leans toward religeous which doesn't work on fact or practicallity - just abstract concepts which is too much of a cop out to me. Chris Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=14777