X-Message-Number: 14934 From: "John de Rivaz" <> Subject: nature of identity Date: Thu, 16 Nov 2000 17:22:20 -0000 Someone raised the point as to whether we are the same people one day to the next. Doesn't it depend on circumstance? Suppose you telephone a friend for a chat just as he is sitting in the sun doing nothing much wondering what to do next. Suppose you telephoned the same physical person just after his hard disk had crashed, he has loads of work to do and it is a fortnight since he backed it up. Is he going to react to your idle chat in exactly the same way? If in each instant you had a very sophisticated computer avatar program that analysed the resulting conversation and tried to create a simulation of the person on the other end of the telephone do you think it would produce the same result? __ Sincerely, John de Rivaz my homepage links to Longevity Report, Fractal Report, music, Inventors' report, an autobio and various other projects: http://www.geocities.com/longevityrpt http://www.autopsychoice.com - should you be able to chose autopsy? Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=14934