X-Message-Number: 21261
Date: Mon, 24 Feb 2003 21:35:49 -0500
From: Francois <>
Subject: Cryonet #21236

For Thomas Donaldson

>Now hold on for a minute. If we suppose that the problems of really
>producing a true duplicate have been solved and methods to do so
>have been implemented, then it will also be perfectly easy to
>work out from their history and observing their creation that
>one person is a duplicate of another. To say simply that the
>problem is purely philosophical and without meaning is simply
>wrong.

<remaining part snipped>

Ok, lets bring that up a notch. You have a vitrified body. A duplicate of
that body is made by scanning it at the atomic level and building a second
one, with the same atoms in the same place, linked in the same way and with
the same distribution of electrical charges and with magnetic domains, if
any, oriented in the same way. Now you have two vitrified bodies that are
indistinguishable. No experiment, even in principle, can distinguish between
the two. Do we agree on that?

If we do, then we put the two bodies in a room and we get out. In that room,
a robotic system switches them around at random. The robotic system keeps no
record of the operation. There is no one in the room to witness the
operation. When we get back in the room, we have do idea which body is the
original and which is the copy. Nobody knows and nobody can know. We then
put both bodies through the reanimation process. Two people wake up. We ask
them which is the original and which is the copy. They cannot answer. Both
perceive themselves as the person who originally died and was just now
reanimated. We can never determine which is the original and which is the
copy. Nobody can, even in principle, not even the two persons themselves.


Francois
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