X-Message-Number: 25261 Date: Fri, 10 Dec 2004 14:27:29 -0800 Subject: Thomas & Continuation, Spooky Rays From: <> Dear Thomas: [snip] >Why is it better to think of a QE remade from the plan of a QE as >different rather than the same? Because the remade QE IS different than the original, in at very least the fact that it is not the original. It looks like you are finally beginning to see this. Instead of insisting they ARE the same, as you have insisted in the past, you are now asking the question, 'Why shouldn't we TREAT them as the same, for purposes of continuation?' As I have proven in past messages, following a blueprint won't give you the original---it will give you a copy. If you doubt this, then all you have to do is follow the blueprint to building something that already exists. Once you conduct this experiment, you will clearly see that two things exist, and not one; therefore, these two things that exist are not the same thing. So now let us consider it a given, from this point forward, that blueprint-following results in a COPY, and not the original. Now you can ask the question, as you have in your most recent message, 'Since the copy has the same atomic arrangement as the original, why isn't the subjective inner-life of the original continued in the copy?' The fundamental answer to this question is that subjectivity is, by its very nature, a property of a *particular* system. Subjectivity is an aspect of the identity of systems supporting subjectivity. Therefore, you can no more copy subjectivity than you can copy identity. It's not that it cannot be done due to lack of technological prowess---it's that doing it would entail a logical contradiction, so it can't be done by any means. To illustrate this forcefully, imagine creating a duplicate of you WHILE you exist, but creating this duplicate 100 million lightyears away from you. For example, we could put you into suspended animation on a spacecraft, scan you, send this information 100 million lightyears away to some space-based manufacturing plant that would create a suspended duplicate of you. Then we can unsuspend both of you at the same time (possible, but tricky due to relativity). From YOUR perspective---YOU as in the one whose brain was scanned--- you are suspended and awaken on the same space craft you were suspended on. Therefore, it is manifestly obvious that your subjective inner life did not continue in the copy, since the copy is 100 million lightyears away from you, in an entirely different part of the galaxy, and he awakens in a space-based manufacturing plant, not in your space craft. 'WAIT,' you say, 'you have to DESTROY THE ORIGINAL!' Let me get this straight. You think that by destroying yourself, your subjectivity (which is a property localized to your brain, on board the spacecraft) will simultaneously hop 100 million lightyears to your copy?!? If I may be so bold... WHAT THE HELL?!? In what form is your 'subjectivity' going to travel??? Can I see spooky light rays shooting from your brain and traveling the vast expanses of space to reach your copy? Can I detect any transfer at all, of anything? Clearly, the destruction of one can have NO EFFECT on the subjective inner life of the other; moreover, the creation of a copy can have NO EFFECT on the subjective inner life of the original. You can wish it to be otherwise, but you can also wish for a bearded man in the sky to rescue you upon your death, and raise you and your pet cat to everlasting happiness in a fairy tale world of your choosing. That won't make it so. [snip] Best Regards, Richard B. R. Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=25261