X-Message-Number: 25338
From: "Valera Retyunin" <>
Subject: To Marta Sandberg
Date: Thu, 16 Dec 2004 05:15:03 +0300

>One of the most telling story was a little mind game.  Imagine you are
>trapped in an alien spaceship.  In one corner is a sleeping beast that VERY
>SOON will wake up and devour you.  In the other corner is a
>duplication/teleportation machine.  When you step into this machine it will
>destroy the original and create two copies of you   one will safely be
>deposited back on Earth and the other will be dumped back on the spaceship
>(awaiting digestion by the space monster).  The question was:  If you
>stepped into the duplicator, would you feel YOU had survived  cause one of
>your copied selves was alive on Earth?

I would certainly not step into the duplicator, not even once. If my "self"
was immaterial or was made up of some unknown, mysterious (dark?) matter not
destroyed by the duplicator and capable of existing without the body, it
would not be destroyed by the monster either. If my "self" was just a
product or state of grey matter, the duplicator would kill me on the very
first try, while staying aboard the spaceship would at least give me the
chance to tame or slay the beast, be rescued before it got at me, or just
have an extra few minutes of life.

>Lots of people had different answers, but the best solution (ie. the
>solution most people seemed to unite behind), was   I would try the
machine,
>and then I d try it again and again and again . .

No surprise, most people are inherently religious and place less hope in
human effort than in the idea that their minds are more than the grey matter
destroyed by the duplicator. One of the reasons why so few people have
signed up for cryonics, BTW.

>The philosophy behind that answer is quite interesting (as well as showing
a
>great deal of ingenuity and stubbornness).

In my view, stubbornness only. Ingenuity would be shown in ideas on how to
deal with the monster without the mass murder of yourself and your multiple
copies.

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