X-Message-Number: 25426
Date: Tue, 28 Dec 2004 09:01:02 -0500
From: Thomas Donaldson <>
Subject: CryoNet #25416 - #25425

For RBR, whether or not he listens: 
     
Reading one more instance of your writings on the QE and our subjective
sense of identity, I am left with a feeling that you've tied yourself
to a definition which you refuse to give up.

One important comment on your responses: I know that I never considered
the possibility of any duplication when we talked about continuation
of your QE or mine. YOU brought up that possibility as your answer
to the possibility that I, the individual, might somehow cease existing
in my present form and then later be recreated from a RECORD of what and
who I was. If someone duplicates me, of course each version will have
his own QE. If I am duplicated but not destroyed, then my QE will continue.
That entire issue of duplication is an irrelevancy. If, however, a single
version is recreated from a (sufficiently good!) record, then I will 
return to life with the same QE I had before --- since, after all, my
QE would be part of the record (remember that we're assuming that it 
is a physical object, which will therefore be recordable and recreatable).

And how is it, if you believe as I understand you believe that our 
QE is ultimately a physical object or system, that it cannot be copied
so that I will retain the same QE as I had before? Frankly, it is on
that point that you seem to me to have lapsed into metaphysics. Sure, 
copying a QE exactly enough may take technology which we now do not
have; nor can I presently tell you how to copy my QE so well that 
it's still mine. I've already quasi-agreed with you: the operations
needed to remake the SAME QE from a record will not come in the near
future, and probably not for several centuries at a minimum. Yet our
current abilities don't directly bear on the question of what is 
possible or impossible in any fundamental sense. So how can you claim
that copying a QE is fundamentally impossible?

And since you've decided that you don't want to answer me, there's no
reason for me to expect an answer to this question. As you can guess,
I have my own opinions as to why you don't want to discuss this issue
with me, and the lack of any answer to this message will reinforce 
them.

           Best wishes and long long life for all,

                 Thomas Donaldson

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