I’d be delighted no matter how many clones of me were made. The idea of my ideas being spread by five times as many of me as at present is great.
Occam
I actually sometimes wonder if there is more than one of you. With all the life stories you have told us, there is no way they can all fit into a life of one individual.
Nah, at 81 one has had an amazing amount of time to experience life. The other thing that I’ve noticed is that most people, even those much younger than me seem to forget a great deal of what happened to them just a few years ago. I recently went to a lunch for the guys who retired from my first job out of college. I mentioned something that occurred there about 35 years ago, and most of the guys looked at me blankly. Then one of them said, “Oh yeah” and filled in other details. Gradually those involved recalled it. I just happen to have an excellent memory. I thought it would fade as I got older, but it hasn’t started to decay yet. So, sorry George, you’re stuck with my anecdotes.
A point for George’s position on genetics. My father had a good memory for facts, but my mother’s memory was spectacular. She could recall and recite my father’s most minor transgessions from more than forty years ago.
Yeah, I’m down with being cloned and killed. I suppose I would cease to exist, but my consciousness is an illusion anyway, so whatever.
The first teleport.
“I am making this thought-recording to document my first attempt to teleport myself. I have placed the re-materialisation plate 10 feet away from the dematerialisation plate. I have set the timer for 5 seconds and am stepping onto the ‘send’ plate now. From here I have a clear view of the ‘receive’ plate.
“Those five seconds are passing very slowly! But, ah, now the scanning process is beginning. It is a strange sensation…. tingly, sort of. Strange, my body appears to be fading more quickly than my consciousness… no, even that is going now too… I can’t hear or feel, but I can still see a little, though even that seems to be fading to gray now… I can see something appearing on the receive plate…. it’s me! It works! It works!
“No, that can’t be me. This is me… my consciousness is fading… I am fading… oh, God, is this what it is to die? I have only a remnant of consciousness left. The other one, the one on the receive plate… he’s almost solid now. Jeez, he’s grinning. Doesn’t he realise I am dying, fading into oblivion? The bastard! He’s going to have the glory, the fame. He’ll have my wife… It was me who built this thing, and its him that lives and me that dies. My mind barely exists anymore. Only enough consciousness remains for one more thought - I hate him”.
“Well, that worked pretty well” I said, stepping off the receive plate. “Let’s play back the tape….”
You missed the intervening thoughts of you on the receiving pad. They go like this. “Oh, I’m fading. Oh, god, is this wa. . . .” Wait a second. Why is my body on the receiving pad disappearing? The damned thing didn’t work. Oh, hey, I’m on the receiving pad. Well, it worked. I didn’t die. It may be a cloned body and brain, but my mind, that is, my programming, is identical, so I still exist. Wow, I’m going to have to do some study about existence and the differences between a physical being and the mind that really defines the person. I didn’t realize until my final thoughts on the send pad, just how poorly I had thought things out. I’m not going to let anyone else use this until they understand that.”
You missed the intervening thoughts of you on the receiving pad. They go like this. “Oh, I’m fading. Oh, god, is this wa. . . .
I was thinking of doing the original’s thoughts and the copy’s thoughts in two columns, but in the end I just did it from the original’s point of view. The last line was intended to indicate that from the copy’s POV the machine worked just great. He doesn’t seem to be aware of the originals suffering, at least not until he checks the tape (I have the original’s thought-tape to hand, so I know it was transcribed correctly).
Did the original not see and feel himself dying and see another individual - atomically identical to himself but not himself - come into being? The copy seems to believe he is the same ‘self’, the original thinks the copy is not the same self - how could he think otherwise when his sense of self was intact as he witnessed the other being brought into being? Doesn’t the original’s POV count for something?
[ Edited: 10 October 2011 12:38 PM by keithprosser2 ]
Nah, when I look in a mirror I don’t think, “that’s not really me” or on waking in the morning, think, “Damn, what happened to the me of yesterday?” I suggest that as the first was being transferred to the second, he would think (were he sophisticated enough), “Hmmm, interesting to see myself moved from here to there.”
I remember a swash-buckling, strapping young man ready to take on the world. Fine smooth skin he had and thick brown hair. I often wondered what happened to him when I look in the mirror and see something rather less impressive! But I digress.
Is no one against teleporting here? On other ‘rationalistic’ boards I know it seems more like 50:50 - even sometimes with a slight majority against!
CFI members are obviously more “something” that most! Now I’ll have to find out what that “something” is….
(btw - Despite my little story, I am pro-teleport).
[ Edited: 11 October 2011 01:26 AM by keithprosser2 ]
In order to teleport a physical thing, you would have to stop the internal atomic interactions before disassembling it. Freeze and record an instant in time of that object. That packet of information is then “transported” to the destination, where the frozen image is reassembled and “hopefully” reanimates and continues in spacetime, from a different location.
Edit: That is total woo. Entanglement (see below) is the answer…....
