Robert Bradbury <bradbury@genebee.msu.su> Wrote:
>The cost of disassembling a large unique collection of atoms
>(to isotopic specificity) and reassembling it *identically*, is probably *very* large.
No need to do it identically, I change when I drink a cup of coffee but I'm
still the same person. I think. Well, at least there's nothing else around
that could make a better claim to the title.
>I'm sure that most will agree that the transistors in those processors
>*are not* identical at the atomic scale.
And the wires in the power supply of two computers may have different
colors but if they're running the same program it really doesn't matter.
>Within milliseconds of the copying process however, neither of them
>is "an original".
Exactly. It doesn't matter who the original is because you can only have
a true "original" if there is no change and life by its very nature is change.
In other words, if it's really original then it's dead.
John K Clark jonkc@att.net
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Thu Jul 27 2000 - 14:08:58 MDT