From: "[ Robert-Coyote ]" <coyyote@hotmail.com>
To: <extropians@extropy.com>
Sent: Tuesday, May 16, 2000 1:04 PM
Subject: Re: Can I kill the "original"?
> The phrase "You can't touch the same river twice" comes to mind here!
Exactly. This is a philosophical claim. It means that the river changes or
that the atoms of water are different at different times. Does this mean
that I will never see the Mississippi again? Does this mean that I can't
tell a riverboat captain to go back the way he came? To argue that the
river is "gone" or "never existed" is to twist the meaning of these words
into nonsense.
This is why I think the whole copy question is really a semantic problem.
People are playing word games with loosely-defined terms to prove their
belief systems in physics terms. This kind of discussion breaks most of the
logical rules of debate, and goes round and round without saying anything
objective.
-- Harvey Newstrom <http://HarveyNewstrom.com> IBM Certified Senior Security Consultant, Legal Hacker, Engineer, Research Scientist, Author.
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