Clint O'Dell wrote:
>
> Say you walk into a store that makes perfect copies of people. You know
> before hand you are going to copy yourself. You remember being put to sleep
> for the process. As a joke, while the two beings with identical memories,
> etc. are sleeping the doctors decide to put you both in a human shuffling
> machine where when each person came out nobody knew who was who.
>
> Now both beings wake up. Which one is you?
> Same body. Same personality. Same memories. Which one is you? Are you the
> one who was put to sleep and came in that day to be cloned? Or was that the
> other you and you are just the copy?
>
Both are you. And both would probably make themselves unhappy
worrying about
whether they themselves are "you". Worrying about copy versus
continuance
may not make a lot of sense if both have ALL your memories and
subjective
experience. You have multiplied the number of "you" in the
world. If one
dies in the copying process there is still one "you". Will the
dying one
experience death? Yes, if conscious for enough of it. Are
"you" still alive.
I believe the answer is again, yes. You are dead, long live
"you"!
- samantha
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b30 : Sat May 11 2002 - 17:44:26 MDT