Re: Does "identical" mean "one"?

Harvey Newstrom (harv@gate.net)
Sat, 18 Jul 1998 13:13:04 -0400

> Addressing your position re discontinous (destructive)
> uploading. Current physics seems to forbid realtime in vivo scans with
> enough resolution without destroying the object. It would be ideal to
> have working incremental/gradual uploading before we croak, but it's
> availability is highly uncertain, because it is pretty difficult to do even
> with mechanosynthetically produced devices. So a destructive scan of a
> vitrified cerebrum ("digitizing neuroanatomy") and a computational

This is probably the most useful point in the entire history of copy debates! As far as we know, it is impossible to produce such an identical copy, so all the copy-and-kill scenarios are theoretical and philosophical arguments.

For my money, I would like to see one neuron at a time replaced with a new one. I think everyone has agreed that this is an acceptable way to end up in a mechanical body. It also seems more likely given laws of physics, and probably cheaper with lower technology.

-- 
Harvey Newstrom                                   <mailto:harv@gate.net>
Author, Engineer, Entrepreneur,              <http://www.gate.net/~harv>
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