From: Lee Corbin (lcorbin@tsoft.com)
Date: Wed Apr 02 2003 - 16:32:50 MST
Harvey writes (glad to see you've got more time for the list, HN)
> Lee Corbin wrote,
> > > You're supposed to MOVE from point A to point B, not COPY
> > > yourself from point A to point B.
> >
> > What the hell is the difference? (Except that copying is non-
> > destructive, whereas moving is.)
>
> Ahhh, the old argument returns...
> Other people want to preserve some attributes of themselves. Destructive
> copying makes sure that those attributes exist somewhere else when the
> original dies. Therefore their desired attributes are preserved and avoids
> the destruction. The surviving attributes are exactly the same whether
> there is a copy or not.
Yes, that's the position I adopt.
> "What is the difference?" Semantics, I think.
I agree literally with that, at least in the sense that to
(a) remain alive without undergoing copying
(b) to be copied and the original simultaneously destroyed
differ only semantically.
> Each side of the debate has different goals for what they
> are trying to achieve. They all call their various goals
> with the same label of "survival", which confuses us into
> assuming that there is one answer...
I'm stubbornly still claiming that there is an answer.
To get your arm broken harms you a lot more than being
destructively teleported. Moreover, if someone had
ten experiences of that, I'm sure that he or she would
come around to agreeing with me.
> The pro-destructive-copy people compare the before and after
> copies as being identical and can't see any difference to
> make them change their mind.
Right. And, as I'll explain in a minute, I think that
the real difference boils down to your theory of physics.
> The anti-destructive-people compare the dead person in
> the copy scenario with the dead person in the non-copy
> scenario, and can't see any difference to make them
> change their mind. Both are correct in their viewpoint
> for their own goals, and no argument for a different
> procedure that doesn't meet their goals will change
> their mind. Only changing their criteria goals will
> convince anybody to change their mind.
Maybe you're right ;-) but I doubt that I will ever stop
trying.
Now if physics is all there is---that is, there are no
souls or essences---then all you are is determined by
the arrangement of your molecules. But now the phone
rings, and your molecules go into a different configuration.
Do you still live?
Of course you still live. But the reason is exactly that
the transformation has *not* altered your state enough to
make you a different person.
Well, then, if you are teleported somewhere, you obtain
*exactly* the state (up to quantum indistinguishability,
i.e., not including quantum indistinguishability), that
is, you go into a state that vastly closer resembles the
state you were in before the phone rang.
Thus if one believes deeply enough in standard physics,
i.e., that we're just atoms, nothing more, then one will
not object to teleportation (wherein one's information
is transmitted to a remote locality to animate remote
atoms and one's local set of atoms is discarded).
But the clincher would come if teleportation were to become
a technological reality. Not many years would pass before
everyone "adjusted" their philosophy to the new reality.
Lee
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