change it to grandpaboy
First, why am I me?
Because I know I am.
Second, will I still be me tomorrow?
Yes, but not the same me as today (or even last minute).
Third, what will be left of the ‘me today’?
Memories, body etc. all slightly different.
Fourth, if I make an exact copy, which one will be me?
As both have what’s left of ‘me today’ and both will know they are me. Both will be me. Thus, there will be one me today, but two tomorrow.
The really interesting point is, would it be possible to put them toghether again to form the me of day after tomorrow. Live the same day twice at the same time!
- pofo
…so many ideas…such idle speculations…
try to run ideas through like this
if( copy human != impossible)
{
if(copy concious != impossible)
copy human;
else
puts( Not possible, move on!);
}
return 0;
@pofo : valid point though, that is the signature form of chaos that would lie within the subatomic makeup of ourselves.
[quote=“bogbean”]I’d thought similar things to this about a matter transporter, like in Star Trek. In that they actually send all the atoms across to be reassembled.
you are correct…sorta. From what I read (gotta love the Star Trek Techical manual, 183 pages of fake science that sounds so real :D), it says that: “the phase transistion coils convert the subject into a subatomically debonded matter stream…that transmit the matter stream within an annular confinment beam to the trasnport location”
And…they have an enitre three-page description of exactly what happens and when…technical fiction…so much FUN! 
So, yes it would appear that your matter is dissasembled, moved from point A to point B, and then reassembled.
However, I have also looked into the science involving real transporters. I do belive that you are correct on that as well. The matter is scanned, destroyed, then re-created in a new location. They have actually managed to transport very tiny things (i.e. a few atoms) very small distances with this method.
As for the copy thing…I volunteer to have myself “backed-up” The backups would have to occur once a year or something like that. As long as you still knew that you were you (abet with a bit of a temporal shift, you would be behind in events), it would be great! To prevent the “old you” comming back to life, it would probably be customary to wait a few weeks after death was declared (or just destroy the body when there is no more hope) before makeing the copy.
If you have not guessed, I am not much for the “soul” and “afterlife” deal.
This is an interesting topic.
However, I believe this and all other philosophical paradoxes, (which I think Green’s original post is) are a function of uncertainty in human language. I think this even overshadows ‘uncertainty principles’ talked about in physics. Most human languages include a whole bunch of linguistic abstractions–like free will, infinity and so on–that have no empirical meaning, but that we think mean something. Rene Descartes talked about this 500 years ago–you can say you understand the notion of a figure with a thousand equal sides, but you probably don’t really understand it, instead it’s a very complex abstraction that we can describe or talk about (‘I think a thousand sided figure would be really cool!’) but that most of us don’t really comprehend.
The idea of an exact duplicate may not be a philosophical abstraction, but the paradoxes that follow are. So for me to know whether or not I’d be the same person is dependent on whether I understand a bunch of really abstract concepts about ‘the soul’, ‘free will’, and so on. There is undoubtedly an answer to Green’s question, but I think we will never know it. How’s that for sitting on the fence!
do you know who are “you”?do i know who am “I”?what is a self?what makes you do the things you like?what is behind your mind?the “soul” thing is a great kind of difficult to understand.i think no computer can copy the data of a what we call soul.it is just abstract.WE DON’T KNOW WHO WE ARE!!!
this is a bit offtopic, but I got a C exam in two weeks:
ACASTO:
if( copy human != impossible)
{
if(copy concious != impossible)
copy human;
else
puts( Not possible, move on!);
}
point number one: no library inclusions
2) No declaration of Main. so there is nothing to return. thats nasty.
3) Why are there two If statements? the first one has no use…
please correct me if i’m wrong. dont want to find this out on my exam
Roel
…using biotech to download the contents of the brain (memories etc) into a box. (theoreticly… i remember back in the mid 80’s in scientific american an article about the discovery of organic magnets in the brain… ram?) then clone me and upload heh…
K
Goofster, it’s just a loose cutting from an imaginary C program, I know there’s no #includes… or anything. As for the ifs, if it is not possible to copy body, then skip all, if it is possible to copy body, then check if it’s possible to copy concious, if not, skip, if it is, then copy human else “not possible”. I’m not sure, it’s a 3am thing
There’s me. Then there’s an identical copy of me made. Identical in every way -physically, mentally, emotionally. At the exact point of creation, the two would be truly identical. But from that singular time event forward, the two would be different beings.
We are shaped not only by our genetics (what we have to start with) but also by our experiences (what we pick up along the way). The genetics would be the same, as would the experiences, but the experiences would be the same only up to that singular point in time.
The two Waylenas created above would get along for a few minutes thanks to the inherent WOW factor. After that, they would start to fight. Each would believe themselves to be the “real” Waylena. They would fight over who owns the car, the computer, etc.
Hmm. On ST:TNG, they had to send Riker’s “brother” away to have his own life, didn’t they? Of course, I think he ended up joining the Maqui (sp?) or some such thing…
Now, if the copy is created just before the other is killed, the story would be different. If the death were from a long-term disease, the newly created copy would meet the same fate. But if the death were accidental, that would be most convenient for the copy, since he or she could then continue the existence. It might seem the same to the copy as well as to family and friends, but it would indeed be different.
-Waystar
The body is but a vessel and a tool. So, then, must we bend and make it twisted to our will.
Free Will does exists. It does not matter on the number of times one ponders on questioning this. No matter what you ‘follow’ in random thinking and predicting, it is still a choice, you can have the pie or you could choose to eat sandwhich. Or even then you might not feel like eating a sandwhich, maybe a pork chop or two?
A back-up of yourself is an exact copy of yourself, right? Is that not cloning? But thats besides the point. An exact copy of yourself is impossible. There is the physical aspect, and then there is the phylosophical aspect.
We cannot even asnwer the question that is “Thought”.
What is thought? You cannot touch it, smell it, taste it. But it is there. You just…know. We cannot truly define pure thought. How, then, do we extract it, let alone copy it?
Ones thoughts are theirs alone. You cannot share it. No matter how many people one can meet and befriend, in the end, one is ultimately alone in thought.
When you die, there is no coming back.
AWH hell, thats enough phylosophical babble.
Forget about this ludicrous thinking, go outside and see the world, dammit.
Dont stress too much on what you cannot fathom.
Less stress = more life. Live it up.
and remember:
“THERE CAN BE…ONLY ONE!” 8)
-Conner McCleod
-RISKBREAKER
That does not have to be. If I choose to be cloned, both of me will know that we are real. The only problem is the former life and the memory of the clone. Just like the 6th day with Arnold. Because both will think that this life belongs to them. In my case, there would not be much to miss, except some musical instruments. I think I could deal with giving away half of my possessions for having another me around. Maybe I should ask Q.
What about the bubblegum crisis method of ‘cloning’ a mind? You send micromachines into the brain. And they start to rebuild brain cells and substitute the old ones with those biomechanical cells. Then the state of the mechanical cells is transmitted into a robot called boomer.
Little microcrabs eating through your brain. yum yum…
Those micromachines will get really funny. They enable mankind to make much more interesting mistakes.
An exact copy will be impossible. But why should you want to make one?. You can have all the problems also with a bad copy. Ask Bizarro #1.
HH
In my opinion it wouldn’t as both the copies would be you at the point of creation. It wouldn’t even be sad that a person died since nothing of that person was lost.
On the free will thing. This copying idea might be a good way to prove it. Make two copies and put them in identical environments. If they act exactly the same there’s no free will.
Of course the environments couldn’t be exactly identical. One stray speck of dust could cause one of them to sneeze and upset the whole experiment.
I personally believe in a limited free will: I don’t believe in destiny, but I don’t believe it’s possible to act against ones nature either. The situation, your genes and everything you’ve ever experienced will dictate what you do. But since that really is what’s you it’s you that’s deciding.
- pofo
Everyone talks about ‘copy’ like all you have to do is press a button. I bet if you ask anyone with good knowledge of advanced physics will tell you this is not possible in the first place, which would make the speculations of “I wonder what would happen if…” irrelevant.
The only way I see from a standpoint of physics to perfectly copy yourself, would be a time shift, not a clone or subatomic duplicate. If you were to go back, say a day in time, theoretically there would be two of you (really…check it out). They would be exact copies (except for any changes in the time span of the travel) because both would be you. A clone is not you, just a copy. If I build an exact duplicate of the sistine chapel, is it a second sistine chapel, or just a rip-off ?
On the topic of free will, it comes down to two seperate things. Evironmental stimuli and trained responses, and free will. There is such a thing as free will. It is what makes us human and great things happen. However, many people are weak, and let the outside stimuli and programed responses take over. The majority of society is nothing more than mere robots. If we realize this, we can look past the normal and shape our own futures.
Of course it’s irrelevant (I’ve got enough knowledge of advanced physics to understand that), that’s what makes it philosophy. Else it would be politics or something like that. The ‘what if’ thought experiments are important in understanding yourself (what if I didn’t have a body, what would I think of). And of course they’re great fun 
.
And don’t forget that an important part of physics is keeping an open mind, whatever turns out to be real goes and screw the theory. Nothing to say that this copy/paste bussiness would ever work though.
- pofo
That´s totally enough for me. It is just plain fun to think of something to be possible and then imagine the consequences. It is good for story telling. But it is very important to think of what is still impossible then.
No. Cloning means that you use the data of your DNA. Probably all original experience and socialization will be lost. There may be inherent memory, but this is as certain as the existance of a soul. And as long as they are not capable of increasing the speed of growing, there will be a difference of age as well.
So is Natalie Portman.
Except that person…
I think we do it all the time. So I rather believe in socialization. But I don´t have faith in it. I mean most of the people I meet, have an enormous amount of mistrust and anxiety, a whole lot of ‘this is the way it has to be done’ thoughts like ‘don´t have sex til you are married’ or ‘nudity is something offensive’ or ‘babies belong into a pram’ or even ‘giving them the breast is bad for them’ or ‘jews, indians and black people in particular and people of other countries on the whole are worth less than people of my skin colour or natinality’. I don´t think this is our nature. It is rape. Normally, our wings are cut very early.
If you work with great apes or whales, you will see that free will isn´t limited to humans. There is no strict border between mankind and everything else. Just a difference in percentage values of the mixture.
HH
but we are talking about copying humans, arn’t we ?
most living things do have some degree of free will
I agree that this is sad, but as I see it those thoughts are as much part of you as anything else. It’s a learned response, but so’s being polite to the elderly. Actively trying to change oneself is much of what makes us human though, so go and unlearn those negative thoughts.
Perhaps ‘nature’ was not the best word. What I meant was, it’s you that’s deciding, but since you don’t decide who you are, your decicions are as much made by the events that shaped you.
Anyways, I think we are more or less onto the same thing here.
- pofo
Things that were set in your childhood can be diminished. But it is not supported in the countries I know. Normally you get hindered.
I wouldn´t call it negative thoughts. I just sense those damages in most of the people around me. It is just my perception.
I think we tend to call things that happen frequently ‘normal’, even if it is the worst shit.
Like it is normal to write or shake hands with the ‘good’ hand. If you try to assimilate a lefthander, you will turn him into a broken person with great problems.
If you want to change society, change the way babies are treated.
I start talking senseless.
:o
HH
imgranpaboy wrote
weve cloned sheep…sheep think(maybe not to the extent of humans)… therefore we cloned thought…
Hmm…a sheep…a sheep, you say? Would you mind asking this ‘sheep’ what is on its mind? You what? You cant ask a sheep that question? Hmm…I wonder why…maybe its because…Sheeps cannot talk. Thus, it would seem extremely difficult to prove that the same exact thoughts were actually “cloned”, (communicating with sheep is dodgy business).
And i thought i was bored, most people here must have idle minds.
Has anyone here actually seen the sun? Point is, does it really matter to think about something that is only 3/4 feasable? (did i spell that right???)
I’ll say this again:
LESS STRESS = MORE LIFE. Peel your eyes off the damn monitor and go outside and live life instead of worrying on trivial matters like “exact dupli-whatcha-ma-call-it”
-RISKBREAKER