From: John Clark (jonkc@worldnet.att.net)
Date: Thu May 11 2000 - 08:51:32 MDT
Harvey Newstrom <hnewstro@us.ibm.com>
>The new guy is alive, but I'm still dead. We are identical, except I'm
>dead and he's not.
You walk toward me and say "Hi John, it's getting a little cloudy we many ge..."
at that point I flash a Gamma ray LASER at you and make a hologram that records
the position of every atom in your body. To do this the flash needs to be short and
very powerful, so powerful your body is vaporized one nanosecond after the hologram
is made, but that's a minor point. 10 years later I use the information and different
atoms to reconstruct your body and you say " ...t some rain this afternoon".
My question is this, how can the "old guy" be dead when you remember being him?
I'm not exactly sure what a "consciousness stream" is but it doesn't seem to me that
it's been interrupted and surely you don't think the atoms are important, I doubt you want
to invoke an immortal soul; so what has changed so much that the fellow who believes
with every fiber in his being that he's good old Harvey Newstrom is actually wrong?
John K Clark jonkc@att.net
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