From: Lee Corbin (lcorbin@ricochet.net)
Date: Mon Jun 11 2001 - 20:29:23 MDT
John Clark wrote
>Lee Corbin <lcorbin@ricochet.net> wrote:
>> 3. Will teleport, unless there is a delay.
>> Suppose the original at the the point of departure is
>> scanned and the information is used to construct the
>> remote duplicate, but then there is a delay before
>> the original is destroyed.
>
>My backup is out of date so when you put a gun to my
>head I am very unhappy.
Well, 3 is to be read literally: will you or won't you
teleport if it is known that there will be (always is)
an overlap between the advent of the remote and the
destruction of the local? In my view, one must
anticipate being both the local and the remote equally
so long as they both exist (after all---what distinguishes
them?). Would you use the teleporter system if there was
an overlap of two seconds? five minutes? etc? Now,
even I wouldn't teleport if it was a very long time and
my local copy had nothing to read, or was going to be
extremely bored (it hardly matters to me that these
painful memories are ultimately discarded because the
local gets disintegrated).
>> 4. Will teleport, but finds backups to be useless.
>
>Again, backups are very useful, if up to date.
The whole question, the real question (sorry that there is not space to
elaborate much within the question itself) is: **how** useful:
You may remember my example of the frozen duplicate with $10,000,000
in a briefcase on top the frozen slab of ice. He was created a few
minutes ago. Do you (a) choose that he (and the money) be disintegrated,
or (b) that you be disintegrated and he gets to deposit the money?
Remember that he, who lies frozen there, is a genuine backup
of you (a few minutes old).
I elaborate also this way: suppose you made a backup last week.
Now you see that your space capsule is doomed to re-entry burn-up.
You're "very unhappy"? I claim that this is precisely like losing
all the memories that you've made this week. This comparitively
small amount of amnesia isn't a threat to your life in any way. Right?
Lee Corbin
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Sat Nov 02 2002 - 08:08:04 MST