From: Damien Broderick (d.broderick@english.unimelb.edu.au)
Date: Fri Oct 11 2002 - 19:02:25 MDT
At 02:43 PM 10/11/02 -0700, Robert wrote:
>So -- If one Damien xox goes to Costa Rica and another Damien
>xox goes to Pakistan, while the original is being put back together
>in Australia (reassembling all of those atoms accurately takes
>time you know) who do you prefer to take to diner at the next
>Extro conference?
Robert, you're still sidestepping what I consider the important issue:
namely, what is at stake for the original.
I believe everyone here grants that *operationally*, for *other people*, an
exact-ish emulation is as good or bad as the original. In the case you
describe, the emulation also has more interesting tales to tell, which are
pretty much identical to the tales the original would have told had he
experienced the same travels. The burning issue is a deictic or indexical
thing: it never matters to *you* (defined as whoever is *outside* the
person, looking in), it only and absolutely matters to *me* (whoever is
inside, looking out). Unless everyone concerned has agreed to accept the
Emlyn Undecidability Principle, in which case the matter is forever moot.
Traditional evidence for the Emlyn Principle is that very few of us fear
extinction during sleep or medical unconsciousness; adducing the continuity
of the body is a rather clinical afterthought since *I*, having been
unconscious, can only know that continuity via the fallible testimony of
others. Luckily, we're social animals with a strong bias to
truth-telling... But I digress.
Damien Broderick
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