From: John K Clark (jonkc@att.net)
Date: Mon Oct 14 2002 - 09:24:20 MDT
> You walk into a room and discover a frozen duplicate
> of you created a few minutes ago. There he is, sprawled
> out in the ice as was the Frankenstein monster. On top
> the cask of ice sits a briefcase containing ten million
> dollars. You must choose between (A) to have your xox
> and the $10M vaporized, or (B) to be vaporized yourself
> with your duplicate getting to be thawed out and sent
> happily on his way to the bank with his new ten million.
I would pick B except for one thing, "a few minutes ago" is far too long for
my taste, I could tolerate a second and perhaps two but not much more. The
thing is if I picked B I don't want to have time to think "I'm about to be
vaporized and this is my last very thought" because that doesn't sound like
much fun, but that's just me. The trouble with your thought experiment is
that there is no wrong answer, it's just what you are comfortable with; I am
comfortable with changes where there is no way for me to know if it a
change had ever really happened or not. I'm curious, would you be
comfortable with "a few months ago" or "a few years ago"?
John K Clark jonkc@att.net
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