From: John K Clark (jonkc@att.net)
Date: Thu Oct 24 2002 - 11:20:10 MDT
"Dickey, Michael F" <michael_f_dickey@groton.pfizer.com> Wrote:
> Aside from the unusual special case you noted above, if you accept that to
> be one person one must share sensory input with oneself, then noting and
> accepting that a copy and an original *do not* share sensory input would
> acknowledge that they are two, separate, distinct individuals.
Yes. In most cases the two would start to diverge almost immediately and the
differences would only increase as time went by. That's why the prospect of
getting vaporized would make me rather unhappy if my backup was older than a
second or two.
> But both are not made up of the *same* atoms.
The way to tell if two objects are the *same* is to exchange them and note
the changes; if you do this for atoms absolutely nothing changes.
Atoms have no individuality, if they can't even give this interesting
property to themselves how can they give it to us? I'll give you an example.
In my right hand I'm holding a hydrogen atom, his name is Ed. In my left
hand I'm holding another hydrogen atom and his name is Ted. As you closely
watch I bring the two together and cool them down (slow them down in other
words) until it's almost absolute zero. They form an object called a
"Bose Einstein Condensate", something with one quantum state not two as
there were before. I now heat it back up to room temperature, the condensate
is destroyed and you see two hydrogen atoms just as you did before, but
according to the laws of physics it is imposable to tell even in theory who
is Ed and who is Ted, both now have the same history. Stuff like that
happens all the time at the quantum level.
John K Clark jonkc@att.net
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