From: gts (gts_2000@yahoo.com)
Date: Mon Oct 28 2002 - 00:01:57 MST
--- Jef Allbright <jef@jefallbright.net> wrote:
> Lee raises an interesting question:
Again I find myself in complete agreement with your
objections to Lee's ideas, Jef, so much so that I
hesitate to respond lest I give a different
impression. However I'd like to to elaborate further
on your message:
> I think it's more useful to consider [our
> separate and independent copies] as
> separate individuals who have the special
> relationship of being branches of myself.
Not only is your view most useful, but I think a
little rational thought shows it to be perfectly true
and obvious.
Lee has failed to offer any reason that any possible
copied versions of ourselves should not be considered
in the same way that we would consider identical twin
siblings with whom we happened also to share some
common memories.
Clearly we would be intimately related to such people
-- I agree with Lee that it would be very odd to meet
someone who looked like me and who remembered some of
the same things I remembered. Due to the common
memories that person would be more closely related to
me than a twin-sibling. However in other respects he
would be no different from a twin-sibling.
Despite those common memories, my other version's
personality would have diverged from mine in the first
moment after the branching, such that he would have
his own independent thoughts and emotions and
experiences. He would have his own cares and
considerations. He would experience his own joys and
pains according to his own personal experiences and
expectations. If he committed a crime then only he
would be responsible. If he succeeded in life then
only he would reap the benefits of those successes. If
he fell in love then only he would feel the closeness
of that bond.
It would be a crime against reason to assume that
other person to be me. And yet here we have Lee
Corbin, who claims with apparent sincerity that after
"thirty years" of research he has concluded that such
branched versions of ourselves should be considered
identical to self. Such rot.
-gts
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