From: Michael S. Lorrey (mike@datamann.com)
Date: Thu May 11 2000 - 11:10:13 MDT
John Clark wrote:
> Harvey Newstrom <hnewstro@us.ibm.com>
>
> >The new guy is alive, but I'm still dead. We are identical, except I'm
> >dead and he's not.
>
> You walk toward me and say "Hi John, it's getting a little cloudy we many ge..."
> at that point I flash a Gamma ray LASER at you and make a hologram that records
> the position of every atom in your body. To do this the flash needs to be short and
> very powerful, so powerful your body is vaporized one nanosecond after the hologram
> is made, but that's a minor point. 10 years later I use the information and different
> atoms to reconstruct your body and you say " ...t some rain this afternoon".
>
> My question is this, how can the "old guy" be dead when you remember being him?
> I'm not exactly sure what a "consciousness stream" is but it doesn't seem to me that
> it's been interrupted and surely you don't think the atoms are important, I doubt you want
> to invoke an immortal soul; so what has changed so much that the fellow who believes
> with every fiber in his being that he's good old Harvey Newstrom is actually wrong?
While the Neo-Harvey might beleive it is the old Harvey Prime, the problem is you haven't
weighed the opinion of the Harvey Prime on this by the convenient act of vaprization.
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