From: Harvey Newstrom (mail@HarveyNewstrom.com)
Date: Fri Jun 01 2001 - 15:08:19 MDT
> Lee Corbin <lcorbin@ricochet.net> made a valiant attempt with:
>
> > No, I think that you would too, unless you're just incredibly
> > stubborn. Imagine that everyone but you began doing it. Years and
> > years go by. You see the same people slowly age. Time and again
> > you hear them recount their adventures on other planets. The tiny
> > voice in your head "but they're not the same people! my old friends
> > are dead!" becomes pitifully weak. Eventually you stop listening to
> > it.
What if you see your friends off to the teleport place and see them off
every time. Then one day you make a wrong turn and see your friend who just
teleported away fighting some thugs. They subdue him, and as he begs for
his life, they shoot him in the head. Then they chop up the body and burn
it. When they notice you, they calmly explain that friend has really been
teleported away to another planet. They didn't kill him.
The point is not that the new copy is invalid, unconscious or wrong. The
point is that the old copy is *also* still valid, conscious and "me". As
such, the old copy does not want to be killed. I am my own original, and I
have a right to say don't kill me. How can anyone argue with that? How can
anyone argue that shooting me in the head is suddenly OK just because of
some new bioexperiment someone created somewhere else that looks a lot like
me?
The objection that killing the original is bad is not solved by pointing out
how good not killing the copy is. These are unrelated issues. No matter
how perfect the copy is, this original still does not want to die.
-- Harvey Newstrom <http://HarveyNewstrom.com> <http://Newstaff.com>
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