From: Lee Corbin (lcorbin@tsoft.com)
Date: Mon Oct 14 2002 - 20:51:15 MDT
John Clark writes
> [Lee writes]
> > 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"?
But you say that a few minutes ago is too long for your "taste",
and you refer to what you could "tolerate". I think that *all*
that needs adjusting is your attitude.
> 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.
But supposed that you bought my argument and then got used to
it. Then you'd say, "Gee, tomorrow when I wake up, I won't
be remembering this. Isn't that odd."
Actually, one can do that today! Take the sleeping pill
midazolam at 11:00 PM and go to sleep at 12:00. You won't
remember anything between 11:30 and 12:00. You can write
funny notes and leave them for yourself in the morning.
It will be weird. But with the sleeping pill, we don't
imagine any danger to our identity. But with the
delayed-choice teleporter (or the above example which
amounts to the same thing) people do. I think, again,
that it's basically because they haven't internalized
the notion that they *can* be in two places at the same
time.
Practice remembering that last week you were at the
library and you were in the supermarket. You can't
know for sure that those two things really didn't
happen at the same time! If we had duplication
devices, and techniques for merging small amounts
of memory, then they might very well have occurred
at the same time.
If you *do* choose B, and get vaporized, the
John Clark that gets up the next morning will be
easily within the permissible sphere of possible
John Clarks that could get up tomorrow morning.
You have no reason to believe that you are *not*
any one of them. Some will have retired tonight
after watching a frightening movie, some after
being arrested and thrown in the poky for a few
hours. Some will have received annoying phone
calls. Some will have been beat up by hoodlums.
But if any of these things happened to you, you'd
still be the same person. And so is that xox
in the ice.
Lee
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