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From: davidson@sdcsvax.UUCP (Greg Davidson)
Newsgroups: net.sf-lovers
Subject: Re: matter transmission and duplication
Message-ID: <1099@sdcsvax.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 13-Sep-85 05:25:13 EDT
Article-I.D.: sdcsvax.1099
Posted: Fri Sep 13 05:25:13 1985
Date-Received: Thu, 19-Sep-85 06:13:55 EDT
References: <3617@topaz.RUTGERS.EDU>
Reply-To: davidson@sdcsvax.UUCP (Greg davidson)
Organization: EECS Dept. U.C. San Diego
Lines: 16
Summary: A duplicate of me is just as good as me

People who won't accept a perfect duplicate of themselves as a
substitute for their continuity in their original body may be
idealizing the continuity of their body and personality over time, both
of which are only approximate.  They may also have some unexamined
mystical concepts of self.  Let's do a thought experiment and find
out.

How do you know that your personality DOESN'T die every night, and 
get recreated imperfectly from backups in the morning?  Imagine this
were really the case; say it had just been discovered, and you read
it this morning in Science magazine.  Would it matter?  Would you
avoid going to sleep, since it WAS death to do so? I can't see as
how it would make ANY difference, so why should I object to a perfect
copy replacing me?  As long as the change over were done gracefully.

_Greg Davidson			Virtual Infinity Systems, San Diego