[extropy-chat] I keep asking myself...

[Russell Wallace]

On 4/5/06, Robert Bradbury <robert.bradbury at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> As an aside with a slight spoiler I'll note that I believe the old SciFi
> novel "The Saga of the Cuckoo" has an interesting sub-plot involving how
> uncomfortable a space explorer becomes with the idea of stepping into the
> self-Xerox machine to make yet another copy of himself after having
> witnessed a dozen or so of his previous copies fail to return from various
> exploration missions.  The argument "Don't worry, you'll be the original"
> only succeeds just so many times...
>

As a subscriber to the pattern view, I wouldn't rely on that argument! I'd
rely on "if I fail to come back, I'll still be alive nonetheless, since both
copies are me"... though I'd also be skeptical of the value of sending a
stream of expensive manned spacecraft, plus maybe subjecting myself to the
unpleasant experience of dying of radiation poisoning/being eaten by aliens
with acid blood/etc, on missions where none of them were coming back with
data. Why not send cheap unmanned/narrow AI probes first to check whether
conditions at the destination are survivable?
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