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

[Neil H.]

On 4/5/06, Robert Bradbury <robert.bradbury at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
> I agree with Ben (regarding what I do with my information is my business).
>
> 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...
>

(There's also some slight spoilers in the message below)

This also reminds me of a sci-fi short story. I don't recall the title, but
it was in an anthology of hard sci-fi. The gist of it is that there's a
"teleportation" technology, given to humans by extraterrestrials. This
technology creates a duplicate copy of a person at some remote location, and
when a signal is sent back confirming the copy, an operator sends radiation
through the original's brain, instantly killing them. The extraterrestrials
refer to the killing of the original as "balancing the equation," and
consider it of utmost importance. Indeed, they believe that if a species
doesn't have the "discipline" to kill off the original, they are unworthy of
the teleportation technology.


The plot in the story concerns the moral dilemma which arises when there's
uncertainty about whether or not the copy was properly sent.

-- Neil
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