[ExI] Let's play What If.

[John Clark]

On Oct 30, 2010, at 2:05 PM, Damien Broderick wrote:

> On 10/30/2010 11:57 AM, John Clark wrote:
> 
>> The copy remembers seeing a man who looked just like him appearing 2
>> feet in front of him, and he's not the least bit surprised because that
>> is exactly what he expected to happen. You are also not surprised when
>> two very large guards with no neck enter the chamber, you wait for them
>> to grab that other poor fellow but to your astonishment they go for you
>> instead.
> 
> Ah, so the psychopaths lied

No.

> Only the original can see his copy "appear in front of him,"

Incorrect. 

> Granted, you can now retweak the conditions of your imaginary set-up until you make it impossible for the two to know which of them is which.

Actually its quite difficult to come up with a scenario where the copy DOES instantly know he is the copy. You could have a trusted third party videotape the entire copying process, if you showed the recording to the copy and the recording showed the original walking into the duplicating chamber and then the copy appearing 2 feet to his LEFT and the copy remembers the man who looked just like him appearing 2 feet to his RIGHT then the copy would know he is the copy. But it would take time to present the evidence and might not work even then; the photographer would have to be very trusted indeed before you could force yourself to really believe such a thing. At any rate, all this is irrelevant to the question I asked you, would you be nervous knowing you were going to be copied tomorrow and if so why.

Today I would be about as nervous as its possible to be if I knew that tomorrow I would be duplicated and the copy was to be tortured and the original set free, but I would be equally nervous if the original was tortured and the copy set free. The two situations are equivalent.

 John K Clark 



-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.extropy.org/pipermail/extropy-chat/attachments/20101031/e7a7d281/attachment.html>