To: trekcreative{at}yahoogroups.com
From: Garry Stahl 
Reply-To: trekcreative{at}yahoogroups.com

DarkHrzn91701{at}aol.com wrote:

>But "you" wouldn't live forever.  If you were hit by a truck, you'd
>still die.  There'd be a "something" walking about that
looked just like
>you and talked like you and maybe even thought like you, but
>that wouldn't erase the fact you'd been hit by the truck and taken
>ten minutes to die a painful death.
>
>Frank Tipler, a physicist from Tulane University, wrote a book
>called "The Physics of Immortality" in which he envisioned in
>the far distant future a huge machine that would run "computer
>simulations" in which "copies" of us would exist and live forever.
>
>He seemed to get a lot of comfort out of this for some reason.
>I don't see much advantage for me to know that if I die
>somewhere, somehow there'd be a copy or simulation of me
>having a great life.  I'd still be dead.
>
>
It comes down to the essence of "me-ness"  I am me, a exact
duplicate of me is not me, it's him.  Our thought patterns might be the
same up to the moment of creation of him, but there in they diverge.  He is
him, I am me.  We don't consider identical twins to be an heir and a spare.
 They are each themselves.  He doesn't want to be "disposed of" at the
end of any experiment and I can't blame him.

But what to do you do with one life and two people?  He has my memories?
 Well he is going to love my wife, and that is hardly fair, to him  my
wife or myself.  I certainly am not going to step aside so he can have my
wife, which he feels is his wife, every bit as strongly as I feel he is
wrong.  How does my mother deal with suddenly having two sons?

The social and ethical implications are staggering.  Who to do you
emotionally destroy by telling them they cannot have the life they expect, 
me or him?  I know how I would react, and as he was made from me he would
react the same way.  Bits of Doctor Stupid all over the place.  "YOU
FUCKING BASTARD you RUINED my LIFE!!!!  I can't have Susan I can have my
home, you have taken EVERYTHING from me."  I'd kill the son of a
bitch, and start a stand off with the cops hoping to get killed.  Suicide
by Cop.  However in the Trek-vesre even that wouldn't work because they
would stun me, and I would suffer a long an miserable life because Dr.
Stupid made me.

Ergo, they don't, even if at all possible, make duplicate people.

--
Garry   AKA   -Phoenix-   Rising Above the Flames

Star Trek le mort.  Viva la Star Trek admiraetur.

Olde Phoenix Inn  http://phoenixinn.iwarp.com




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