Hi David, Bo and Squad
Question:
"Suppose there is a teleportation system that copies your DNA, kills
you then instantaneously builds a perfect copy of you at a different
location would you agree to travel by it?
Or suppose it doesn't kill you, would it create another you?
What does it take? Is it enough to copy your DNA? Are "you" defined
by your DNA?"
On 2 Feb 99, at 2:27, David Buchanan wrote:
> Some of the more crucial experiences missing from the clone would even
> include the first divisions of those undifferentiated cells. He would
> not have experienced any of the stages of growth or birth itself. Birth
> is a big one to Jungians and Freudians alike. Learning to crawl, eat,
> walk, talk and drive a car were important experiences my clone would
> have to do without. Not only has the poor ignorant creature never been
> to school, he has missed the stages of cognitive development that allow
> the acquisition of language and other skills. It's well known that
> children pass THROUGH these stages and the capacity learn certain
> mental skills fades as they mature. The clone's ability to learn most
> things would be forever lost.
I agree that missing out on the trauma (?) of birth may have some sort of effect,
although it may not be detrimental, but surely at the point where the clone is created it
would be at the same stage that a baby would be at at birth. The difference here being
that the whole process is massively accelerated. So from this point on the clone would
then have to go through the cognitive stages that you describe above complete with a
newborn childs ability to learn. This is in the case that memories are not transferred
> I can't help thinking that our "teleportation system" is just a science
> fiction version of the old mind/body problem. In effect, it takes the
> mind out of the body. As I understand it, the MOQ dissolves that problem
> entirely. The MOQ would say the question is predicated on false or
> mistaken assumptions, namely SOM. The MOQ would say the questions are
> meaningless.
I'm not at all sure that the MOQ would find the question meaningless. What false or
mistaken assumptions are being made? Does the MOQ deny the existence of either DNA or
memory? Could you explain what you mean by the MOQ dissolving the problem.
If we are assuming that only the DNA information is being transmitted then from an MOQ
point of view this is information regarding at most the first two levels. At one level
there are the patterns of Inorganic Value which constitute the chemical structure of DNA
and at another level there is information regarding the patterns of Biological Value
which emerge from the Inorganic level.
Admittedly the process would be extremely complex (quite likely impossibly so) but for
the purposes of an MOQ thought experiment if the DNA information is extractable then its
application as the recipe for a new body is also feasible. What is interesting to
discover in MOQ terms is how DNA maps to the first two levels. Would the *information*
extracted (remember it's a teleporter so it's not sending a physical sample) refer to the
Inorganic POV's that constitute the physical/chemical structure of the DNA or would it
refer to the Biological POV's which are built upon the lower Inorganic level and are an
inherent part of it.
If we are assuming that all personal memories can be extracted somehow, then would this
have to be information regarding all four levels? Information extracted would, I presume,
be physical information as in the case of DNA, but where do memories physically reside?
Memories must exist somewhere as we have access to them whenever we wish to remember
something - like 'where did I leave my front door key this morning'. I have to 'search'
my memories in order to locate the last time I put them down. What creates those
memories, experiences, memories of experiences or experiences of memories is one thing
but how and where they are stored and how they are accessed is another matter.
I would say that these questions are far from meaningless from an MOQ point of view but
start to throw some light on how the levels relate to each other and to Dynamic Quality.
On 2 Feb 99, at 19:24, B. Skutvik wrote:
> But our thought experiment is more advanced with the possibility of
> zipping us across with every last memory "byte" in place, and in that case
> I can see no other possibility that another me has been created. But -
> shudder - if I (here) weren't destroyed I think the I (there) would be a
> different person, and should I happen to meet him would think it an
> uncanny resemblance, but still not me. I think this also underpins the MOQ
> because in it the various q-levels may be seen as different identities.
I agree with you here Bo. I'm making the assumption here that an *exact* copy could be
made and disregarding, for the moment, Magnus's point about the quantum self.
If the technology existed to recreate not only the body but all the memories of a person
and they could all be reproduced at another location then at that instant would it not be
the case that the copy would be identical to the original. But from that point on the two
would diverge and become different persons due to their subsequent different experiences,
even though their initial starting point is identical.
Horse
"Making history, it turned out, was quite easy.
It was what got written down.
It was as simple as that!"
Sir Sam Vimes.
MOQ Online - http://www.moq.org
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