"1. Do you consider yourself to have experienced the torture in the case of the Restorers, even though you no longer remember it? If not, why not."
Yes "2. If yes, do you consider yourself to have experienced the torture in the case of the Duplicators? If yes, please explain, if not, please explain." The idea that atoms can be duplicated is an assumption. If we only look at the part of a plant that we can see and tried to duplicate that, it would not have an roots and it would die. I think of the roots of atoms to be experiences through time. Just having a person who seems to be shaped like you according to an electron microscope does not make them you. 3. Both scenarios I think are based on misconceptions. Nothing in the universe can be duplicated absolutely and nothing can be erased absolutely, because what we see of time is, again, missing the roots that extend out to eternity. I find it bizarre that we find it so easy to doubt our naive realism when it comes to physics but not when it comes to consciousness. Somehow we think that the idea that this moment of 'now' is mandated by physics to be universal and uniform. Craig On Tuesday, February 12, 2013 7:58:49 PM UTC-5, Jason wrote: > > Consider the following thought experiment, called "The Duplicators": > > At 1:00 PM tomorrow, you will be abducted by aliens. The aliens will tell > you not to worry, that you won't be harmed but they wish to conduct some > experiments on the subject of pain, which is unknown to them. These aliens > possess technology far in advance of our own. They have the ability to scan > and replicate objects down to the atomic level and the aliens use this > technology to create an atom-for-atom duplicate of yourself, which they > call you2. The aliens thank you for your assistance and return you > unharmed back to your home by 5:00 PM. You ask them "What about the pain > experiments?" and they hand you an informational pamphlet and quickly fly > off. You read the pamphlet which explains that a duplicate of you (you2) > was created and subjected to some rather terrible pain experiments, akin to > what humans call torture and at the end of the experiment you2was euthanized. > You consider this awful, but are nonetheless glad that they > tortured your duplicate rather than you. > > Now consider the slightly different thought experiment, called "The > Restorers": > > At 1:00 PM tomorrow, you will be abducted by aliens. Unlike the aliens > with the duplication technology (the duplicators), these aliens possess a > restorative technology. They can perfectly erase memories and all other > physical traces to perfectly restore you to a previous state. The aliens > will tell you not to worry, that you won't be harmed but they wish to > conduct some experiments on the subject of pain, which is unknown to them. > They then proceed to brutually torture you for many hours, conducting test > after test on pain. Afterwards, they erase your memory of the torture and > all traces of injury and stress from your body. When they are finished, you > are atom-for-atom identical to how you were before the torture began. The > aliens thank you for your assistance and return you unharmed back to your > home by 5:00 PM. You ask them "What about the pain experiments?" and they > hand you an informational pamphlet and quickly fly off. You read the > pamphlet which explains that a duplicate of you (you2) was created and > subjected to some rather terrible pain experiments, akin to what humans > call torture and at the end of the experiment you2 was euthenized. You > consider this awful, but are nonetheless glad that they tortured your > duplicate rather than you. > > My questions for the list: > > 1. Do you consider yourself to have experienced the torture in the case of > the Restorers, even though you no longer remember it? If not, why not. > > 2. If yes, do you consider yourself to have experienced the torture in the > case of the Duplicators? If yes, please explain, if not, please explain. > > 3. If you could choose which aliens would abduct you, is there one you > would prefer? If you have a preference, please provide some justification. > > > Thank you. > > Jason > > > -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
