From: Lee Corbin (lcorbin@rawbw.com)
Date: Tue Mar 18 2008 - 22:17:22 MDT
Mike writes
> On Mon, Mar 17, 2008 at 8:17 PM, Lee Corbin <lcorbin@rawbw.com> wrote:
>> Oh, okay. But you don't defend "close duplicates should merge
>> at least as easily as they are created"? Or 'twas someone else
>> said that?
>
> I don't defend it. I don't deny that I said it either....
>
> <big snip to be addressed below>
>
> Given further consideration of my statement you have quoted above, I
> would like to put a strike-through over it.
I'll take that as a retraction! :-) Thanks. You are probably familiar
with the sad fact that there aren't so many people on this list who,
like you and me, will simply admit to a misstatement or an error.
They'll either grimly hang on, or just pass over their error in total
silence. (I suppose that total silence is sometimes appropriate, if
conditions are just right.)
> I meant [was trying to say] that
> by whatever mechanism that a duplicate is created, there should be as
> simple or complex a machine to reverse the process.
Totally agree. If a dish falls on the kitchen floor and shatters into
a thousand pieces---well, that transformation was easy. But just
because a 100% reverse transformation is difficult does not in any
way make it impossible. In fact, with nanotechnology...... :-)
> ... Their race can only grow in number if there are
> sufficient numbers of humans to consume, and it's a moderately
> successful plot device. I always wondered why this would be a problem
> for aliens that can teleport a human via upload->storage, then
> reconstitute the person from storage back to flesh&blood. It would
> seem an easy solution to produce any number of copies from storage
> using whatever fantastical power source drives the ship as the input
> energy for the reconstitution.
Yah, the plot writers just figure that most people won't notice,
I suspect.
Lee
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