From: Matt Mahoney (matmahoney@yahoo.com)
Date: Wed Mar 19 2008 - 13:50:33 MDT
--- Lee Corbin <lcorbin@rawbw.com> wrote:
> Matt writes
>
> > Also, what is the conceptual difficulty of having the memories of two
> people
> > who lived separate lives?
>
> Well, that's for another thread, but let's briefly consider two cases.
>
> 1. The two people in question are Julius Caesar and George Patton.
> In this case, the sudden merger (merged guy) is baffled and very
> confused. But then, rather easily I suspect since each was a bit
> of a mystic by our standards, the Patton memories would be used
> to formulate the hypothesis that he was really the incarnation of
> Julius Caesar, (a thought that would not displease him in the least,
> I think). The problem could be minimal, except for certain values,
> like, "should all the inhabitants of certain conquered territories be
> exterminated for the sake of future safety"? But hell, that happens
> to all of us (well, not so graphically, or literally, of course).
> Whenever
> you act in a certain way for a specific reason, you may recall that a
> some time earlier in your life (or earlier in your day) that you acted
> in the opposite way.
>
> Now this is the *conceptual* difficulty, as you asked. The practical
> difficulty, as when we discussed merging Shakespeare and Einstein,
> would still be enormous.
>
> 2. The two people led concurrent lives, and perhaps had opposing
> goals, mutual hatred, and so on. You could end up with a very
> distraught, confused, and possibly mentally ill patient on your
> hands.
>
> (if you reply to that last part, why don't you merge it back into
> the Memory Merging thread? thank you)
I admit there will be problems when two people find themselves sharing the
same body. They will just have to come to an agreement. But it can be done.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MiSuyuOOBR8
-- Matt Mahoney, matmahoney@yahoo.com
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Wed Jul 17 2013 - 04:01:02 MDT