From: Charles Hixson (charleshixsn@earthlink.net)
Date: Tue Feb 03 2009 - 16:24:25 MST
Matt Mahoney wrote:
> ....
> What's not so clear is whether the outcome is good or bad. It is like asking whether you benefit from a teleportation device that makes a copy of you at your desired destination and slowly crushes the original to death. It depends on how you define "you".
>
> -- Matt Mahoney, matmahoney@yahoo.com
Why in the world "slowly"? Unless there's some required reason, then
any device that slowly tortures someone, anyone, to death *HAS* to be
considered unethical. It doesn't matter whether it's you or not.
P.S.: From my point of view, all sufficiently indistinguishable
versions of myself are me. Note that before I enter the transporter,
both resulting copies will be "me". Afterwards, each of them will be me
to itself, and the other will not. But the other will be an "extremely
close blood relation"...closer than either a parent or a sib. Me is
the entity that can control the peripherals that I can control. An
example might be a hand, but it might also be a car that I'm driving.
(If I can't control it, I'm not driving it.) This is (part of) the
basis of the phantom limb problem.
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