Article-I.D.: mtgzz.1180
Posted: Tue Sep 24 01:33:18 1985
Date-Received: Thu, 19-Sep-85 04:55:45 EDT
References: <3645@topaz.RUTGERS.EDU>
Organization: AT&T Information Systems Labs, Middletown NJ
Lines: 33

>From: "James J. Lippard" 
>
>[Keith Lynch:]
>>>    Postultimate thought: if you put yourself on file could
>>>    you ever truly die?
>>>
>>>  Sure.  If all the copies get wiped out.  Just as books,
>>>music, and computer data can become irretrievably lost.  The
>>>more copies, and in the more places, the better.  Keep one
>>>in another solar system (it's called supernova insurance).
>
>[Mark Leeper:]
>> I think that there is a misconception here.  Your species remains
>> reconstructable while your genetic code is on file, but you do not.
>
>*If* just the genetic code is on file.  If all the information about
>your identity was put on file, you *could* come back.  In fact, there
>could be more than one of you.  This is assuming a materialist point
>of view--if there's a soul which flies away at death then the copy
>isn't the same.
>

OK, so there is more of you on file than just your genetic code.  Then
a new copy is made.  I think the point still is valid.  As far as the
world is concerned you are alive, but that is an illusion.  You are
dead.  There just is a perfect copy around that thinks it is you.  The
fact that two or three of these things can be made is the clincher.
They can't all be the original.  Take my word for it, if you are
destroyed and replaced by an exact copy with your mind, you are dead.
The exact copy is only that.  I know.  It happens to me every night.

				Mark Leeper
				...ihnp4!mtgzz!leeper