>
> Speculating wildly here... and certainly not claiming to know anything of
> the experience...
>
> What if, instead, this gave him an *overdeveloped* sense of self?
>
> Unlike us singletons, twins face this risk of being confused with another
> person. So they're forced to elaborate, internally, on their distinction. If
> I woke up tomorrow and everyone called me "Bob", but didn't expect me to be
> any different, would that change me? Would it affect me as much as two twins
> who were nominally switched? I would consider it weird, but not necessarily
> an affront on my self-hood.
>
> Does a twin focus on the differences rather than the sameness? I know I
> won't be the same person a year from now, but on the other hand I won't be
> that different. A 50-year-old writer and his twin are effectively separated
> by 100 years of distinct history, which is an awful lot. I wouldn't really
> accept a 5-year-old copy of myself as useful continuity. 6-months, maybe.
Of course, we're talking twins raised together. Once they reach a certain
age they consciuosly try to differentiate themselves. So if anything they
are less alike than twins raised apart (who often didn't even know they
had a twin till they were adults) who tend to follow the innate/genetic
"path of least resistance." It's the stories about twins raised *apart*
where the similarities get reeeeealy eerie.
Maybe stuff like that gave rise to myths about dopplegangers - after all
there were sometimes "foundling" children left on the church doorstep or
something, (or exposed to die) who might eventually get adopted by
different people? -theyre have always been adoptions - the whole Oedipus
myth is based on what might happen if you didn't know who your biological
parents were!
>
> Or doing a process fork on an upload.
>
> Oddly, there's a National Film Board of Canada *cartoon* about
> duplicating/transporting people that addresses all of these issues. Yes, a
> cartoon. (Of course, they also have one on probability theory. The NFB is
> cool.) One of the more amusing bits is where the scientist hops into the
> teleporter and zaps from here to there. An observer asks what happened to
> the original - and the scientist says it's killed, and opens the door so she
> can watch. The scientist then proceeds to take 10-odd trips through the
> device, and each time the original is subjected to a grizzly death -
> blender, laser beam, flamethrowers, etc.
>
> Then they set a delay on the death-dealing devices, so the original has a
> chance to see the copy and come to terms with imminent death before being
> slaughtered.
Is this educational or sf? where can i get a copy?
>
> (That's supposedly not what happens of Star Trek, though. I have a FAQ if
> you're curious:
> http://members.aa.net/~skeksis/Star_Trek/FAQs/transport-faq.html - although
> it's in deperate need of updating.)
Yeah, well did anyone have an Aussiecon membership and see Benford's rant
about ST in one of the progress reports? (I didn't actually use the
membership. I even for got to use the voting rights so it was money down
the toilet or a donation to the concom, whichever you want to call
it.) one of the things he disliked about ST was that they *never* dealt
with the implications of transporter duplicates or else used gibberish to
explain it away. Me, I like to think all the red shirts were the same
guy. THey uploaded him once and beamed down a clone every time ;-)
>
>
> There's certainly something going on which is affecting memory and using all
> sorts of brain bits.
hm. WOnder how well it depends on how much or how vividly you dream and/or
to what extent you remember your dreams. some people forget everything and
think they have "dreamless" sleep, but EEGs prove REM is going on (and
waking them up in the middle of a dream settles it!) I tend to have vivid
dreams just before waking up (which are generallythe only ones you
remember.)
>
> Or, you are your memories and that's all that matters. We think it's
> consciousness, but we lose that routinely and we don't really know what that
> is.
Eerie. would an upload be conscious? would it *think* it was?
>
> I'm starting to have a hard time watching ER - every time someone dies I
> feel like shouting at the screen "chop off their head! chop off the head and
> freeze it!"
>
What for? I mean I respect people's personal decisions about what they
want done with their bodies after they die. I'm not inclined to think it
likely theyll actually resurrect so called corpsicles (and I also know
some very unpleasant people who have bought corpsicle contracts who I
wouldn't want to share an afterlife with...)but if the technology advances
you might be able to freeze and revive *living* people. OK, if you wake up
in the future, do you really think they'll put you in charge or
something? or that life will be so pleasant in their people-zoo or living
history museum?
Anyway, cutting off the head *without* their written consent would be
unethical and criminal.
>
> He compares his experience being a twin to being uploaded, which seems
> mostly bogus to me.
you mean his childhood experience (when they speent all their time
together) as opposed to right now, right? Why exactly does it seem
bogus? Is it a gut reaction? I think twins and singletons can perhaps
never understand each other on this level.
>
> >I think there is such a thing as a deep primitive fear of dying in your
> >sleep, at least as a kid I tended to be afraid of it. my mom would say so
> >what? you wouldn't know the difference, but I intuitively *knew* sleep
> >wasn't death!
>
> Your mom sounds cool. :)
>
well I had a more anxious temperament than she does (and life experience
changes your perspective), besides she'd had more than one major
operation in her life.
> >i've read that patients about to be anesthetized may be
> >apprehensive because they're afraid they won't wake up; it's a pretty
> >common fear.
>
> I can't blame them. But having thought about this, I'd rather die not
> knowing it was coming and save myself those few seconds of anticipation and
> panic. But maybe it's the anticipation that's the worry.
>
All anxiety is anticipation.
>
> Which I'd love to, but I have to keep this message short. I think a segue
> into a discussion of religious thoughts on immortality is a good thing. I'm
> a terrible person to partake, though, being raised atheist. By all means -
> everybody leap in!
>
> >other sects argue that dead is dead but when the
> >world/universe ends everyone will be resurrected (the day of judgment),
> >which is a bit less incompatible with science, you can say God has an
> >infinite-capacity computer and uploads everybody anyway!
>
> On that "rants" page I posted a while back there was a great quote about
> Titanic...
>
> "After she dies, she is taken down one of those tunnels of light that all
> the fashionable near-death experiences are wearing this year. In 'heaven'
> she is reunited with the poor boy who saved her in life all those years ago
> (which must be rather galling for her husband of forty or fifty years. )" -
> http://www.aslan.demon.co.uk/titanic.htm
>
I've seen ultraconservative christians (who believe in resurrection only
and not the floating out of body type thing) argue the *scientific*
debunkings of NDEs ("it's hallucinatory, artifacts of dying brain") since
admitting that an NDE/OBE experience was really "your soul flitting off"
would conflict with their pre-existing religious beliefs (which are often
fundamentalist/creationist, and if anything tend to be anti-science). Sort
of like just cherry picking the science that fits your POV.
CS Lewis fans are a pretty theological bunch since he wrote so
many Christian apologetic books. Interesting that probably the best
selling "theologian"/religious thinker wasn't a *professional* one but an
English professor, who wrote about faith issues and his own experience of
it while using his brilliant intellect to give Christianity more
intellectual respectability and respond to people who thought relgion was
obsolete in the so called modern world. Lewis was very Christian and kind
of evangelical in that he talked about his "personal conversion"
experience (he's popular with people who call themselves Born Again.)
however, he was a very INTELLIGENT Christian and not one of the people who
give it a bad name. I've seen both liberal and conservative (theologically
I mean) ministers/pastors who were fans of his. People influenced by Lewis
tend to be a lot smarter than the people I was talking about who
compartmentalize their minds and believe say neuroscience but not
evolution.
Kristin
