On Wed, Mar 7, 2012 Craig Weinberg <whatsons...@gmail.com> wrote: > Can you transplant a particular flame from one candle to another?
Can a particular flame exist from one nanosecond to the next? > Can you cut a spark down the middle lengthwise and put half here and half > there? > Certainly, a spark is made of matter, plasma to be specific, so put half the plasma here and the other half there. > >> I think there is a thought experiment that can resolve this issue: You > are a copy of Bruno Marchal made as precisely as Heisenberg's law allows > and you are now facing the original Bruno Marchal in a symmetrical room, > thus the two of you are receiving identical sensory input > > That's an assumption. A compass duplicated in this way would not be > receiving identical sensory input. That could only happen if the magnetic field in that room favored one direction over another, and in my thought experiment I'm talking about a room with a infinite number of symmetries, like a sphere. > > Someone with an exact copy of my brain might not be able to read English > because they haven't had any history reading it. The brain may not encode > in English or Chinese but in neurotransmitters which don't know the > difference. The only difference between a native English speaker and a native Chinese speaker is the position and momentum of the atoms in their brain; as a matter of fact that's also the only difference between you and me. > My thought experiments start with "if something is real, then it cannot > ever be truly identical to anything else in the cosmos > Then your thought experiment starts out as Bullshit right out of the box because science tells us there is no difference between one electron and another, there are no scratches on electrons to tell one from another. And this is not just vague philosophy, the identical nature of things when they get very small is behind the idea of "exchange forces" one of the pillars of modern physics, and from that you can deduce that there must be two classes of particles, bosons like photons and fermions like electrons, and from there you can deduce The Pauli Exclusion Principle, and that is the basis of the periodic table of elements, and that is the basis of chemistry, and that is the basis of life. From just the fact that electrons are identical and a little high school algebra you can derive The Pauli Exclusion Principle and that principle is not only responsible for life it is the very reason matter is solid, it is the only reason your feet don't sink into the ground and you fall to the center of the earth. So don't tell me nothing can be identical! John K Clark -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.