On 11/25/2012 1:21 PM, John Clark wrote:
On Sat, Nov 24, 2012 at 5:15 PM, meekerdb <[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:> But strictly speaking they cannot be identical. For example it is statistically certain that they will be thinking different thoughts as they revive from the transport.I don't know what statistics you're referring to but I do know that when statistics are involved certainty rarely is.> The no-cloning theorem already ensures that they cannot be identical at the level of quantum stateThe no cloning theorem says that you can't duplicate the quantum state of a particle (although you can transport one at the speed of light, that is to say you can destroy the quantum state here and recreate it over there). But if we become a new person every time a particle in our head changed state we'd become a new person about 10^43 times a second.and the very interactions with the environment that make them quasi-classical will ensure they are not identical even at a much higher level than the molecular.The duplicates would need some sort of feedback mechanism to keep the two brains in synchronization, non linear effects would amplify tiny variations into big differences, but that is a engineering detail and this is a thought experiment, so we cut back on needless complications.
But is this complication 'needless'. First, it's not a question of keeping their brains syncronized. They will *never* be in syncrony. Even though the same information is sent to Moscow and Washington, the processes of reconstructing the man from Helsinki will not be identical; the non-linearities and random effects like cosmic rays and K40 decays will mean the two clones are already different before they have enough brain to think anything. Of course people change moment-to-moment yet we identify them as 'the same person'. So I think the point of this is that the continuity of identity relies entirely on the memory of the two clones - their shared memories of the Helsinki man. There is no other sense in which they can be considered 'the same'
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