If someone constructed an exact molecular duplicate of me, would I be standing here looking at him, or standing there looking at me? I doubt that there would be a strange double vision thing going. Far greater philosophers than I am have sweat blood over things like this, and I suspect the idea of a soul was arrived at partially out of mental self-defense.
When I go to sleep at night, the same brain wakes up in the morning. If my brain were transplanted into a cyborg, I'd still be in there. Make a copy of me? Where am I then?
Now, moving into the geek zone, I looked into this a little bit, and it seems that the Star Trek transporter concept does not actually destroy something and rebuild a new copy, but actually just disassembles the molecules and pipes them to a new location for reassembly. I take it significant amounts of RAM and processing capacity are required for this.
Does this change things? Who knows?
Safest bet: keep my brain in one piece.
Space/Science » in reply to Star Trek and the existence of the soul
re: Star Trek and the existence of the soul
The whole thread (25 posts)
- Suspended animation for large mammals.
- ****A post was deleted by ModBob****
- How do you tell if a dog is brain damaged?
- re: How do you tell if a dog is brain damaged?
- Do a CAT scan. (n/t)
- :) lol
- Yeah? Imaging being the first person in the Star Trek universe to try a transporter...
- A joke...
- :) lol
