From: LARRY KLAES (ljk4_at_msn.com)
Date: Tue Nov 04 2003 - 14:07:12 PST
----- Original Message -----
From: daviddarling123
Sent: Tuesday, November 04, 2003 3:48 PM
To: DarlingsSpace_at_yahoogroups.com
Subject: [DarlingsSpace] David Darling's Newsletter #16
------------------------ Yahoo! Groups Sponsor ---------------------~-->
Buy Ink Cartridges or Refill Kits for your HP, Epson, Canon or Lexmark
Printer at MyInks.com. Free s/h on orders $50 or more to the US & Canada.
http://www.c1tracking.com/l.asp?cid=5511
http://us.click.yahoo.com/mOAaAA/3exGAA/qnsNAA/1.XolB/TM
---------------------------------------------------------------------~->
DAVID DARLING'S NEWSLETTER
--------------------------------------------------
Issue #16
November 4, 2003
e-mail: daviddarling_at_daviddarling.info
website: http://www.daviddarling.info
--------------------------------------------------
Contents
1. Meanderings
2. Clones and Selves
3. Bookends
--------------------------------------------------
1. Meanderings
Greetings, everyone! Snow has come early to Minnesota this year and,
even as I write, is settling on the ground. I know there are people
reading this newsletter who are scattered as far apart as India,
Australia, Italy, Brazil, Russia, Sweden, and South Africa, and it
makes me wonder what it's like in your part of the world right now.
Some, no doubt, have it colder and snowier, while others will be
heading for the beach.
A couple of items of news. My new website is now up and running.
When you type in http://www.daviddarling.info, or the address of any
page beginning with that, you automatically go there. The old site
(http://www.angelfire.com/on2/daviddarling) still exists, but is no
longer being updated and I'll be winding that down and eventually
closing it altogether as traffic switches over. The new site has a
bulletin board which I hope many of you will take advantage of for
asking questions of me and other readers, joining in debates,
contributing to existing topics, or starting up new threads of your
own. It's very easy to use, just go to any page on my site,
including the front page, and click on "bulletin board" in the menu
at the top. You can also go directly to the bulletin board here:
http://www.daviddarling.info/discussion/phpBB2
Don't be afraid of making mistakes or posting something you're not
sure about putting before the public gaze. I want this to be a very
informal and completely open forum. It isn't just for academic
discussion. Have your say. The more people I hear from, the better --
and your contribution will be greatly appreciated!
The second bit of news is that my latest book, The Universal Book of
Astronomy, is now available from bookstores, in both real space and
cyberspace. I think its probably the first (and only, so far)
encyclopedia of astronomy to have been written entirely in the 21st
century. So, although obviously I'm biased, I'd have to claim it's
the most up-to-date A-Z currently on the market. It forms a set with
The Complete Book of Spaceflight that came out last year and The
Complete Book of Mathematics that will be published in August 2004.
See the front page of my website for more details.
And now, let's talk about you ...
-------------------------------------------------
2. Clones and Selves
Imagine: You've stepped onto the transporter pad of the starship
Enterprise. It's your very first experience of being "beamed" from
one place to another. What's going to happen? What will it feel
like? You hear the transporter engineer say "Energize!" And then ...
nothing happens. You're still on the pad, wondering what's gone
wrong. A second later you hear a radio message coming from the
planet's surface below: "Transport successful. Lock on to my signal
and prepare to beam me back if necessary." It's your own voice! You
were beamed down to the planet after all. And yet, here you are,
still on the starship. Apparently, there are now two "you's,"
identical in every respect, down to the last brain connection,
molecule, and subatomic particle. Which is the "real" you?
Thought experiments -- gedanken -- like this, help us focus on what
it means to be an individual or a particular self. Quite a few
philosophers (I recommend Derek Parfit and his book "Reasons and
Person") have used Star Trek-type teleportation incidents to probe
the nature of "you" and "me." And, in case you think beaming around
is a bit far-fetched, this whole issue of selfhood is of huge
importance when we come to consider the imminent prospect of human
cloning. If someone is created genetically identical to another
person, to what extent can or will they think of themselves as being
unique?
Before going back to our little story about the transporter
incident, I have to mention that Star Trek-type transporters work
differently than the kind of teleportation that scientists are
experimenting with in the real world. In actual teleportation, as
far as we know, it's absolutely impossible to make an identical copy
of something (right down to the subatomic level) without destroying
the original. This all comes about because of a frustrating rule in
quantum mechanics called Heisenberg's uncertainty principle which
says, basically, that you can never know exactly where something is
and how it's moving at the same time. One of the upshots of the
uncertainty principle is the so-called "no-cloning theorem" -- if
you make a duplicate by the (known phenomenon) of quantum
teleportation you inevitably lose the original.
But let's put this little show-stopper aside and assume that a
transporter can be built like that in Star Trek. As far as I can
gather, this works by scanning the original object or person,
producing an exact blueprint that's stored in a "pattern buffer,"
sending a stream of "phased matter" -- like a river of energy or
plasma -- to the destination, and using the information in the
pattern buffer to reconstitute the transportee at the other end. If
there's a glitch it's obviously possible that the stored information
could be used to make more than one copy, just like you can print
out multiple copies of a single file on a computer disk. In fact, in
a number of Star Trek episodes, problems with the transporter are
used as the starting point for interesting plots. There's the one in
which Captain Kirk is split into his good and evil sides ("The Enemy
Within") -- a variation on the Jekyll and Hide theme penned by top-
flight SF writer Richard Matheson, who also wrote some of the more
memorable episodes of The Twilight Zone (including "Nightmare at
20,000 Feet," in which William Shatner sees a gremlin on the wing of
a plane). Transporter fission turns to fusion in the Star Trek
Voyager episode "Tuvix," when crewmates Tuvok, the Vulcan security
officer, and Neelix, the Talaxian, long-time antagonists, are merged
in transit into one person. The resulting "Tuvix" harbors the
memories of both progenitors but has a single consciousness. From
being initially confused and ambivalent, Tuvix goes on to carve out
a clear identity and personality of his own and, when a means is
discovered to undo the meld caused by the transporter accident, he
objects -- not unreasonably -- to going through with the procedure
on the grounds that he'll be killed. Captain Janeway is faced with
the moral dilemma of ending the brief existence of a distinct,
unique individual, who's become well-liked among the crew, or
denying the rights of Tuvok and Neelix to continue their separate
lives. Ensemble casting and contractual arrangements being what they
are, Tuvix is consigned to oblivion. In the Next Generation
episode "Second Chances", an identical copy of Wil Riker is created.
We're even given a bit of technobabble about how it happens. Twelve
years ago, while a then-lieutenant Riker was beaming up from a
planet's surface through severe atmospheric interference, the
transporter chief locked onto Riker's signal with a second
confinement beam. When this turned out not to be needed, the second
signal was abandoned -- but not lost. The disturbance in the
atmosphere caused the second beam to be reflected back to the
planet, like a short-wave radio signal. Somehow the matter stream
was duplicated, using phased matter from the atmospheric
interference effect. Unbeknownst to everyone else, an identical
Riker was formed on the planet's surface -- just as in our thought
experiment.
OK, so here you are on the Enterprise not having beamed down. And
yet there is this other "you," identical to the last atom and
quantum state, down on the planet below. Both of you claim to be the
genuine article. Who is right? There are three possibilities:
neither of the copies is you, one or the other is you, or both
copies are you. It doesn't make sense that by making an exact
duplicate of you, there should now be no you! Nor can we point to
one of the you's and say that it is the real McCoy and the other is
a fake, since they're absolutely identical. The only answer that
makes sense is that there really are now two "you's."
But isn't the whole point about being "you" or "me" that we're
unique? Apparently not. You can be a distinct self, and there can be
another self, identical to you in every respect (except location)
who thinks and feels exactly like you do and, indeed, claims to be
you. If there were a transporter accident in which a duplicate of
you appeared, would it feel as if you were flitting back and forth
between the two bodies, or that you could see out of two separate
sets of eyes? Not at all. Two brains means two selves and two
centers self-awarenesses, whether the brains are exactly identical
or not.
In the case of a Star Trek transporter, we can claim in our thought
experiment that the two you's really are exactly alike, down to the
subatomic level. At the instant of rematerialization, these two
you's would have exactly the same thoughts and memories. But
immediately after, differences would start to appear because even
duplicates can't occupy the same space or do exactly the same
things. From the point of bifurcation onward, different sets of
experiences, different personal narratives, would give rise to the
laying down of different memory chains. Although the two copies
would always be very much alike in appearance, thought, and deed,
they'd diverge over time. In "Second Chances," Riker-2 (the copy
that forms on the planet's surface) remains more like the youthful
Riker -- more of a risk-taker -- than the familiar Commander Riker-1
of the Enterprise. The message here is that your brain's wiring
doesn't totally dictate what you'll do or become in the future.
What about clones? If a baby is born who has been engineered to be
genetically identical to someone else, what moral and psychological
dilemmas might this give rise to? Of course, we already have the
example of identical twins. But such twins grow up together and are
a natural phenomenon. I haven't heard of many cases where an
identical twin has suffered psychologically through having a like
sibling. But the fact that clones are, some extent, manufactured
could give rise to all kinds of emotional and psychological
problems, from resentment to a feeling of being different and
isolated from the society that created them. Will human clones tend
to band together and live apart from the rest of us? Will they be
treated differently, discriminated against. I'd be interested to
hear people's thoughts on this.
A couple of more ideas for you before I go. What if it were possible
to make an exact copy of someone far in the future. Say, your body
and brain was scanned down to the last molecule and then, long after
you'd died, maybe thousands of years in the future, this scan was
used to re-make you. Would this be the same as being brought back to
life? Would it be like beaming into the future? Would you be happy
to try it, realizing how frightening it might be to suddenly wake up
in a world that you didn't understand and in which you didn't know
anyone?
And would making an identical copy of you, by scanner, transporter,
or some other means, recreate every part of you? What about your
soul -- assuming you think you have one?
Being dematerialized and whisked across space and/or time to be
formed anew may sound outrageous, but, in one sense, it's already
happened. Every particle now making up your body was one floating
freely in the void between the stars.
----------------------------------------------
3. Bookends
For news on all my books and how to order them (perhaps as a
Christmas present!) visit my website. And, of course, I'd love to
hear from you at any time.
All the best,
David Darling
To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to:
DarlingsSpace-unsubscribe_at_yahoogroups.com
Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.6 : Tue Nov 04 2003 - 14:20:23 PST