On Apr 19, 8:59 am, Russell Standish <l....domain.name.hidden> wrote:
>
> We have had discussions here about the possibility of Jesse Mazer
> morphing into Bruno, and also about David Parfit's thought experiment
> of morphing a person into Napoleon Bonaparte. I have expressed doubts
> on this list as to whether this is possible, particularly in the form
> of the thought experiments given by Parfit, but assuming it is
> possible, then a single mind theory would have legs.
>
> --
>
Consider what happens to a single person as they evolve through time
in an ever-branching universe. Across the ever widening set of
branches exists a spectrum of individuals similair enough to that
person that no one could tell the difference, still further along that
specturm there may be noticeable differences but still enough
similarities to say that two people in different branches are the
same. However you will soon reach a gray zone where you can't quite
say if an individual is one person or another. Consider branches
starting at the person's conception, there are many branches where the
individuals share idenitcal genes, then there are some where the DNA
makeup between two zygotes in two branches differs by only one gene,
is it still the same person? If you move far enough across the
spectrum you can link any two individuals, moving in steps so small
that each observer differs by only an atom. In this sense, a self
sampling observer could find themself morphing into someone else not
travelling through time, but across branches in the multiverse.
Jason
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Received on Fri Apr 20 2007 - 05:04:46 PDT