Re: where do copies come from?

From: George Levy <glevy.domain.name.hidden>
Date: Wed, 06 Jul 2005 13:12:55 -0700

Stathis Papaioannou wrote:

> You would also need to know the electrical potential at every point of
> every cell membrane; the ionic gradients (Na, K, Ca, pH and others)
> across every cell membrane, including intracellular membranes; the
> type, position and conformation of every receptor, ion channel and
> other proteins; the intracellular and local extracellular
> concentrations of every neurotransmitter; the workings of the cellular
> transport, synthetic and repair mechanisms for each neuron and
> probably also for each supporting glial cell; the intracellular and
> extracellular concentration of other small molecules such as glucose,
> O2, CO2; how all of this is changing with respect to time; and
> probably thousands of other paramemters, many of which would currently
> be unknown.


This is unfair. According to this strict standard you are not the same
person today as you were yersterday. In fact even an automotive
transportation method would violate the above standard. We can't expect
a Star-Trek tranporter to have more "High Fidelity" than a car. The
question is how much can we relax the standard until the person at the
output is "not the same" as the person at the input. In a brain
substitution experiment, when should the patient say "yes doctor" or "no
doctor"?

George
Received on Wed Jul 06 2005 - 16:19:01 PDT