Matter Transportation/Multiple Avatars+Bodies and the Idea of the Soul/Self

Currently, in the very basic "teleportation" we can do, the original is destroyed and copy created at the other side and this is not avoidable.
However, I'd still go for it, who we are is the pattern of our brain, so an exact copy should re-create an exact you, as much as you are still the same you, you were when you went to sleep last night.

If you want an example of a book that has "clones" but no destruction of the original, you should try David Brin's "Kiln People", its quite good.

trout wrote: »

There is a substantial sub-plot in Orson Scott Card's Ender's Saga / Children of the Mind which deals with "philotes" twining or binding with souls, in which people who are closely bound by love or family ties can literally create or recreate lliving copies of their loved ones. It's hinted at in the early novels, and in the Shadow series ... but more so in the last book where it is revealed that "souls" bind with philotes to create aiúa's ... or living philotes. These living philotes seem to be physical representations of "the soul" ... without which life as we know it is not possible (the philotic web).

It's an interesting plot device, but one I didn't really warm to ... especially in the last two Ender novels ... it almost seemed to me like he was struggling to close off the series ... and this plot device was press-ganged into service.

Through this device, Miro (a disabled person) "thinks" a clone of himself alive, perfect in almost every detail. Ender himself is able to recreate clones of his brother & sister while the original Peter and Valentine are still alive.

Ender's Game / Speaker for the Dead are so good, it's hard not to like the entire series ... but I think the quality tailed off towards the end

Yeah, didn't like that part myself, thought the series went downhill and got pretty hard to read near the end.

Not to go off on a tagent, but our bodies are in constant flux, albeit at a much slower pace than say outright cloning. Cell die and are regenerated constantly in the body. In fact I read that within a 7 year period every cell in the body will have died and been "cloned".

So, this leads me to conclude that as time progresses, we are changing from one form to another. Inbetween there are spiritual, emotional, physiological and biochemical alterations, enhancements and degradations. Me 7 years ago was a different being to me now, yet very very similar.

Here's my theories:

1. Anything that has the ability to articulate its own existence and experiences, and willing and able to change oneself without the influence of outside forces, has a soul. So clones have souls.

2. If I stepped into a Twinner, and stepped down and turned to face my twin/clone/carbon-copy, we already are different people. I would feel the power of being the Original, the True Human. he would look at hus hands and feet and realise that he is the Replica, the New Human. He would already be at a disadvantage psychologically. Like alternate timelines spawned from differing events, we would be made of the same seed but grow in different directions.

3. If the Original were destroyed as part of the process, then I, the subject, will have died. No question. Yes the entire human psyche will eventually become communicable as a list of ones and zeroes. But I do not believe that as that stream of digitalife crosses from one pod to the other, that it lives. I believe that as soon as the analogue of life is reduced to numbers, it dies, if even for a nanosecond. The Copy will be born, and it will bear my characteristics and programming, and it will be me, but I will not be it. I will die.

4. Galaxy Quest named its transport device as the Digital Conveyor. It's a snazzy name and it implies the above scenario---hard-driving a life. However the source of its spoofery, the Star Trek transporter beam, always meant something different to me. With the splash and sparkle of bright light, the breakdown of people by molecules, I always saw it as a form of quantum displacement: a highly concentrated and carefully manipulated wormhole device that carried people across the intagible realm of so-called subspace. Like the Stargate, but less violent in its delivery system. In that case, Kirk and co never became digitized. (Note: Kirk and Saavik chatting as they rematerialised on Enterprise in Wrath of Khan.)

Klingon Hamlet wrote: »

Not to go off on a tagent, but our bodies are in constant flux, albeit at a much slower pace than say outright cloning. Cell die and are regenerated constantly in the body. In fact I read that within a 7 year period every cell in the body will have died and been "cloned".

If you go down another level, to the atomic, every atom in your body will be replaced within a matter of days, so its not the physical that makes us who we are, so maybe the pattern? However, this of course is also constantly in flux as we learn/experience new things etc.
Maybe its your stream of consciousness, but this, while not stored digitally, is just stored (and imperfectly at that) and thus, changeable. If you change someone's brain or memory, does this make them a new person?

oxygen wrote: »

Interesting thread. On a more technical note, the short story, the Jaunt by Stephen King, in a far to rare sci fi story from him, has people teleporting, but only unconsciously. A small boy teleports awake, and realises that even a microsecond of a non corporeal existence is hellish, and feels like close to an eternity with no physical frame of reference.

Isn't Jaunt about more of a hyperspace sort of thingy?