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From: mikel@codas.UUCP (Mikel Manitius)
Newsgroups: net.sf-lovers
Subject: Re: matter transmission, etc.
Message-ID: <144@codas.UUCP>
Date: Sat, 5-Oct-85 16:54:56 EDT
Article-I.D.: codas.144
Posted: Sat Oct  5 16:54:56 1985
Date-Received: Mon, 7-Oct-85 03:57:29 EDT
References: <> <331@proper.UUCP>
Organization: AT&T Information Systems (SDSS) - Orlando
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> The matter transmission might destroy a soul if we had one.  What are the char-
> acteristics of the soul, if one exists?
> 	Consider what matter transmission could do for surgery:  load someone
> into memory and just edit them, removing cancers and such.  Maybe even take
> out the brain of a youthful backup and substitute the one of the aging current
> one, and PRESTO! instant youth.  Is someone legally dead when they only exist
> on magnetic tape or whatever we use for storing them?  Suppose there's a glitch
> in the tape when you're restored, heavens forbid....
> 	Think of what could be possible for transporation: assuming the ability
> to digitise someone and recreate them later, it might be able to post a copy of
> yourself to net.net-people and be created for a conversation.  Or famines and
> droughts:  take the digitisation of several acre-feet of water and just supply
> the energy from a nuclear power plant and create water or food!  There's a lot
> more than souls in danger here- transporation, factories, and much more would
> be made completely obscelescent...
> 						Carl Greenberg

What everyone seems to be forgeting here, is that, as you may be able to
digitise the atomical structure of a living organism, how are you going to
digitise the information it contains, namely the "energy" within it. What
I'm getting at, is that you may very well be able to re-create the physical
body of the organism, but how are you going to restore the "life" within
it?

Imagine that you can digitise a computer, in order to restore it exactly
to the point it was at which you digitised it, you must also store the 
information in it's memory, this is not matter, it is energy. The problem
comes when you try to restore all of the processes running in the computer
that you had when you started, and make it all continue.

Now go back and solve the problem of digitising atmoic information,
or earth's orbit around saturn for that matter!
-- 
                                        =======
     Mikel Manitius                   ==----=====    AT&T
     (305) 869-2462 RNX: 755         ==------=====   Information Systems 
     ...{akguc|ihnp4}!codas!mikel    ===----======   SDSS Regional Support
     ...attmail!mmanitius             ===========    Altamonte Springs, FL
     My opinions are my own.            =======