Date: Mon, 3 Apr 1995 16:02:00 -0400
From: SBronzell-AT-aol.com
Subject: Re: human body transformation


What it seems we're broaching upon is the question of structure or pattern,
or form.  Nevermind the transporters; our bodies right now are not the same
as they were, not the same substance.  The pattern continues, with variation
and degradation, etc.

And a lot of theorists, sci-fi or otherwise, stop right there.

But preserve my pattern and what is preserved?  And can I start 16-track
editing of what I am?  I wonder if this would be the fast track to articicial
intelligence?  :-}

What is going on here with these bodies of ours and lives isn't just pattern.
 I would venture that what is most important or lively about our lives is
that which can't be preserved.  In other words, it is not the shapes and
patterns of nature as scenery merely which are interesting.

One might suggest that the very pursuit of duplication or imitation stifle
the endeavor.  That life, or whatever we're going to call it, is always at
the frontiers.  And therefore irreproducible, if only because it is always
already undoing itself, moving anew.

Sean


Previously:

>>Star Trek's transporter always seemed like death to me, although it would 
be difficult to analyze. If B is a re-creation of A elsewhere, B may or 
may not survive of course; there are always bugs in the machinery, always 
quantum loss. So it would never be exact, and could in fact never be. 

If we consider a simple mechanism, say a yoyo, and we map it by a 
computer at X and reconstruct it at Y, then destroy X, it's clear that 
something is lost, eliminated. But why would this be any different for a 
transporter?

Finally, the _material_ simply disappears in the transporter - as if the 
body would evaporate? The smell would be awful, there would be this 
residue, and the residue would be the stink of death. I'd say that there 
is a connection between the transporter and the Auschwitz gas chambers, 
which also operated with the notion of a clean elimination, effacement. 
If the Jews were beyond the Pale, fine - just not within the borders. 
Although they were clearly not allowed back in.

Alan<<

On Mon, 3 Apr 1995, Patrick Hopkins wrote:

> >>When will we or anything cease to be subject or liable to death?  Let's
say
> we extend our lives with all kinds of technology, and even allow for a
> seemingly endless life, moving the structure or info of self from place to
> place, incarnation to incarnation, throughout existence.  That still seems
> subject and liable to death.  (Sean)
> 
> Yes, still liable to death, but what does death now mean?  Rather than a 
> "leaving this world" sort of phenomenon, death is becoming more like 
> "currently nonfunctional", and someone who is irremediably dead is 
> incapable of re-functioning.  Even today, brain surgery during which the
> patient is virtually frozen is more and more common.  During such
procedures
> their is no breathing, no heartbeat, and no detectable brain activity.
 Right
> here we have all three major definitions of death legally active in the 
> 20th century represented, but still the patient gets up and walks away
after
> an hour or so of being legally dead.  Already the technology has fuzzed
even
> the new "brain death" standards.
> 
> Some futurists have described what I'd call "serial immortality" where the 
> molecular stats of a human body (a person) is somehow recorded and stored
> (Heisenbeg problems here?), say with nanotechnology, and then if that body
> is irremediably damaged, you produce a new body with the stored information
> (like Star Trek's transporter could do if the writers would just think
about
> it for a second).  The loss of the information is still "deadly" of course.
> Like with Lyotard's limit of "solar death", if your structure or its plan
is
> lost, so are you.
> 
> Patrick


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