Date: Wed, 5 Apr 95 09:36:48 CDT
From: hopkins-AT-twinearth.wustl.edu (Patrick Hopkins)
Subject: Re: human body transformation


Sean writes:

>>IN view of what Patrick says below, does pattern duplication "virtually
elminate death?"  Doesn't it actually highlight death in an interesting way?
 I die; a pattern is reconstituted somewhere.  I still died.  Somebody still
hit the pavement (to use Patrick's example).

Ok, so I die on an Away Mission.  But I (phenomenologically speaking, at least)
*wake up* back on the Enterprise and either leave the M-class planet below
or go on another Away Mission.  In any case, death is highlighted interestingly
in this way:  death doesn't really interfere all that much in my life.  Death,
though perhaps still metaphysically interesting and something one would 
generally try to avoid, just doesn't have the punch it once did.  To use
a lame analogy, today I can hop on the Concord and get to Paris in a few
hours, whereas 100 years ago it would have taken several weeks (lets assume
I'm right here, my transportation history is weak).  So today, going to
Paris isn't the big deal it used to be.  The trip wouldn't interfere in my
life the way it once did.

Sean writes:

>>Also, the _virtual_ is at least to me the kind of thing that is as scary in
its own way as the gas chambers Alan mentions.  The virtual seems closed or
enclosed.  If you want to get rid of an enemy, one way would be to lock them
or lose them or whatever in a virtual reality where they think everything is
fine (see in fact TNG episode with Moriarity which actually also involves
transporter tech questions).

Of course moral and political problems arise here, but I don't think many 
phenomenological problems arise.  After all, in the Moriarty Returns episode
they contemplate at the end that maybe they have all already been in a 
holodeck sim and don't know it--which is possible as many other episodes
have shown.  Now, what is scary in this is that if one is trapped in a VR
world and doesn't know it, all your philanthropy and solving of great 
philosophical problems isn't benefitting whatever *real* people exist.  That
is a problem for those people.  However, there is no problem for the 
person *inside* the VR because (given the right tech) their life is just as
rich as it would be on the *outside*.  After all, in one of ST:TNG's few
technologically perspicacious moments, they didn't feel as though they had
cheated or harmed Moriarty--because his life would be just as rich and varied
as their own.

Patrick


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