I mean, that too, of course. Always tr0lley utilitarians!
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I bet you just hate having a passport, huh?
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This is why the world will eventually be destroyed in the cataclysmic Physicist-Philosopher war of 2026, when the Philosophers learn that nukes are a far more effective weapon than trying to explain that your enemy does not actually exist
(And the Physicists learn, too late, that maybe there was something to all of the endless discussions and thought experiments about ethics, morality, and the consequences of human action)
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We are told that all the cells in our bodies replace themselves every seven years, yet my passport only expires after ten years. Am I travelling under false pretenses?
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Clearly. Whatever you do, don’t travel by ship.
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Nope, I happily bite the bullet in the other direction. I’m the same person I was when I went to bed last night, or before I took my last breath. And also, if the universe is big and random enough, I am confident there are already infinitely many of me and almost-me in every possible set of circumstances somewhere out there far beyond our Hubble volume.
As for passports - in the hypothetical future where a government needs to define laws for identity of citizens who can duplicate themselves, I’d propose as a starting point a measure theory based definition of personhood. If I choose to make a second me, I should have to accept that each future me inherits an equal share of everything I now have and am, including rights to my name, passport, and belongings. I should also be able to contract with myself, before or after the duplication, to change that default, in accordance with all other laws regarding contracts between distinct people. (After all, if I contract before, I do so in full acceptance that I will be the one experiencing both sides of the contract - there is no meeting of the minds deeper than that!). If duplication imposes costs on society (public benefits and public goods, for example), then each of me should only get a fraction of that (unless I apply and pay for some fractional equivalent of naturalization?). If I duplicate myself into 2, and 1 of those 2 duplicates again, then the legal ownership of whatever I started with would be 1/2, 1/4, 1/4. This requires a much more libertarian worldview - in the sense of letting people suffer the costs of their own decisions and planning - than is currently typical, I think, but I believe it could work.
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Most physicists are very well aware of that, and the ones who invented nukes knew what they were unleashing.
Edit to add: But taking ethics, morality, and consequences seriously should involve, as a prerequisite, understanding what those consequences actually are and aren’t, which means understanding how the world actually is. If you don’t understand that, you do the best you can, as philosophers have for millennia. And then you re-examine past arguments when you learn new facts to see which still hold and which need changing. Instead I get to live in the kind of world where professional ethicists frequently argue in favor of killing huge numbers of people because their systems of ethics do not account for the ways in which actions have consequences in the world that we actually live in.
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And yet, they did it anyway.
Really though, I know. One of my favorite physicists is Sean Carroll, who is as much about the philosophy as he is about the physics.
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But is your duplicate forever a second you, or a distinct person at some point? If your duplicate works and pays taxes, then over time they should be eligible for an increasing share of public benefits.
And don’t get me started on marriage equality.
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For a second there I thought I’d been teleported into a Faculty Senate meeting.
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I am actually a duplicate of the me in another universe
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From the moment of duplication the two start diverging by virtue of the fact that they have different experiences. They will always have shared history, but from that moment on should be able to make individual choices (like buying a house, or getting married) that do not affect the other. I think the duplicates should each be able to buy-back access to full legal status for public benefits (not just financial, but political rights like voting, too), at some well-defined price. I think a person is responsible for setting out how their existing contractual and social obligations (including marriage, parenthood, debt) divide among duplicates. And I expect such a world would evolve boilerplate contract options and legal defaults for all these things the same way we have standardized marriage laws and laws for dying intestate today, even though individuals can choose to sign a pre-nup and write a will.
Edit to add: that said, some assets, for example licensing credentials and degrees, that simply reflect the reality of past actions taken to build skills and know-how, should get duplicated right along with the person. A duplicated lawyer shouldn’t have to have one of himself pass the Bar exam again.
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I don’t travel at all anymore. I find that I only get halfway there, then a quarter of the way there, then an eighth, and by that time the flight attendants are in a foul mood and the toilets are filthy.
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Never travel with Xeno’s. That whole “Travel like an arrow” thing was a lie.
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Someday we’ll figure out whether and how space and time are quantized, that should clear this right up!
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does dog have buddha spirit?
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Buying voting rights? There’s a can of worms. It’s absurd that your duplicate should have to wait 18 years or so to reach voting age, but if not then billionaires could make multiple duplicates of themselves, buy them voting rights, and swing elections as they chose.
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Slow claps, but only with one hand
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Skip the part about duplication and it’s SO close to reality.
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