
The Ghost Protocol – Digital Identity for Immortals - ThomPete
http://000fff.org/the-ghost-protocol-digital-identity-for-immortals/
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CapitalistCartr
His initial statement, "It takes seven years for each and every atom in your
body to be replaced by another." sounds like an urban myth, and he provides
zero documentation for it.

~~~
ThomPete
[http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=1189358...](http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=11893583)
[http://stevegrand.wordpress.com/2009/01/12/where-do-those-
da...](http://stevegrand.wordpress.com/2009/01/12/where-do-those-damn-atoms-
go/)

I don't know any specific place to point to, but I have heard this from
scientists that I know.

None the less the point I was trying to make was more that the body is in flux
not simply a static thing.

~~~
stcredzero
It is an urban myth. A lot of your body's cells are around for much longer
than 7 years, and they do not recycle all of their constituent atoms.

~~~
ThomPete
Well I haven't found anything to disprove it. And from the perpective of the
post it's doesn't take anything away even if it's 10 instead of 7

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jjs
Suppose that, in an instant, your body and mind ceased to exist. Just
completely vanished.

And suppose further, that nobody witnessed this, and that one instant later,
by some very unlikely process, some matter or energy spontaneously organized
itself into an exact duplicate of _you_ , down to every last quantum wobble,
in exactly the same place that you were standing.

Would either this new you or the old you notice? Would "you" still be "you"?

And would it matter?

~~~
pavel_lishin
What if instead of miraculously vanishing, you were instead vaporized by your
neighbor, using a ray that recorded the position or every atom? It's murder,
right?

What if he recombines you, just like in your example an instant later. Is it
murder?

A minute later. Murder?

An hour, day, week, month, year. Murder?

What if he just promises to everyone to put you back together. Later. In the
future. Murder?

~~~
jjs
What if his name is Scotty, and rather than zapping you, he merely stored you
in his transporter buffer and delayed beaming you to your destination for a
moment?

What if he didn't delay at all? Did he kill you just by letting your atoms get
ripped apart and reassembled elsewhere?

Or is this whole continuity-of-self thing a sham?

~~~
adrih
Don't these questions hint at "death" being a leaky abstraction?

It seems that people have their own definition of death with details added to
the general concept. Then, when exposed to these hypothetical scenarios, they
either say "it is murder" or "it isn't murder", depending on what their
personal definition of "death" is.

The problem is that if we redefine death as "no chance of ever coming back",
some people would still not be ok with being temporarily disintegrated because
they believe it would be someone else who would come back.

So the concept of death should actually be split in two: death as in "I
believe it would not be me anymore", and death as in "the functional unit
defined as you would not be operational anymore".

~~~
jjs
Or perhaps "self" is the leaky abstraction.

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zarco74
good stuff :)

