Quote:Original post by aphydx
right. i meant a complete representation

And there's the mistake: assuming that comprehension requires representation. Consider: I comprehend my car's internal combustion engine, despite the fact that I do not know the exact configurations of the atoms which comprise it, or even how many atoms there are in it.

I don't know. This whole thing is very confusing and I agree with the authors prognosis that 'something weird' is definately going on around here :).

Just throwing this on the table, because I have been thinking this topic over for a number of years also. I was reading in a Popular science magazine talking about teleportation. In the article it happened to mention a conference held by a lot of big companies like IBM, Intel, Sony, etc., a few years back. The conference was discussing the feasability of quantam mechanics and teleportation on the scale of teleporting humans. Well they wrote a paper and in it said that for something to be teleported, the Original must be destroyed(ie. Kill that person.) Now think about that. They scan all of the particles in your body (and keep in mind this was just high-level 'what-ifs' to say. They dont know how to actually do that, they are just saying), they transmit the particle information via communication lines, and then they destroy the original and reproduce the particles on the other end.

Now still bearing with me that this is all just a hypothetical situation just think about what that means. Your all talking about having a ghost. So if we do in fact have a ghost, when they destroy your original, does your ghost go with it? When they duplicate your original, will it be 'you'. Do you understand why this scenario is so perplexing?

So several things to say here going along with the author... if nr 1 is true and we were created by a higher being... then I don't even know what would happen when they recreated you. You would probably just be the equivilant of dead.

If nr 2 was true, then your body would create a ghost itself, since the brain is able to hold a ghost. Now think about this: would that new "ghost" be "you" or would you still be destroyed and some other ghost is running around with your body.

Now if nr 3 was true I would imagine the same thing such as nr 2 would happen, but for a different reason.

I guess this just brings a new element to the table, when taken into a scenario like this, not only the question "what is life", but the question "what is death"

If that was too ridiculously confusing/stupid, im sorry I'm ranting and its late :)

Quote:Original post by HemoGloben
Uhh...Isn't a more likely option to the whole internet seemingly alive, france being alive thing the fact that both happen to be in large part run by humans that are alive? I mean, ...meh.

Ok, focus on the france thing. It acts like a living entity because it's run by living entities. Doesn't that make more sense than trying to pretend that france itself is a living entity? Your entire thought experiment attempts to grapple the idea of seperating acts like an entity and is an entity, but somehow manages to miss acts like entity because it's run by entity.

Meh, again.

I apologize for the incoherence, but I think my general thought is there.

Seems a little weak. Are you saying that things cannot be alive unless they are comprised of parts which are alive? That seems to break down. Carbon and hydrogen atoms can't really be said to be alive. Concurrently, humans display much more capability for adaptation and intelligence than the cells of which they are composed. They can, by some measure of "alive", be said to be MORE alive than those cells: they display traits above those which the cells themselves can "run".

Also, who's this Meh person?