An Interview with Douglas R. Hofstadter, following ''I am a Strange Loop''

		mst writes: thank you drh! Thank you DRH for your books, and also to Tal for this interview, and for giving us much to think about. I wonder if the discussion of copying the soul is premature, and whether we shouldn't be discussing whether a soul, or indeed anything, can be copied at a meaningful resolution. Is not the copy a separate and different entity? Every pattern, every instance has, at least at some level, a uniqueness that cannot be replicated elsewhere (starting at the subatomic level: we don't know where an electron is, just an area where it is likely to be). If matter is a pattern of energy, and if people are patterns of patterns of patterns, are they not a unique occurrence in a unique (system of) locations. Perhaps Heisenberg and Godel could team up to show a complete copy cannot be made, but that is beyond my mathematics...
		[351] Posted on Thursday, 13 November 2008 at 13:32 GMT [Reply to this] [Permalink]