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[–] 29 points 4 months ago (9 children)

If they made a spare of each of Thomas's parts, replaced them one at a time, and then reassembled all his original parts, would there be two Thomases with all his thoughts and memories?

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  • [–] 11 points 4 months ago (5 children)

    Why not just assemble all of Thomas' spare parts immediately, without dismantling the original? Same end result, should be indistinguishable.

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  • [–] 6 points 4 months ago (4 children)

    So with a human, if you could make all the parts and assemble them, it wouldn't result in the result having all the memories because the brain part doesn't work that way - it stores memories and experiences that the fresh parts wouldn't have. We know Thomas is sentient, but as far as we've seen, all his parts are just train parts (maybe face notwithstanding); we have never seen that there's a brain part.

    So I'm going to postulate that there's some essence of Thomas that persists through the part swaps. What's unclear is whether or not those individual pieces that are swapped out retain the essence of Thomas and would be recreated if they were reassembled.

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  • [–] 3 points 4 months ago (3 children)

    it stores memories and experiences that the fresh parts wouldn’t have

    What if we place the human fresh parts in the exact molecular state, that the original is in ? If my understanding is correct, our memories are somehow encoded with whatever chemical biology is happening in the brain, and if we suppose we can imitate those chemical states with the fresh parts, shouldn't we get the same memories/consciousness ?

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  • [–] 3 points 3 months ago (2 children)

    Maybe so, but does Thomas have a brain someplace?

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  • [–] 3 points 3 months ago (1 child)

    Good question. I'd postulate they have some equivalent for a brain : if not a chemical one, maybe a very intricate mechanical one. Anyway, if it has something that works as a brain, we could theoretically recreate it. But this is only hypothetical of course. We could also say it has just a soul, and then your theory would be back on tracks (pun intended)

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