Philosophy Thoughts - The Teletransporter Mystery Cache
Philosophy Thoughts - The Teletransporter
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The cache is not at the above co-ordinates but is
within 1 km
(with apologies to Derek Parfit !)
Gertrude ‘GeocacheGirl’ Grantley (cache finds
1,486,855) had exhausted all the hides here on earth. She was
looking for a new challenge, and so when she saw the advert for the
latest high speed method of travelling to Mars, she jumped at the
chance. (There was a particularly tricky new ‘Kid
Marsicus’ cache that she’d heard of that just had to be
a FTF).
Gertrude arrived at the teletransportation station and walked into
the booth. The booth operator (after spitting out his chewing gum
and glancing puzzlingly at his set of instructions) told her that
the machine worked by copying & destroying her cells and
sending a blueprint to Mars, where she would be re-created –
physically identical and with all the same memories etc. So, after
what seemed like a short period of unconsciousness, she awoke on
Mars and set off to find that dastardly cache. A few hours search,
and her FTF claimed (“it was hidden where ?!...”),
Gertrude returned to earth by the same method.
After a few months of trips to Mars, 999 new caches found, and an
average difficulty rating of 4/4 achieved, Gertrude arrived at the
teletransportation booth for her latest trip and a chance to get
her 1000th space cache. (This time it was a ‘Team
Yellowy-Green Martian-Dog’ cache she was after, and to be
honest she wasn’t holding out much hope of finding it).
After saying hello to the new booth operator (the first day of his
new holiday job), Gertrude stepped inside and...nothing happened -
she emerged from the booth still on earth. The booth operator
looked confused and called the helpdesk on Mars. After a 30 minute
hold with some rather strange music, the customer service
representative on the line said that it appeared that the booth had
malfunctioned. Gertrude had appeared as normal on Mars (in fact
earth-Gertrude could have a word with her if she wanted ?), but
that earth-Gertrude's cells hadn’t been destroyed after the
copying. A further problem was apparent – the faulty copying
of earth-Gertrude’s cells had damaged her so that she only
had minutes to live.
Earth-Gertrude was puzzled. She didn’t want to die –
this ‘person’ on Mars wasn’t her – she was
still here...but in fact this was what had been happening in the
past every time she had taken a trip to Mars. And there was someone
on Mars that was her exact replica – ready to step into her
life exactly as had happened so many times in the past. As she lost
consciousness, she wondered why she no longer believed that this
replica was her ?
Meanwhile, up in the skies, Mars-Gertrude was unaware of any
problems, and left as normal to find her next cache. The only
strange thing was that when she pulled out her note of the new
coordinates, this is what was written :
ofynioiieeehttriter
nhteetffwzzterheteu
rittgnvvsrrrhyeghfo
tfwyheeetooeitehrok
Funny, she thought, it appears that this note has been transposed
in the teletransportation process. She quickly solved the puzzle
and headed off into the Martian sunrise.....
This story is based on a famous thought experiment on the
subject of personal identity by Derek Parfit. If you are interested
further, I would recommend his book ‘Reasons and
Persons’ (Oxford University Press) or have a look at this
website
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/identity-personal/
Additional Hints
(Decrypt)
Chmmyr : Znef-Tregehqr tvirf gur pyhr naq Znef vf gur xrl
Pnpur : fgnaq njuvyr naq pbagrzcyngr lbhe frafr bs vqragvgl - gura ybbx oruvaq lbh haqre gur ybtf
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