Thought experiment

[Cosmin Apreutesei]

Hi everyone, I'd like to propose an experiment. Here's the story.

 

Stef is recording a podcast in his podcasting room.

The room has really good blinds, so that no light comes in from the outside,

and it's well sound proofed. The internet at his house was down all day.

Also, there's nobody home right now - we want to make sure that nobody can

come in the room for the next few minutes while we conduct the experiment.

 

We use a super power to freeze all the atoms in this room, including Stef itself

(Stef's made of atoms, so this should work, right?).

I'm talking a really good freeze, like we freeze all the atoms positions,

and their electrons, and even bosons, if we find any.

 

Somewhere nearby we rebuild Stef's room identically, and Stef itself, atom by atom.

We could use a super power for that or a reanimator, or we could borrow a teleport device

from a friend, and replace its move(atom) function with an illegal copy() function.

Anyway we do it, we get this second room with Stef in it, frozen with a funny face

like when we pause one of his youtube videos.

We now give the atoms in both rooms their momentums back (we can record those before the

freezing with a freezemometer) so that we can unpause the rooms, Stef included.

 

This is the crucial part of the experiment. What would happen next?

Would Stef's clone even be alive? Or would he (it?) fall on the floor

like a bunch of marbles? If life is a purely physical phenomenon, his atoms well into place

should have their relationships to one another preserved, still forming the molecules, cells,

tissues and finally the organism that we call Stef. When the electrons would start spinning again,

and jumping from atom to atom like they do, electrical impulses would continue their flow

through the brain, thought will continue to form, and if physics is right, Stef #2 would just

finish off his sentince, with the exact same motions as the real Stef.

 

In fact, if physics is right, the two Stefs would continue to podcast the exact same podcast.

The two physical systems called Stef would behave identically until the moment they try to leave the

room or open the blinds because that's when the environment around Stef changes. Science says that

physical systems tend to behave identically in identical environments and their behavior can only

diverge when their environments diverge.

 

So, what do you think it would happen?

 

[Wuzzums]

Actually if physics is right the two copies won't finish the same exact podcast if we're talking about this at an atomic level. If we were to let the podcast unfold regularly, go back in time, do everything you said of doing then the end result will be again 2 different podcasts (different from each other and different from the first pdocast we witnessed before traveling back in time). You cannot act upon a system and expect it to behave as if nothing acted upon it. It's the observer effect. But I'm just talking about this at an atomic level, at a macro scale things will go on the same. Not exactly the same, but as close to identical as physically possible.

[Bradford26]

Thanks for this. I have enjoyed thinking about it.

 

My initial thought is that both Stefans should behave identically, considering that all their atoms and energy are in the same configuration.

 

However: this reminds me of a scene in Into the Universe with Steven Hawking. In the scene, Hawking is describing the Big Bang. It shows how, if the explosion of matter was perfectly symmetrical, and the distances between relative pieces were the same, then the gravity would effectively be neutralized, since each piece of matter would be equidistant from the nearest pieces. It demonstrated this by showing a wood floor with ballbearings evenly spaced, not moving because gravity was equal in all directions. Then it rolled a single ball out of alignment and simulated how gravity would move the balls around after that. The way the balls moved looked like a nebula. Essentially, it explained that there was something that made that first piece of matter move out of alignment to set the chain in motion. The point of this scene was to demonstrate that there is a level or randomness to everything in the universe and, without it, the universe would be radically different.

 

I think Wuzzums is right, at the atomic level, there is an element of randomness.

 

Now that I think of it, that randomness, within a very short span of time, could lead to enormous diversions from the "original" course. Considering the number of microorganisms in the body, the number of sensory receptors; etc., It's likely that a physical itch, or twitch or something could easily change what happens. Could mental itches or twitches happen just as easily and change the conversation?

[Holo Cene]

What a great thought experiment. Has my mouth agape, staring at the wall. I think the clone wouldn't be alive simply because there has to be more than just atoms, it is the history of those atoms and the relationships between them.