TED Community » Robertson Klaingar

Comments

• TEDCred score: +1.40 TEDCred reflects your contribution to the TED community.

• A reply on Conversation: If I had 100% of your genes and 100% of your environmental experience I would be you.

  May 10 2011: I get what you mean Mathew. Culture, religion, education are belief systems that we created. I just fail to see how being more educated means you have more free will. It does give you more options to choose from. But think of it this way: You only know what you know.
  
  Let's say you are faced with a problem: "should I eat this apple or this orange?" The problem needs urgent solving. So you go in your brain and you look for past experiences that can help you solve this problem. Given that your knowledge is finite, you will choose the best solution to the problem according to you. A clone of yourself facing the same problem, and knowing exactly what you know, placed in the same environment, will make the same decision you would have made. So,that clone will still end up wherever you would have ended right?
  
  I hope that made sense.

• A reply on Conversation: If I had 100% of your genes and 100% of your environmental experience I would be you.

  May 10 2011: No, because that external 'unbiased force' is probably determined. But I think closing your eyes and depriving yourself of some external stimuli should change some things.
  
  I was also thinking that if we pursue your argument to it's extreme, a corollary should be that our date, time, and second of death are determined. Now if only there was a way to calculate that.

• A reply on Conversation: If I had 100% of your genes and 100% of your environmental experience I would be you.

  May 10 2011: In this case, replacing a single bolt is enough to call it a different car.

• A reply on Conversation: If I had 100% of your genes and 100% of your environmental experience I would be you.

  May 9 2011: Haha. I thought the same once I got it. I think a more challenging question would be: If I had 50 percent of your genes and 50 percent of your environmental experience, would I be 50 percent of you?

• A comment on Conversation: [FRENCH] Qu'est-ce qui vous fait lever le matin, aller travailler gaiement et donner le meilleur de vous-même dans votre job ?

  May 9 2011: Si seulement je savais. Je n'ai aucune idee ce que je veux faire.

• A reply on Conversation: If I had 100% of your genes and 100% of your environmental experience I would be you.

  May 9 2011: I was just looking at George Spilkov's argument with the five doors. You wouldn't necessarily place any thought behind it. If I had five identical doors in front of me and there were no way of reasoning my way out of this problem, I would probably close my eyes and choose a door at random.

• A reply on Conversation: If I had 100% of your genes and 100% of your environmental experience I would be you.

  May 9 2011: I think a concept inherent in the phrasing of the question is that even if the universe is random, the same outcomes occur. i.e the environments your clone has encountered are the same as those you have encountered to date . So, you both followed the same path and lived the same experiences. This means that even if the universe is random, the outcomes in your life and in the life of your clone are the same.

• A reply on Conversation: If I had 100% of your genes and 100% of your environmental experience I would be you.

  May 8 2011: Well, yes.It does make sense then. If you had 100 percent of my DNA and environmental experience, you should be me.
  I was wondering though if mind altering substances could change that. Say, if you get drunk, do your thoughts become random? If they do then that could cause a deviation from your 'path' right?

• A reply on Conversation: What poems are most powerful to you?

  May 8 2011: I agree, but one does not dismiss the other
• +1

  A comment on Conversation: If I had 100% of your genes and 100% of your environmental experience I would be you.

  May 7 2011: Are you implying an alternate world?
  Because if it is in this world, and it still behaves normally, then you cannot occupy the same space I do, so you will see things differently and your world map would definitely differ from mine.
  
  So, unless I don't exist, you cannot be me. And if I don't exist, you still cannot be me, because you are still you.