Thought experiment- asked this in news group in1999 but no satisfactory answer yet.?

Question

A machine that can duplicate position and state of atoms - a
people duplicator plus a machine to transmit matter.
Human is 'duplicated' and transmitted with duplicate into a room. The room is inside a sphere all directions the same. No windows and no objects.
The room floats free in space -no gravity, ie. No up no down.
The person and his duplicate materialise in the room, one
behind the other like they were in queue.
The one facing the wall would see the wall.
The one behind would see the back of his double.
A tap on the duplicates back and a conversation ensues between them.
Because their experiences were different when they entered the room. (One saw a wall the other a figure). But if they arrived facing each other what then?
Their experiences would be the same they would do and say exactly the same thing for all time. No conversation possible because the initial symmetry of their experience cannot be broken .
Can Tweedle Dum/ Tweedle Dee existence be avoided?

After about 10 or so answers.
Lets not worry too much about quantum effects. You go to bed at night liking vanilla ice cream and thinking Tony Blair is a total ********. During the night there will occur countless 'random' effects but when you awake in the morning you still like icecream and Tony Blair is still an ********. Peoples opinions ,motivations and perceptions do not change on the random change of state of an atom it is an aggregate effect and the aggregation is predictable I think. Thought cannot be shown to be random and certainly isn't. If quantum changes will break the symmetry then it might take 30 years or 3 weeks or 3 hours. Whatever the time it takes the concept of a human being is surprising.

Answer 1

Interesting. I would say that the symetry of the moment will stay for at least a while. The particle duplicator needs to have an infinite "reoslution" when reading the position and state of all particles.

Chaos theory states that even the slightest change in initial state will have completely different result if you give the particles enough time to interact (this is called the butterfly effect). That is why one of the persons will eventually think something different.

Even if the machine is infinitely perfect in making a duplicate, there is a way to find a way out. The sphere around them was not made with the duplicate, so the subjects can both of them (together) throw something at the wall, and since the direction will not be straight ahead, keep throwing the object, until the symmetry is broken, then chat all night.

Answer 2

The mere fact that it just mentioned duplicating position and state of atoms gives away the answer.

Atoms only have states and position due to quantum mechanics. Aside from the fact that the exact position/speed of quantum sized particles can never be determined, even if we assume that somehow the machine was able to do this, the quantum uncertainty in energy states of ANY of the trillions of particles that comprise the two "identical" people will cause the degeneracy to eventually differentiate.

Basically, quantum mechanics says you're always rolling dice, and that the roll result will always be random (yet following a prescribed distrubition) even if the dice are thrown the exact same way.

In this case, the people are the die, and the sphere is the crapshoot.

Answer 3

Interesting question....also touches on a subject I have heard very few people talk about, namely the fact that we are essentially controlled by chemicals and that free will is only relative.

But back to your question...

I would like to point out that Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle states that we can never know for sure where the electrons in an atom are at any given point in time, we can only estimate in what area/orbit they are most likely to be. So, given the randomness of each individual atom that makes up each one of those human duplicates, I would guess that they start off "feeling" slightly different from one another simply due to the randomness of the make-up of their atoms.

That would cause their neurons in their brains to fire differently from one another and cause each duplicate human to perhaps focus on different parts of each others faces. One may be inclined, due to the way his neurons are firing at the moment, to look at the other guy's eyes, while the other guy may be inclined to focus on the other guy's mouth. That small difference will eventually give them distinct experiences and thoughts, and will probably break the cycle of doing or thinking the same for all time.

Answer 4

You are ignoring the randomness of thought. I don't think that you can put forth that the two will get caught up in an infinite loop of mirrored actions because neurons can fire randomly. Eventually, one of them will have an impulse that the other didn't have.

Now, if they really were identical programs running on identical machines, you would be right. However, they aren't machines. They are humans and there is a natural quantum mechanic taking place. You could say that each of them will probably do this, but they might do that. Somewhere they will begin to cascade into macro differences.

Answer 5

Of course they will not be exactly the same for all time. That's silly. They will be very very similar, but that 1st 3 seconds of experience is irrelevant to who they fundamentally are.

Answer 6

eventuaLLy they wiLL come upon something that wiLL break the symmettry, but if thy never did then they wouLd just keep saying the same words to each other at exactLy the same time, they wouLd get bored.

Answer 7

Yes--human behavior is not predictable. It's called free will, and it seems to exist. Nobody is sure why, but it does.