tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3891434218564545511.post7350848850160256505..comments2024-03-28T19:56:42.305-05:00Comments on Alexander Pruss's Blog: Fission and making the world have been a happier placeAlexander R Prusshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05989277655934827117noreply@blogger.comBlogger3125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3891434218564545511.post-80873465651476353362016-03-23T10:28:10.485-05:002016-03-23T10:28:10.485-05:00I'm inclined to view this sort of thing as a g...I'm inclined to view this sort of thing as a good argument against the co-location view. However, just to play Devil's Advocate: What we could be saying is that "fissioning" is only possible in cases where the person is already lots of co-located people. So, if (perhaps <i>per impossibile</i>) there existed both fissionable and non-fissionable people, the distinction between them may just be that some of them are lots of co-located people and others are not.Michael Gonzalezhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05279261871735286117noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3891434218564545511.post-34589741725118735002016-03-23T10:11:44.198-05:002016-03-23T10:11:44.198-05:00Well, suppose that there is only one Jim. Surely t...Well, suppose that there is only one Jim. Surely that happens sometimes. But then *were* Jim to be split, there would have been two. <br /><br />One way out along your lines of thought might be to think that *whenever* a person is such that it is *possible* to split them, there are already many copies of them. This means that once medical technology progresses to the point of being capable of splitting people in half, suddenly everybody will be born a twin. It seems very strange that the mere existence of the technology would result in that.Alexander R Prusshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05989277655934827117noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3891434218564545511.post-43705268266810102232016-03-23T07:19:24.871-05:002016-03-23T07:19:24.871-05:00I think this may be a non-sequitur. Splitting, so ...I think this may be a non-sequitur. Splitting, so far as I can tell, does not <b>make</b> it the case that there are two people all along. Rather, as you said at the outset, splitting merely <i>reveals</i> that it was always true that there were two colocated people <i>all along</i>. If that's the case, then the world was always as much a "happy place" as it would properly be with TWO happy Jims in the world, since there have indeed always been both happy Jims.Michael Gonzalezhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05279261871735286117noreply@blogger.com