I will answer your questions about the meaning of life.

[guesswest]

[ QUOTE ]
I just started reading Viktor Frankl's Man's Search for Meaning. Is this a book I should finish?

[/ QUOTE ]

I'll field this since nobody else has. A big yes.

[bisonbison]

Is the Philsophy professor at UCLA or the people on this forum really any more enlightened than the local teenaged girl mall rats?

They are more likely to have perspective on their place in the world, but in day to day moments when someone slights them, ignores them, loves them or whatever - we're all about equally lightly to lose our footing in equanimity.

[vhawk01]

[ QUOTE ]
Imagine a teleportation device that reads every atom of your body, disassembles the atoms, and creates an exact copy somewhere else. Would the copy be you or someone else?

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I think thats an easy question if you consider that not a single atom or molecule in your body was there when you were born. Its unlikely any of them were there when you were ten or twenty either (I don't know how old you are, and there is some probability involved.) So I think the answer is a definite yes. We are patterns of information. Any pattern that was exactly the same as I am now would be me at this exact moment. Any pattern that was exactly how I was when I just wrote 'now' would be me at THAT moment.

[Sephus]

i have no expertise in this area but it seems very unlikely to me that none of the matter that composes my body was "there" when i was born, not that i think it's all that important to the question.

i think the answer is a definite "no" but it's a mysterious question. for example disassembling your body obviously "kills" you, so if the new version of you really is "you" it should seem to you that you fell asleep and then woke up. but what if it makes multiple copies of you? they are identical people (except for their physical location) but they aren't all the "same person."

[LadyWrestler]

Lucrativeness.

[vhawk01]

No, you are constantly being reassembled. Even the atoms and molecules that make up your neurons (what most people consider 'them' perhaps?) and your brain are replaced over time. In other words, this has already been done to you, to various degrees, probably several times. Why does the speed at which it occurs (i.e. nanoseconds versus twenty years) change the process?

[vhawk01]

Also, about the copies...this is a good question, but perhaps an answer is that they arent copies at all. Its impossible to actually copy something, they will be made up of entirely different molecules and atoms.

[Dane S]

Are some people's lives better than others?

[Sephus]

[ QUOTE ]
No, you are constantly being reassembled. Even the atoms and molecules that make up your neurons (what most people consider 'them' perhaps?) and your brain are replaced over time. In other words, this has already been done to you, to various degrees, probably several times. Why does the speed at which it occurs (i.e. nanoseconds versus twenty years) change the process?

[/ QUOTE ]

specifically i was thinking that some of the original matter that made up my bones would not have a reason to be replaced it would just sit there forever, but it's not important.

i don't know why it makes a difference. it seems though that if the machine made an exact copy of me instead and i were given the choice to kill the copy or have "him" kill "me" that i shouldn't be indifferent even if the rest of the universe sees the two as exactly the same.

[Sephus]

[ QUOTE ]
Also, about the copies...this is a good question, but perhaps an answer is that they arent copies at all. Its impossible to actually copy something, they will be made up of entirely different molecules and atoms.

[/ QUOTE ]

but it's theoretically possible for the two to be indistinguishable (other than by location).