Random...

Given your response, I'd guess that you have completely misunderstood every remark I've made. You've succeeded at over-looking my point in every post. I'm just going to let this go, and let other people speak, because you obviously're too trite.

 

No, it's just that he'sn't really reading my posts, and so I've given up on explaining them, since it's just turning into a bickering battle, and I'm far too lazy for a flame fight.

 

The whole time I've been reading the thread, I was thinking of the Red Dwarf episode, where the crew actually gets into a parallel reality where they actually meet parallel female versions of themselves, and Lister even proceeds to have sex with his counterpart - and then finds out that in that particular parallel reality it is men who become pregnant...

 

That was the perhaps most stupid cartoon plot I've ever heard of. What was the writer thinking?


Probably nothing, but still...

 

[EDIT]: Ok. For the sake of the argument, I want to make one last try to make it clear to you that I do understand what you're talking about, but that I just don't agree with it. You're saying that the parallel universe we're observing has an identical history as ours up to the point where you're born because at that point you're not male, you're female. I'm saying that can't be. That's the part I'm not agreeing with. Here's why:

The Many Worlds Interpretation you referenced to says:

Notice the word I have in bold italics. POSSIBLE. Is it at all biologically possible for a male and a female to be genetically equivalent? No. It is impossible. Therefore, there does not exist an alternate universe that in which you are a female if you happen to be a male in the original one. Now, this is why I made this comment earlier:

After seeing Blinky post in this thread, I was reminded of the discussion we had a month ago concerning souls and biological AI, and I asked him:

If we have souls, maybe our souls are what carry over into alternate universes. And since souls are sexless, maybe your soul in this universe could inhabit a male body, but in the alternate universe, it inhabits a female body. Two different sexes, one soul. BUT, we're not considering religious or spiritual influence here, are we? No. We're discussing the biological implications of alternate universes and alternate selves. Therefore, I stand by what I've been saying all along. It is impossible to have an alternated you that is of the opposite sex as the original you.[/EDIT]

Why would you start a flame fight if you're too lazy to carry it on? See you don't even know what you're doing here. Seriously, go back through the posts and notice that 90% of your responses to anyone's opinion that was different from your own can be paraphrased like so: "You whiny bitch! You don't agree with me? Fuck you then, douche!"

But allright I'll drop it as well. Just riddle me one thing first though:
If I'm not really reading your posts, then why am I still using direct quotes from you about your views and answering them with rebuttles and views of my own? If you don't want to answer back, fine. I won't beat a dead horse any more. But if you respond, actually answer that question without changing the subject into my percieved bitch-fest or double talking about how I'm the one not answering your comments when it is crystal clear that you're not actually paying attention to mine. Seriously, at what point did you even responde to anything I said past the initial "No I don't agree with you becau-"? You didn't. Yet I repeatedly drew from your comments concerning the topic at hand to further express what I did or did not agree with in your opinion.

So really, you either 1) don't know how to discuss things with people without flipping out when their opinion clashes with yours -or- 2) need to explain your side a little better if you don't think they're understanding what it is you're really trying to say -or- 3) actually say what you fucking mean.

 

Grimm, I think you're problem is that you're not seeing the whole "more-or-less equivalent".

Obviously if there was a female version of you, for example, she wouldn't have the same genes, she'd have an X where you had a Y. But if, other than that, we assume all of your genes are identical (they might manifest differently due to the different circumstances, which, as you know, is also possible) but despite the fact this alternate 'you' isn't actually you in a philosophical sense of the word, and isn't completely identical to you on a genetic level, it still can be said to be 'you' in a figurative sense because she occupies in that universe the same biological role you occupy in this one.

As Darkfool said, this isn't a serious topic, if you'd like to discourse on multiple world theory, there might be a better topic for that (perhaps one just for that?), but this seems like it was really just meant to be funny.

As for my belief about Atman... I can't really say if this world's Atman is bound within our dimension or if an overarching Atman exceeds it. If I had to posit a theory I'd say that each dimension has a discrete flow of Brahma and Atman that all combine and culminate to a 'higher Brahma' of sorts at some extra-dimensional level. This, however, is solely based off meditating while on mushrooms, which despite the skeptical-sounding nature of the method, does the trick pretty well.

That said, I kind of put stock in Many Worlds Theory, if only because it makes for the best novel-writing, and since we can't prove it anyway, might as well go with what works.

EDIT: Oh, and Dark, stop bitching; he disagreed, he didn't slap you.

 

Understood. I made a big issue out of something that was light-hearted to begin with. That's all I needed to hear to get the hint to tone it down.

 

Well, I still think you made the better argument

 

That was the point I was trying to make. I suppose what I failed to say was that if you examined their DNA versuses yours, it would be nearly identical, based on the belief that your family history and such would be identical, meaning that you'd be dealing with a being that was very genetically close to you. Closer, theoretically, than a sister/brother would be, based on the belief that they're born into your "slot," effectively filling your role in that universe. Then comes the act of getting said near-identical drunk and making near-clone babies. I also got caught up in the heat of the argument. Something that tends to destroy what little mental capacities I have.

Speaking of mental capacity, it's 4am and I can't come up with support for the part that's italicized. I like the way it sounds though.

 

The definition of 'you' is whatever you percieve to define 'you'; if, say, you identify yourself as DarkFool - whoever you have come from, whatever it is you did, whatever it is your believe. whatever you want to achieve, whatever you want to become, etc etc etc - then if you come across someonein the alternate universe, who is exactly the same as DarkFool except for the genitalia part, then you've found your alternate 'you'.

That being said, if the female DarkFool is exactly like you as per above, then she'd probably not want to sleep with male DarkFool, because she wants a girl instead....

But okay, say she wants boys instead....

I'm sorry, I'm going to bed now...

 

I half anticipated you were going to mention something like that (about the "slot" or something to that extent). But since I never saw mention of it, I thought maybe you were talking about something else. The sister/brother thing is how I was looking at it.

Would you take cultural differences in raising a boy or a girl psychologically into consideration? I think a girl's interests/goals and a boy's interests/goals might lead them to define themselves different from each other. Might just be careless speculation on my part though.

 

What about my female copy's other X chromosome ?

If both X chromosome are copied from mine, wouldn't a male child be an exact clone of me, and a female child an exact clone of my female copy ? With both females suffering from possible X-linked diseases, if I had one.

What happens with a female and her male version, if we copy the male's X chromosome from one of the female's ?

 

I'm not quite sure what you're asking here. Could you try to be a little more specific in your wording? It's not like chromosomes are xerox'ed when you have sex with someone (even an alternate version of yourself with the exact same genome). Genes have different, individual versions of themselves, called alleles, that can lie dormant in a person if paired with another allele that is dominant over it. Each allele of a gene comes from each parent (1 from each), who also have 2 alleles from the genes their parents gave them, who have 2 alleles from the genes from their parents and so on etc etc etc. So different alleles can pair up in different ways to produce different results even if the two parents have an identical genome. This is why we're not all identical twins with our siblings.

Hopefully this figure can simplify things a little. Remember: these pairings are all done randomly, determined by which sperm fertilizes which available egg.



So as we can see, there's a 50/50 chance your offspring won't even share the same hair color as you and your mate. Now extrapolate this process across EVERY gene that the offspring will recieve and it's easy to see how different (or similar) the next generation can possibly look.

EDIT: We're even assuming that these are two different people who are coincidently heterozygous (Bb mix) for their hair color gene. The resulting percentages will obviously be different if one is, or even both, are either homozygous dominant (BB) or homozygous recessive (bb) for this gene. And even more obvious is the fact that if you boink your alternate, opposite sex self, you'll have an identical copy for this gene. So this example does accurately depict the possible outcomes for how different/similar the offspring of you and your alternate self will look.

I used a vague example of a gene that determines hair color, but this could be applied to the process of how any gene is characteristically, randomly determined through sexual reproduction regardless of what chromosome it resides in, even the sex chromosomes X & Y.

 

I was falling half asleep after a wild night out with my boyfriend... apologies for any vagueness...

'You' is defined by whatever you deem to be you and whatever you associate with you. Sure, parenting has something to do with it, but ultimately we become our own person.

If you find someone that is an equivalent of 'you', in everything except genitalia, then yeah, the 'you' that you found would have probably been raised in the same way you were. At the risk of starting another debate about nature vs. nurture, that's what I meant about the whole female DarkFool preferring girls, as male DarkFool would...

Unless I'm mistaken...

 

The "nature vs nurture" is exactly what I had in mind when reading your post. That's a good point you bring up.

 

I was thinking about it because in one of my units I've just learned the personality traits of the majority of musicians. One of them is psychological adrogeny. This means that musicians tend to have an equal amount of feminine and masculine traits.

No matter how my parents' have tried to raise me, I've ended up as a type of tomboy - I behave like a girl but I think like a boy. For example, I like to dress in a feminine way, obviously, but the way I select my clothes is like a boy's - whatever is best for the situation, to impress the right people at the right time. Or, when I'm looking for a house, not only do I look for where the sun is facing and the structural integrity of the house, I look to see if I can see the back garden from the kitchen, or how the house flows from the front door to the bathroom.

I wonder what my 'alternate self' would be like then....

 

A complete nihilist, perhaps?

 

Do you like sports and beer too? I've always loved the girls who can drink like the guys and scream their heads off at a game.