What If There Are Two of Me?

24 February 2021: I don't really agree anymore with many of the things I've said here.

***

I’m not really sure when did I start thinking about this, but I’m sure that this thought is at least partly inspired by (WARNING: SPOILER!) this movie. What’s interesting is that I might not be the only one who has this thought. If I recalled correctly, one of my friends brought up this topic in one of our conversation. He said that it’d be fun if there is an extra copy of himself. Well, I had been thinking thoroughly about this matter, and I quickly said to him that it might not be that fun.

First of all, having two persons with exactly the same mind is really complicated and could lead to unexpected outcomes. I can’t list all of the possibilities, but there are a few scenarios that came to my mind. Since we have exactly the same mind, when we meet each other, it’s possible that we both would be doing exactly the same action. I’d say “WTF!” and he’d say the same, I’d open my eyes wide and take a deep breath and he’d do the same, I’d say “Okay, calm down” and he’d say the same… and it would continue forever, or at least until an external intervention takes place. If there’s no external intervention, we can still end this “tie” by physically interrupting one of my selves, e.g. by smacking my clone’s head with a book. Assuming there’s only one book in the room, only one of us would be unconscious, giving the other a chance to think peacefully.

Now that the two of me can talk in peace, we can start considering what will happen next. Let’s start with the worst case scenario. This is actually very simple, you might even have thought about it: one of us would kill the other one. There are variations of this scenario: we might end up killing each other simultaneously, or it can be suicide instead of murder. No matter how it happens, at least one of us would be dead.

But it doesn’t have to be that bad, right? What about the best case? I think the best case is not very different from what happens in the movie I mentioned before, we both would work together to reach the same goal. Yet another alternative is that we both will live our own lives normally, separate from each other, although I’m not really sure we can even live “normally” given the circumstances.

***

Okay, that was interesting, but this morning I have an idea that would make things much more interesting: what if, instead of making a perfect clone of myself, I just “copied” my mind and plant in inside the body of a beautiful girl?[1][2]

Compared to the previous case (the “perfect clone” case), this case is obviously more dangerous. Because she’s a girl, and I know exactly what she’s thinking. Add that to the fact that she doesn’t exist: she’s physically here but there’s no record of her anywhere, and nobody knows about her except me. And that naturally leads to a very frightening conclusion: I can do anything to her and no one would have the slightest idea of what happened.

Nah. It will not happen. As soon as I see her, I will fall in love with her. There is no doubt about that. And since I love her, there’s no way that I will do anything that might hurt her.

And when she wakes up, she will be happy, very happy. Of course she is, because she is living my dream to become a beautiful girl.

She might cry a little bit, though. After all, waking up inside a completely different body can be a very shocking experience. But after that, we’re going to laugh, a lot. We will laugh about things that weren’t even laughable when I was all alone.

***

As I said, I will fall in love with her. But what about her? Will she love me back? At first, I was worried that she might not love me back. I mean, who would fall in love with someone like me? Even now I have thoughts like that. And that’s not even counting the probability that she will fall in love with someone else.

But hey, it’s okay to be optimistic sometimes, right? It is in critical times like this that you have to be optimistic, otherwise you will always live a boring life.

I mean, I’m the only person in this world who truly understand her. The same goes for her, she is the only person in this world who truly understand me. And I always think, that if there is a person who would still accept me even after finding out about all of my ugly sides, if there is a person who would support everything I do no matter how crazy or stupid, if there is a person who would always be by my side no matter what other people say… if there is a person like that,[3] I wouldn’t think twice to make sure that I can spend the rest of my life with that person.

As long as she thinks that way too, there’s nothing to worry about.[4] There’s nothing that can separate us.

***

Okay, that’s sweet, but how can you be sure that everything would go as you expected? Can you be sure that two persons sharing the same mind will be happy instead of hurting each other? How are you going to explain to everyone about her identity? Can you guarantee that the “mind transfer” process will run successfully? What if an error in the process results in her being impaired mentally or physically?

I got it, I got it. I know it is a crazy idea. I know that it might actually bring us more suffering than happiness. I know that. But I want to believe that we can be happy. Even if it’s impossible, even if it’s just in my imagination, I want to believe that the two of us can live happily together.

***

Notes:

[1] Originally, this thought experiment was meant to answer another question, “Do you even like any girl in real life?” And my answer was, “Well, if there is a female version of myself… But wait! Even if there is a female version of myself, as much as I love myself, I might still not love her that much!” But then I remembered the result of one of my previous thought experiments: “If she is blindingly beautiful, I will throw away any logic and fall head over heels for her.” And so, for the purpose of this essay, we can safely assume that I will fall in love with a (beautiful) female version of myself.

[2] For now, just don’t think about how I can make a copy of my mind, or about how I can get a spare human body for experimentation.

[3] I’m not sure if such person actually exist for me in this world. But for the purpose of this essay, we make her exist.

[4] Of course she will think that way. She has a copy of my mind.

***

References:

- Happy Sugar Life, without this anime, the last paragraph (before the notes) of this essay wouldn’t be possible

- Love Letter for an Imaginary Girl, not my favorite song, but the title alone makes it awesome

- I Am My Wife, to be honest I don’t really like this manga, I stopped reading it after the first few chapters, but you can say that I borrow some ideas from it

- Koibito no Ranje, one of my favorite song, but I still can’t understand its meaning even after listening to it a hundred times and reading the (translated) lyrics over and over again

- Kara no Kyoukai: Shuushou, a fun philosophical dialogue that briefly mentions why you would have a different mind if you have a different body

- Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha, one of the few anime that deal with the problem of living together with a clone you created (not necessarily a clone of yourself)

***

Addendum 1:

There’s one thing that really bothers me. I only came up with this a month after writing the original essay, so I figured it would not fit nicely into the main essay. I’ve continued to think about what she would think, and it just pops into my head: since she has the same mind as myself, how can I guarantee that she will not make her own perfect boyfriend?

Addendum 2:

It’s 2 AM and I just discovered another very interesting thought. In Addendum 1, I mentioned that she might try to make her own perfect boyfriend. But I think it’s more likely that she’s thinking about making a perfect girlfriend. I mean, she has a copy of my mind, certainly she would remember the times when I (she) was fantasizing about making my (her) own perfect girlfriend. It must be very confusing for her, since she is the perfect girlfriend herself.

Addendum 3:

I think it would take a very long time before we see the first cloned human in history. A hundred, a thousand, maybe a million years, I don’t know. And I think the main issue is not “merely” technology, but also ethics. If you create a clone of someone, then that clone is automatically a lab rat the moment he/she open his/her eyes, and many people would not like it. Instead of using a flesh-and-bone human body, I think it is more plausible to use a robot body. And instead of replicating the entire brain, we can just emulate a person’s brain using silicon chips. The ethical issue still persists, although it now depends on whether a conscious machine can be called a human. Also, having a robot girlfriend would bring a whole new class of confusing problems.