Shit like this always remind me of the videogame SOMA.
That game has the best story and atmosphere I’ve ever seen in my life (maybe except for HL2)
And by HL2 you mean Half Life 2? Which has a shitty and unfinished story and way less atmosphere than its original game HL1???
^ This comment was presented by the Combine.
I mean it though. HL1 was way better, storywise. HL2 just had upgraded graphics that couldn’t make up for worse gameplay. That endless water corridor run with the swamp boat at the beginning bored me to hell and back.
I know how teleportation machines work and I won’t be using one.
Wait, you… you do?
You’ve shed and replaced every atom that you were made of when you were born and many times over since then, are you still that same entity?
Yeah, but you didn’t shed them all at once. If the ship of Theseus exploded, and then they built a new one, the question wouldn’t be, “Which is the true ship of Theseus?” it would be, “Hey, did you guys see Theseus’ new ship?”
It’s all just abstract philosophy on a non-reality scenario, I’m just having fun with it.
On a heavily relative note, though, has anyone watched Space Dandy? The show about a dandy guy in space?
I did, and I remember enjoying it, but that was 10 years ago and I don’t remember it that well. Did they have a teleporter?
They had one, but it was never existential. They had warp, though, and it put them in the same but different dimension when they used it, so Space Dandy’s cosmic energy warped every time he used it, essentially changing him at a material and energy level but not a conscious one. He has a relationship with an energy entity that decides they can’t be with him because he’s literally not the man they fell in love with, and because he’s used the warp so much his energy is essentially changing the fundamental make-up of the universe.
Yeah, I do remember that the series ended with him being given the opportunity to become God (AKA the narrator of the show), and him turning it down, creating a universe without God, which appeared to make everything the same but without narration. I assume that was related to the cosmic energy? Fun idea, but, to bring it back to Theseus, his continued consciousness despite his physical transformation into energy implies the existence of an intangible part of his being (AKA a soul) that continues beyond his human brain. If we ever prove that transporters are teleporting our souls, I’ll happily use one. Otherwise, they are 100% suicide booths.
Meh, I don’t think we have souls, I’d take the suicide booth, it would be cathartic. Especially if it does the fix your health issues thing like the Star Trek teleporters do (except the times it would get in the way of the plot, so it just doesn’t. Because.) maybe I could get a functioning thyroid out of it.
Uh, you OK? That was a borderline SI statement.
I tend to think what “you” are is the pattern formed by the various electrical and chemical signals in your brain and whatever other parts of your body are involved in cognition, and since patterns are ultimately information, and a completely identical copy of some information is the same information with nothing to distinguish it, that a sufficiently perfect copy of you literally is you, and as such, if the teleporter works the way fictional teleporters are generally described as working, then yes, it is you.
For everyone else, yes. But the you you are now will cease to exist. Your consciousness won’t transfer.
I don’t believe continuity of consciousness is actually required to maintain the identity of consciousness, is the thing. I think that, if you died, and then were brought back some how, you wouldn’t have some “new” consciousness that merely think it’s the first one, but literally would have the first one again, to the degree that such a thing can be called the same from moment to moment even under normal circumstances anyway.
Would you just have two yous if there were two existing copies?
Youd get two people who are both “you” from before the copying, in the same sense that you are the same you that existed in your past, but arent the same as eachother anymore because they both get different inputs and experiences and develop along different paths.
But if you say that a perfect copy of you is literally you, why would it matter if the “original” is destroyed or not? The result should still be the same (as in a copy that is a separate conciousness) no?
What “you” are changes with time (consider that you’re quite different now from when you were, say, 5). The implication of this is that once a copy is made, new experiences are formed by both copies and their patterns change in divergent ways. If you destroy one after a copy is made, the changes undergone by the destroyed one after the copying aren’t transferred to or recreated again, and so are lost. Or in other words, if you make a perfect copy, they’re identical at the moment of creation, but virtually immediately afterwards won’t be. If you destroy the original before making the copy, then the copy is identical to the original at the moment it is destroyed, ideally, and so the same state last experienced is re-achieved and can develop further.
I’m struggling to think of the proper words to explain my thoughts on this subject, so I’m sure my responses about it are somewhat confusing, and my attempts to elaborate make them fairly long, I’m sorry about that.
Something that I think might be a source of some of that confusion is that I get the impression that many think of consciousness as a distinct nonphysical “thing” that is somehow tethered to the brain, such that the destruction of the brain results in the severing of that connection in a way that means it can’t be caught and pulled back again by any physical process, similar to how people that believe in souls posit them to behave.
I do not believe consciousness works this way. I think that it literally is a specific form of information, or perhaps an emergent effect of certain kinds of information processing, and thus, is a part of the physical universe in the same sort of way that a digital image is (the image itself isn’t “made” of any substance and can be encoded into any form of matter that can be organized into a sufficiently complex arrangement, but that organization physically exists, changing it changes the image, or produces a new but similar one depending on how you define it, and it cannot exist if no matter exists in an arrangement that can encode it), and as a result of that, getting it back just requires getting some matter into an arrangement that encodes it again. The tricky bit is that unlike a digital image, it isn’t a static sort of information but a changing one. So, to take the analogy further, replace the image with a computer program that takes inputs from the world around it, and then rewrites it’s own code in response to those inputs. If you take this algorithm, pause it, copy it’s state and destroy the original machine while rewriting that state into a new machine in a new location, and unpause the program on the new machine, you’d get the same results as if you had just paused it, moved the original machine to the new location and unpaused it at the same time you would have unpaused the copied program. There’s no basis to say that you have a different program, because they have the same code and are behaving the same. But if you unpaused the original machine, its instance of the program will change itself, and then if you destroy it now, the copy won’t reach the state that that last version of the original would have reached had you brought it to the new location too. In this analogy, killing a person is equivalent to one of these programs reaching a state that is no longer continued, so if you continue it later, somewhere else, even on new hardware, that’s fine, and if you create a branch and keep both running, that’s also fine, but if you create a branch, and then destroy one without recording it’s state to recreate it later, or just never actually run it again on a new machine, that branch has reached an end state that doesn’t continue changing itself, and so you’ve had “someone” die.
I think I get what you’re saying, and I completely agree with the first parts. What I don’t quite understand is how the conciousness would differentiate between the two clones in all scenarios.
If we create a copy and pause at the exact moment of creation, where both copies are exactly the same, how would the conciousness “choose bodies”?
If we kill the person first, doesn’t that necessitate that the clone has been killed as well in that case?
If it’s jot you then the question becomes, are you willing to commit suicide so a reasonable facsimile of you can save some strangers.
I’m willing to die to save people, so if some version of me actually gets to survive it, with there being a chance that it is me, then there’s no reason for me not to do it.
Are you willing to die to save any people?
People dumb enough to nap on a trolley trail? No. rich people? Also no.
Actually this would be faster the other way around.
Orphans with chronic diseases who, should they be saved stand a reasonable chance at a cure and a long, prosperous and happy life?
Also no.
It won’t be me and, unless I have some loved one there, I’m not thoughtlessly jumping into suicide.
I think teleportation is a really interesting philosophical question. If life is deterministic and there is no soul, then there should be no problem with teleportation. From a deterministic atheist perspective it should not be a problem, I wouldn’t teleport myself though 😅
Doesn’t matter because your original brain was destroyed. You would be dead and a copy of you would remain.
Was it though? I’d argue it was disassembled. And a pen wouldn’t stop being the same pen if you disassemble it, take the pieces somewhere else, and assemble it again. This is the same but at an atomic level.
Nope. If it makes a perfect copy of you during transport … you die during the transport.
If you come through with a transporter clone your original mind doesn’t inhabit both of them … so your original mind will not inhabit either of them.
What is your “original mind” though? Is there such a thing? Are you the same you you were last night? You only “Inhabit yourself” in the present, so the continuity of your mind is just an illusion. For the clone, they would be as “you” as you are, and in fact it would be impossible to tell the difference between you and your clone for anyone, including yourself. Maybe you’re the clone?
There is an easy logic test to see if a person’s “mind” is really in a clone/copy/backup. If the original and the copy exist at the same time would the original perceive itself in two places? If not, then that “exact copy” method doesn’t work … the original just dies and a near copy is made. Someone mentioned the zombie theory earlier in the post … just about as creepy.
Why would the “original” be able to perceive itself in two places? Are you able to perceive yourself in the past? That was literally you, yet you only perceive the present. There is no reason why you should be able to perceive a brain identical to yours but separated in space either.
Also the point is the “original” doesn’t make sense in the first place, both the copy and you would perceive the same thing in your hypothetical case, because you are the same.
