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What is the difference between assembling a replica and re-assembling the original if they are physically identical down to the last particle?
They aren't identical unless they are the same particles.
So particles have identity, and particular identity is attached to the generation of consciousness? If you swapped out some particles from the brain for other particles, the original person is no longer alive? What if you did the whole brain, or most of it, or part of it, or just a few particles? A carbon particle has properties beyond simply being a carbon particle by virtue of being part of my brain?
What is the difference between assembling a replica and re-assembling the original if they are physically identical down to the last particle?
They aren't identical unless they are the same particles.
So particles have identity, and particular identity is attached to the generation of consciousness? If you swapped out some particles from the brain for other particles, the original person is no longer alive? What if you did the whole brain, or most of it, or part of it, or just a few particles? A carbon particle has properties beyond simply being a carbon particle by virtue of being part of my brain?
I hope Yar's being sarcastic, because the particles of your body are being swapped out for different but virtually identical particles all the time.
Feral on
every person who doesn't like an acquired taste always seems to think everyone who likes it is faking it. it should be an official fallacy.
What is the difference between assembling a replica and re-assembling the original if they are physically identical down to the last particle?
They aren't identical unless they are the same particles.
We replace cells all the time. It's the structure that matters.
[EDIT] Damn, I lost the race because I wanted to know whether the rumor that every atom in your body gets replaced in x years is really true. A thread on Snopes says no, by the way.
No, I'm saying that from a practical language standpoint we wouldn't say that we died. But if the person you were 10 years ago or the person you were 5 seconds ago before you had that experience that changed your perception of the world no longer exists, what would you call that person? What state would they be in? Technically, they'd be dead.
Just out of curiosity, what do you think happens when we die?
The person we were the instant before we go brain dead ceases to exist, and there is no new configuration to replace them. There's just dying neurons and breaking connections.
Asiina on
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MrMonroepassed outon the floor nowRegistered Userregular
edited October 2008
In order to survive the journey, I will cast Cartesian Dualism to separate my mind from my body so that it can be implanted again at the end of the journey without harm.
In all seriousness, though, the mind and body are unified. One doesn't exist without the other. To say that upon disassembly "you" cease to exist is technically accurate, but then when they put your body back together at the other end, the same cells and processes that created your conscious self before create the same self again. The idea that I have a consciousness that is dependent on anything other than a bunch of neurons firing is ludicrous. When they get put back together at the other side, "I" come back, with all the same memories and tendencies and agency I had before.
And as for the second Riker, I thought that was an error that caused the waveform to be duplicated and redirected. It's just an energy signal they route through the ship's systems so it can be directed anywhere, why couldn't it be recorded?
No, I'm saying that from a practical language standpoint we wouldn't say that we died. But if the person you were 10 years ago or the person you were 5 seconds ago before you had that experience that changed your perception of the world no longer exists, what would you call that person? What state would they be in? Technically, they'd be dead.
Just out of curiosity, what do you think happens when we die?
The person we were the instant before we go brain dead ceases to exist, and there is no new configuration to replace them. There's just dying neurons and breaking connections.
Subjectively, how do you reckon that is experienced?
Feral on
every person who doesn't like an acquired taste always seems to think everyone who likes it is faking it. it should be an official fallacy.
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
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TL DRNot at all confident in his reflexive opinions of thingsRegistered Userregular
edited October 2008
Can the teleporter create additional copies? I think if so, then you never existed in the sense you probably thought to begin with.
Though this discussion is of course moot if the teleporter doesn't scramble your atoms at all, but rather tears a hole in space, like the kind that makes Sam Neill gouge his eyes out.
TL DR on
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MrMonroepassed outon the floor nowRegistered Userregular
No, I'm saying that from a practical language standpoint we wouldn't say that we died. But if the person you were 10 years ago or the person you were 5 seconds ago before you had that experience that changed your perception of the world no longer exists, what would you call that person? What state would they be in? Technically, they'd be dead.
Just out of curiosity, what do you think happens when we die?
The person we were the instant before we go brain dead ceases to exist, and there is no new configuration to replace them. There's just dying neurons and breaking connections.
Subjectively, how do you reckon that is experienced?
No, I'm saying that from a practical language standpoint we wouldn't say that we died. But if the person you were 10 years ago or the person you were 5 seconds ago before you had that experience that changed your perception of the world no longer exists, what would you call that person? What state would they be in? Technically, they'd be dead.
Just out of curiosity, what do you think happens when we die?
The person we were the instant before we go brain dead ceases to exist, and there is no new configuration to replace them. There's just dying neurons and breaking connections.
Subjectively, how do you reckon that is experienced?
No, I'm saying that from a practical language standpoint we wouldn't say that we died. But if the person you were 10 years ago or the person you were 5 seconds ago before you had that experience that changed your perception of the world no longer exists, what would you call that person? What state would they be in? Technically, they'd be dead.
Just out of curiosity, what do you think happens when we die?
The person we were the instant before we go brain dead ceases to exist, and there is no new configuration to replace them. There's just dying neurons and breaking connections.
Subjectively, how do you reckon that is experienced?
Fade to white?
Okay, so in the example I gave, of the cells and molecules of my brain being rearranged by Star Trek technology to match Evil_Multifarious's - thereby replacing my experiences and memories with his - is there any reason to suspect that I experience a "fade to white?"
Feral on
every person who doesn't like an acquired taste always seems to think everyone who likes it is faking it. it should be an official fallacy.
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
0
MrMonroepassed outon the floor nowRegistered Userregular
edited October 2008
While I was being glib, I would expect that you would experience whatever might happen to someone who's brain was falling apart on a molecular level, followed immediately by the same process in reverse.
This is why we should rely on tesseracts. Just pass a fifth-dimensional object through our four-dimensional space, grab on to it, then pass it through the universe in such a way that when you intercept four-dimensional space again you do so at your desired location and then you just get off.
While I was being glib, I would expect that you would experience whatever might happen to someone who's brain was falling apart on a molecular level, followed immediately by the same process in reverse.
This is why we should rely on tesseracts. Just pass a fifth-dimensional object through our four-dimensional space, grab on to it, then pass it through the universe in such a way that when you intercept four-dimensional space again you do so at your desired location and then you just get off.
that is my favourite theory of teleportation and space travel, honestly. partially because academic mathematicians become your navigators.
While I was being glib, I would expect that you would experience whatever might happen to someone who's brain was falling apart on a molecular level, followed immediately by the same process in reverse.
This is why we should rely on tesseracts. Just pass a fifth-dimensional object through our four-dimensional space, grab on to it, then pass it through the universe in such a way that when you intercept four-dimensional space again you do so at your desired location and then you just get off.
that is my favourite theory of teleportation and space travel, honestly. partially because academic mathematicians become your navigators.
Or big fat hallucinogen-munching genetically-altered humans in vats.
Feral on
every person who doesn't like an acquired taste always seems to think everyone who likes it is faking it. it should be an official fallacy.
Some of you are saying that the slight interruption of consciousness (due to the fact that there is no body to support consciousness) does not equal death. Personally, I disagree. However, I can be persuaded to that perspective if you can answer the following few questions in a way that makes sense.
By the way, this is a really long post that just rehashes points I made before, so I can understand if you skip it.
Imagine that you're a scientist and you've developed a way to copy someone. Your test subject stands in an empty room and you engage the copymatron. There's a bright light and an identical copy of your test-subject stand in a different room on the other side of the planet. What happened was that a scanner recorded the placement of the test-subject's every particle and transmitted the information to a machine that uses the template to create an exact replica.
You wait an hour and then you activate the deathray that vaporizes the original test subject. There is steam before the room cools down and the elements of the human body condense on the cold walls and trickle down into puddles on the floor. A cleaning crew enters and hoses down the walls. The corpse, if you can call it that, runs down the drain.
The question is, did the test subject just teleport to the other side of the Earth?
What if you waited about ten minutes, instead of an hour, before you vaporized the original test-subject? Would that make a difference? What about five minutes? Or two? What if you didn't wait at all and the original is vaporized at the exact same moment that his copy is created? Does the time interval before vaporization (or lack of it) matter?
Satisfied with the results, you continue to the next stage of testing. Again, the test-subject stands in an empty room. The machine engages and there is a bright light. Only this time, no copy appears in another room. The scanner merely did its job and stored the template in a data-haven somewhere off the coast Africa. You hit another switch and the test-subject dies in a burst of fire.
In Bangladesh, someone downloads the latest template and uses it to recreate the test-subject. The question becomes, has the test-subject just been resurrected? And by virtue of the location change, has he been teleported?
In a last experiment, you do exactly what you did last time, only now you ask the cleaning crew to plug the drain and scoop the left-over liquids from the vaporization into a barrel. This barrel you fed-ex to France, where another scientist plugs it into the end-machine, which then uses the barrel-contents as raw resources for the template.
The question is, does it make a difference that the latest copy uses the same atoms as the original test-subject? Where do you draw the line between murder and successful teleportation?
TeaSpoon on
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MrMonroepassed outon the floor nowRegistered Userregular
While I was being glib, I would expect that you would experience whatever might happen to someone who's brain was falling apart on a molecular level, followed immediately by the same process in reverse.
This is why we should rely on tesseracts. Just pass a fifth-dimensional object through our four-dimensional space, grab on to it, then pass it through the universe in such a way that when you intercept four-dimensional space again you do so at your desired location and then you just get off.
that is my favourite theory of teleportation and space travel, honestly. partially because academic mathematicians become your navigators.
Or big fat hallucinogen-munching genetically-altered humans in vats.
While I was being glib, I would expect that you would experience whatever might happen to someone who's brain was falling apart on a molecular level, followed immediately by the same process in reverse.
This is why we should rely on tesseracts. Just pass a fifth-dimensional object through our four-dimensional space, grab on to it, then pass it through the universe in such a way that when you intercept four-dimensional space again you do so at your desired location and then you just get off.
that is my favourite theory of teleportation and space travel, honestly. partially because academic mathematicians become your navigators.
Or big fat hallucinogen-munching genetically-altered humans in vats.
!Volunteer
the spice must flow
Feral on
every person who doesn't like an acquired taste always seems to think everyone who likes it is faking it. it should be an official fallacy.
This is why we should rely on tesseracts. Just pass a fifth-dimensional object through our four-dimensional space, grab on to it, then pass it through the universe in such a way that when you intercept four-dimensional space again you do so at your desired location and then you just get off.
What is the difference between assembling a replica and re-assembling the original if they are physically identical down to the last particle?
They aren't identical unless they are the same particles.
So particles have identity, and particular identity is attached to the generation of consciousness? If you swapped out some particles from the brain for other particles, the original person is no longer alive? What if you did the whole brain, or most of it, or part of it, or just a few particles? A carbon particle has properties beyond simply being a carbon particle by virtue of being part of my brain?
I hope Yar's being sarcastic, because the particles of your body are being swapped out for different but virtually identical particles all the time.
No, I'm not being sarcastic. Everyone seems to be trying to qualify this now by saying "virtually" identical, or identical at least to the cellular level. That's fine. EM's assertion that they are physically identical down to the last particle is what gives me pause. Ultimately two things aren't truly identical unless they are the same thing, that's what identity entails, particulary if you want to say "down to the last particle." My point was that something has to be different, or else we are necessarily talking about the same particles being physically transmitted and reformed at the other end.
The important question to me seems to be at what point is the difference of any meaning to us.
I could write 50,000 words on this, but instead all just piss of EM and MrMonroe by saying that this is just another matter of objective truth vs. practical/useful truth.
In Feral's hypothetical, of him being molecularly transformed into a being with the exact same physiology and memories as EM, I have a counter-hypothesis: what if there was no template used, but rather the machine was smart enough to just make a random (but viable) human out of you with all new physiology, DNA, and memories? Objectively, you are still you, inasmuch as objectively we can even say there is a you. You went through an experience that changed you a whole lot. Completely changed you, practically speaking. We don't need science fiction for this; just imagine someone with amnesia, or who built their life anew after a traumatic event (or both!). To them we often even claim "he's not the same person he used to be." We know that on some level they really are the same person, but practically speaking they aren't. Feral's hypothetical significantly broadens the gap between "really" and "practically" there, but that's all it does. It's still Feral really, but in all practicality it walks and quacks like an EM. It's DNA is EM's, photo ID, he can present himself as EM to anyone who knows EM, if they were children he would likely need to be taken from Feral's parents and placed into care with EM's parents, because else would be traumatic for the child. For most or perhaps all purposes, he'd have to be EM, and so he'd be EM (and thus not Feral), despite the fact that he is still really Feral who underwent some seriously thorough life-changing experiences.
Assuming the original EM is still around, or presuming my counter-hypothesis, we have varying degrees of how practicality would view who Feral is now on a practical level.
Now, I won't pretend to have the answer to consciousness, but my gut tells me that there is an important aspect to it that exist at the "really" level as opposed to the "practical" level. For the most part I believe it to be a matter of brain processes, which in our hypothietical are being reproduced to an effective clone. However, other elements have been brought here, regarding moments in time and continuity, and I think at that level you do in fact destroy a significant part of consciousness when you break it down and rebuild it with new matter.
In Feral's hypothetical, of him being molecularly transformed into a being with the exact same physiology and memories as EM, I have a counter-hypothesis: what if there was no template used, but rather the machine was smart enough to just make a random (but viable) human out of you with all new physiology, DNA, and memories? Objectively, you are still you, inasmuch as objectively we can even say there is a you. You went through an experience that changed you a whole lot. Completely changed you, practically speaking. We don't need science fiction for this; just imagine someone with amnesia, or who built their life anew after a traumatic event (or both!). To them we often even claim "he's not the same person he used to be." We know that on some level they really are the same person, but practically speaking they aren't. Feral's hypothetical significantly broadens the gap between "really" and "practically" there, but that's all it does. It's still Feral really, but in all practicality it walks and quacks like an EM. It's DNA is EM's, photo ID, he can present himself as EM to anyone who knows EM, if they were children he would likely need to be taken from Feral's parents and placed into care with EM's parents, because else would be traumatic for the child. For most or perhaps all purposes, he'd have to be EM, and so he'd be EM (and thus not Feral), despite the fact that he is still really Feral who underwent some seriously thorough life-changing experiences.
Okay, so you're basically saying... there is personal continuity between Old Feral and New Feral, right?
What if I died, and then the Star Trek supercomputer used my corpse to make a randomized New Feral with different memories and personality? Would there be personal continuity then?
Feral on
every person who doesn't like an acquired taste always seems to think everyone who likes it is faking it. it should be an official fallacy.
What is the difference between assembling a replica and re-assembling the original if they are physically identical down to the last particle?
They aren't identical unless they are the same particles.
So particles have identity, and particular identity is attached to the generation of consciousness? If you swapped out some particles from the brain for other particles, the original person is no longer alive? What if you did the whole brain, or most of it, or part of it, or just a few particles? A carbon particle has properties beyond simply being a carbon particle by virtue of being part of my brain?
I hope Yar's being sarcastic, because the particles of your body are being swapped out for different but virtually identical particles all the time.
No, I'm not being sarcastic. Everyone seems to be trying to qualify this now by saying "virtually" identical, or identical at least to the cellular level. That's fine. EM's assertion that they are physically identical down to the last particle is what gives me pause. Ultimately two things aren't truly identical unless they are the same thing, that's what identity entails, particulary if you want to say "down to the last particle." My point was that something has to be different, or else we are necessarily talking about the same particles being physically transmitted and reformed at the other end.
The important question to me seems to be at what point is the difference of any meaning to us.
I could write 50,000 words on this, but instead all just piss of EM and MrMonroe by saying that this is just another matter of objective truth vs. practical/useful truth.
In Feral's hypothetical, of him being molecularly transformed into a being with the exact same physiology and memories as EM, I have a counter-hypothesis: what if there was no template used, but rather the machine was smart enough to just make a random (but viable) human out of you with all new physiology, DNA, and memories? Objectively, you are still you, inasmuch as objectively we can even say there is a you. You went through an experience that changed you a whole lot. Completely changed you, practically speaking. We don't need science fiction for this; just imagine someone with amnesia, or who built their life anew after a traumatic event (or both!). To them we often even claim "he's not the same person he used to be." We know that on some level they really are the same person, but practically speaking they aren't. Feral's hypothetical significantly broadens the gap between "really" and "practically" there, but that's all it does. It's still Feral really, but in all practicality it walks and quacks like an EM. It's DNA is EM's, photo ID, he can present himself as EM to anyone who knows EM, if they were children he would likely need to be taken from Feral's parents and placed into care with EM's parents, because else would be traumatic for the child. For most or perhaps all purposes, he'd have to be EM, and so he'd be EM (and thus not Feral), despite the fact that he is still really Feral who underwent some seriously thorough life-changing experiences.
Assuming the original EM is still around, or presuming my counter-hypothesis, we have varying degrees of how practicality would view who Feral is now on a practical level.
Now, I won't pretend to have the answer to consciousness, but my gut tells me that there is an important aspect to it that exist at the "really" level as opposed to the "practical" level. For the most part I believe it to be a matter of brain processes, which in our hypothietical are being reproduced to an effective clone. However, other elements have been brought here, regarding moments in time and continuity, and I think at that level you do in fact destroy a significant part of consciousness when you break it down and rebuild it with new matter.
The rest of you, I fucking hate you for the fact that I now have a blue dot on this god awful thread.
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MrMonroepassed outon the floor nowRegistered Userregular
edited October 2008
Yar, you're essentially talking about cloning the person. You can't reproduce the mind of a person without a physical map of it; too much of the structure is the result of their experiences. They would inescapably be a different person because they would have nothing like the same physical brain structure.
And you only pissed me off with that objective truth vs. useful truth stuff when you implied that if something wasn't useful to us it could not be true in any sense, which is just dumb.
Also, Madeline L'Engle always confused me with that terminology. Why would you name a five-dimensional object useful for time and space travel after an actualfour-dimensional object?
Edit: also you are playing a little loose with the definition of "person" there, and we shouldn't look to Law in an inquiry about what the self is. Just because a person with amnesia can still use their old ID doesn't mean they have the same "self."
Also, Madeline L'Engle always confused me with that terminology. Why would you name a five-dimensional object useful for time and space travel after an actualfour-dimensional object?
I think she meant that the tesseract was a 4-dimensional projection of a 5-dimensional hypercube.
Feral on
every person who doesn't like an acquired taste always seems to think everyone who likes it is faking it. it should be an official fallacy.
this seems arbitrary still. you seem to be arguing about how you'd define something rather than about the physical process that you think would happen.
consciousness exists; the question is, what effect would the different varieties of teleportation have on it?
more specifically, what constitutes a lethal interruption of continuity and what constitutes a non-lethal one?
if a person is killed and then their body is revived somehow, with all organs returned to functionality, are they the same consciousness? is that even a coherent question? is our self-awareness a limiting factor that makes us think of consciousness as a discrete individual thing when in fact it is not?
consider this: consciousness has no individuality. it is almost a kind of substance, the substance of self awareness. identity is, materially, an illusion; the only real thing that makes you you instead of someone else is that your substance-of-awareness is physically separated from other such substance. The identity you possess is simply the brain state of which your consciousness is aware, and through which your consciousness is projected. Substance isn't the best word; it doesn't seem to have material existence. Thus, your idea of "you" is illusory anyways. This runs pretty much exactly counter to the cogito, but it (or something like it) seems like the only way to materially reconcile it.
I'm not arguing definitions, I'm arguing practicality. If you are "killed" by having your molecules ripped apart, but then are put together in the exact same configuration as you were when you "died", the practical effect on consciousness is that you simply have been instantaneously moved. It also makes perfect sense if you define consciousness by a brain state interacting with outside stimuli. Do you have a different definition of consciousness?
RandomEngy on
Profile -> Signature Settings -> Hide signatures always. Then you don't have to read this worthless text anymore.
this seems arbitrary still. you seem to be arguing about how you'd define something rather than about the physical process that you think would happen.
consciousness exists; the question is, what effect would the different varieties of teleportation have on it?
more specifically, what constitutes a lethal interruption of continuity and what constitutes a non-lethal one?
if a person is killed and then their body is revived somehow, with all organs returned to functionality, are they the same consciousness? is that even a coherent question? is our self-awareness a limiting factor that makes us think of consciousness as a discrete individual thing when in fact it is not?
consider this: consciousness has no individuality. it is almost a kind of substance, the substance of self awareness. identity is, materially, an illusion; the only real thing that makes you you instead of someone else is that your substance-of-awareness is physically separated from other such substance. The identity you possess is simply the brain state of which your consciousness is aware, and through which your consciousness is projected. Substance isn't the best word; it doesn't seem to have material existence. Thus, your idea of "you" is illusory anyways. This runs pretty much exactly counter to the cogito, but it (or something like it) seems like the only way to materially reconcile it.
I'm not arguing definitions, I'm arguing practicality. If you are "killed" by having your molecules ripped apart, but then are put together in the exact same configuration as you were when you "died", the practical effect on consciousness is that you simply have been instantaneously moved. It also makes perfect sense if you define consciousness by a brain state interacting with outside stimuli. Do you have a different definition of consciousness?
Aren't you technically dead while they're gearing up the defibrillator?
this seems arbitrary still. you seem to be arguing about how you'd define something rather than about the physical process that you think would happen.
consciousness exists; the question is, what effect would the different varieties of teleportation have on it?
more specifically, what constitutes a lethal interruption of continuity and what constitutes a non-lethal one?
if a person is killed and then their body is revived somehow, with all organs returned to functionality, are they the same consciousness? is that even a coherent question? is our self-awareness a limiting factor that makes us think of consciousness as a discrete individual thing when in fact it is not?
consider this: consciousness has no individuality. it is almost a kind of substance, the substance of self awareness. identity is, materially, an illusion; the only real thing that makes you you instead of someone else is that your substance-of-awareness is physically separated from other such substance. The identity you possess is simply the brain state of which your consciousness is aware, and through which your consciousness is projected. Substance isn't the best word; it doesn't seem to have material existence. Thus, your idea of "you" is illusory anyways. This runs pretty much exactly counter to the cogito, but it (or something like it) seems like the only way to materially reconcile it.
I'm not arguing definitions, I'm arguing practicality. If you are "killed" by having your molecules ripped apart, but then are put together in the exact same configuration as you were when you "died", the practical effect on consciousness is that you simply have been instantaneously moved. It also makes perfect sense if you define consciousness by a brain state interacting with outside stimuli. Do you have a different definition of consciousness?
Aren't you technically dead while they're gearing up the defibrillator?
I think for all intensive purposes we should define "Dead" as "Brain Death".
DanHibiki on
0
MrMonroepassed outon the floor nowRegistered Userregular
edited October 2008
Apparently a five-dimensional regular polytope which appears as a series of hyperspheres (tesseracts) as they intersect four-dimensional space is called a penteract or decateron.
Go go gadget wikipedia!
And good lord Dan, that better of been intentional.
this seems arbitrary still. you seem to be arguing about how you'd define something rather than about the physical process that you think would happen.
consciousness exists; the question is, what effect would the different varieties of teleportation have on it?
more specifically, what constitutes a lethal interruption of continuity and what constitutes a non-lethal one?
if a person is killed and then their body is revived somehow, with all organs returned to functionality, are they the same consciousness? is that even a coherent question? is our self-awareness a limiting factor that makes us think of consciousness as a discrete individual thing when in fact it is not?
consider this: consciousness has no individuality. it is almost a kind of substance, the substance of self awareness. identity is, materially, an illusion; the only real thing that makes you you instead of someone else is that your substance-of-awareness is physically separated from other such substance. The identity you possess is simply the brain state of which your consciousness is aware, and through which your consciousness is projected. Substance isn't the best word; it doesn't seem to have material existence. Thus, your idea of "you" is illusory anyways. This runs pretty much exactly counter to the cogito, but it (or something like it) seems like the only way to materially reconcile it.
I'm not arguing definitions, I'm arguing practicality. If you are "killed" by having your molecules ripped apart, but then are put together in the exact same configuration as you were when you "died", the practical effect on consciousness is that you simply have been instantaneously moved. It also makes perfect sense if you define consciousness by a brain state interacting with outside stimuli. Do you have a different definition of consciousness?
Aren't you technically dead while they're gearing up the defibrillator?
I think for all intensive purposes we should define "Dead" as "Brain Death".
The rest of you, I fucking hate you for the fact that I now have a blue dot on this god awful thread.
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MrMonroepassed outon the floor nowRegistered Userregular
edited October 2008
You can come back from cardiac arrest, you can come back from brain death. Your consciousness continues on, even if severely limited and different from before.
Essentially this comes down to whether you accept some kind of dualist view of the mind. If you think that consciousness exists purely as a result of the physical processes of the brain, then you have to accept that to say that someone's "self" of conscious mind would restart, exactly the same way it was when it left.
If you don't accept that, and you think that your conscious mind is somehow not entirely dependent on the structure of the brain (and the rest of the body), then it makes sense that it would "end" upon disassembly and then a "new" consciousness would begin upon reassembly.
Jeez, this conversation warrants the use of way too many quotation marks.
I think the biggest question is the "transfer" of consciousness. Yes, on the other side you are you. The matter is all there, your memories and personality, too. But do you experience life after you teleport? If you were to clone yourself, you don't experience life through both you and your clone's eyes, even though you're the same person, correct?
I think the biggest question is the "transfer" of consciousness. Yes, on the other side you are you. The matter is all there, your memories and personality, too. But do you experience life after you teleport? If you were to clone yourself, you don't experience life through both you and your clone's eyes, even though you're the same person, correct?
When you copy, you make a new person. This person will have different experiences and will therefore be a different individual. Yes, a lot more similar than identical twins, but still different.
RandomEngy on
Profile -> Signature Settings -> Hide signatures always. Then you don't have to read this worthless text anymore.
this seems arbitrary still. you seem to be arguing about how you'd define something rather than about the physical process that you think would happen.
consciousness exists; the question is, what effect would the different varieties of teleportation have on it?
more specifically, what constitutes a lethal interruption of continuity and what constitutes a non-lethal one?
if a person is killed and then their body is revived somehow, with all organs returned to functionality, are they the same consciousness? is that even a coherent question? is our self-awareness a limiting factor that makes us think of consciousness as a discrete individual thing when in fact it is not?
consider this: consciousness has no individuality. it is almost a kind of substance, the substance of self awareness. identity is, materially, an illusion; the only real thing that makes you you instead of someone else is that your substance-of-awareness is physically separated from other such substance. The identity you possess is simply the brain state of which your consciousness is aware, and through which your consciousness is projected. Substance isn't the best word; it doesn't seem to have material existence. Thus, your idea of "you" is illusory anyways. This runs pretty much exactly counter to the cogito, but it (or something like it) seems like the only way to materially reconcile it.
I'm not arguing definitions, I'm arguing practicality. If you are "killed" by having your molecules ripped apart, but then are put together in the exact same configuration as you were when you "died", the practical effect on consciousness is that you simply have been instantaneously moved. It also makes perfect sense if you define consciousness by a brain state interacting with outside stimuli. Do you have a different definition of consciousness?
You're not really addressing the problems we're discussing, though.
What is the difference between taking the particles that previously constituted you and reassembling them, and taking any particles of the same kind and assembling them into the exact same configuration? Would your consciousness persist, or would a new, separate consciousness with the same personality, memories etc be created?
If your consciousness does persist, then any particles in the right configuration would reconstruct your consciousness. But then what happens if you're replicated, instead of just being killed then reassembled? The replica can't have the same consciousness as the original, because they are separate individuals.
If your consciousness does not persist, this suggests that an individual consciousness is tied to particular particles, even though a given particle is physically identical to any other particle of the same type. This seems nonsensical, as there seems to be no way a particle can possess or project this property, or retain it outside of a larger structure.
The problem here is that both answers have nonsensical implications.
If time is infinite, then it's impossible that it be anything other than analog. However, time being infinite is debatable itself, so... I guess you have a point.
Unsupported. Infinite discrete sets are entirely plausible.
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So particles have identity, and particular identity is attached to the generation of consciousness? If you swapped out some particles from the brain for other particles, the original person is no longer alive? What if you did the whole brain, or most of it, or part of it, or just a few particles? A carbon particle has properties beyond simply being a carbon particle by virtue of being part of my brain?
I hope Yar's being sarcastic, because the particles of your body are being swapped out for different but virtually identical particles all the time.
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
We replace cells all the time. It's the structure that matters.
[EDIT] Damn, I lost the race because I wanted to know whether the rumor that every atom in your body gets replaced in x years is really true. A thread on Snopes says no, by the way.
The person we were the instant before we go brain dead ceases to exist, and there is no new configuration to replace them. There's just dying neurons and breaking connections.
In all seriousness, though, the mind and body are unified. One doesn't exist without the other. To say that upon disassembly "you" cease to exist is technically accurate, but then when they put your body back together at the other end, the same cells and processes that created your conscious self before create the same self again. The idea that I have a consciousness that is dependent on anything other than a bunch of neurons firing is ludicrous. When they get put back together at the other side, "I" come back, with all the same memories and tendencies and agency I had before.
And as for the second Riker, I thought that was an error that caused the waveform to be duplicated and redirected. It's just an energy signal they route through the ship's systems so it can be directed anywhere, why couldn't it be recorded?
I believe this is how replicators work.
Subjectively, how do you reckon that is experienced?
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
Though this discussion is of course moot if the teleporter doesn't scramble your atoms at all, but rather tears a hole in space, like the kind that makes Sam Neill gouge his eyes out.
Fade to white?
Death? Having not died before, I wouldn't know.
Okay, so in the example I gave, of the cells and molecules of my brain being rearranged by Star Trek technology to match Evil_Multifarious's - thereby replacing my experiences and memories with his - is there any reason to suspect that I experience a "fade to white?"
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
This is why we should rely on tesseracts. Just pass a fifth-dimensional object through our four-dimensional space, grab on to it, then pass it through the universe in such a way that when you intercept four-dimensional space again you do so at your desired location and then you just get off.
that is my favourite theory of teleportation and space travel, honestly. partially because academic mathematicians become your navigators.
Or big fat hallucinogen-munching genetically-altered humans in vats.
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
By the way, this is a really long post that just rehashes points I made before, so I can understand if you skip it.
You wait an hour and then you activate the deathray that vaporizes the original test subject. There is steam before the room cools down and the elements of the human body condense on the cold walls and trickle down into puddles on the floor. A cleaning crew enters and hoses down the walls. The corpse, if you can call it that, runs down the drain.
The question is, did the test subject just teleport to the other side of the Earth?
What if you waited about ten minutes, instead of an hour, before you vaporized the original test-subject? Would that make a difference? What about five minutes? Or two? What if you didn't wait at all and the original is vaporized at the exact same moment that his copy is created? Does the time interval before vaporization (or lack of it) matter?
Satisfied with the results, you continue to the next stage of testing. Again, the test-subject stands in an empty room. The machine engages and there is a bright light. Only this time, no copy appears in another room. The scanner merely did its job and stored the template in a data-haven somewhere off the coast Africa. You hit another switch and the test-subject dies in a burst of fire.
In Bangladesh, someone downloads the latest template and uses it to recreate the test-subject. The question becomes, has the test-subject just been resurrected? And by virtue of the location change, has he been teleported?
In a last experiment, you do exactly what you did last time, only now you ask the cleaning crew to plug the drain and scoop the left-over liquids from the vaporization into a barrel. This barrel you fed-ex to France, where another scientist plugs it into the end-machine, which then uses the barrel-contents as raw resources for the template.
The question is, does it make a difference that the latest copy uses the same atoms as the original test-subject? Where do you draw the line between murder and successful teleportation?
!Volunteer
the spice must flow
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
Please, he prefers "Nyarlahotep".
The important question to me seems to be at what point is the difference of any meaning to us.
I could write 50,000 words on this, but instead all just piss of EM and MrMonroe by saying that this is just another matter of objective truth vs. practical/useful truth.
In Feral's hypothetical, of him being molecularly transformed into a being with the exact same physiology and memories as EM, I have a counter-hypothesis: what if there was no template used, but rather the machine was smart enough to just make a random (but viable) human out of you with all new physiology, DNA, and memories? Objectively, you are still you, inasmuch as objectively we can even say there is a you. You went through an experience that changed you a whole lot. Completely changed you, practically speaking. We don't need science fiction for this; just imagine someone with amnesia, or who built their life anew after a traumatic event (or both!). To them we often even claim "he's not the same person he used to be." We know that on some level they really are the same person, but practically speaking they aren't. Feral's hypothetical significantly broadens the gap between "really" and "practically" there, but that's all it does. It's still Feral really, but in all practicality it walks and quacks like an EM. It's DNA is EM's, photo ID, he can present himself as EM to anyone who knows EM, if they were children he would likely need to be taken from Feral's parents and placed into care with EM's parents, because else would be traumatic for the child. For most or perhaps all purposes, he'd have to be EM, and so he'd be EM (and thus not Feral), despite the fact that he is still really Feral who underwent some seriously thorough life-changing experiences.
Assuming the original EM is still around, or presuming my counter-hypothesis, we have varying degrees of how practicality would view who Feral is now on a practical level.
Now, I won't pretend to have the answer to consciousness, but my gut tells me that there is an important aspect to it that exist at the "really" level as opposed to the "practical" level. For the most part I believe it to be a matter of brain processes, which in our hypothietical are being reproduced to an effective clone. However, other elements have been brought here, regarding moments in time and continuity, and I think at that level you do in fact destroy a significant part of consciousness when you break it down and rebuild it with new matter.
Okay, so you're basically saying... there is personal continuity between Old Feral and New Feral, right?
What if I died, and then the Star Trek supercomputer used my corpse to make a randomized New Feral with different memories and personality? Would there be personal continuity then?
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pdxucpPq6Lc
The harder the rain, honey, the sweeter the sun.
Somehow, you made me think of this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hvUsdmqGYV8
And you only pissed me off with that objective truth vs. useful truth stuff when you implied that if something wasn't useful to us it could not be true in any sense, which is just dumb.
Also, Madeline L'Engle always confused me with that terminology. Why would you name a five-dimensional object useful for time and space travel after an actual four-dimensional object?
Edit: also you are playing a little loose with the definition of "person" there, and we shouldn't look to Law in an inquiry about what the self is. Just because a person with amnesia can still use their old ID doesn't mean they have the same "self."
I think she meant that the tesseract was a 4-dimensional projection of a 5-dimensional hypercube.
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
I'm not arguing definitions, I'm arguing practicality. If you are "killed" by having your molecules ripped apart, but then are put together in the exact same configuration as you were when you "died", the practical effect on consciousness is that you simply have been instantaneously moved. It also makes perfect sense if you define consciousness by a brain state interacting with outside stimuli. Do you have a different definition of consciousness?
Aren't you technically dead while they're gearing up the defibrillator?
Go go gadget wikipedia!
And good lord Dan, that better of been intentional.
That would have given me so many nightmares if I'd seen it as a child.
I know, isn't it great?
The harder the rain, honey, the sweeter the sun.
Then where do cryogenics come into play?
Essentially this comes down to whether you accept some kind of dualist view of the mind. If you think that consciousness exists purely as a result of the physical processes of the brain, then you have to accept that to say that someone's "self" of conscious mind would restart, exactly the same way it was when it left.
If you don't accept that, and you think that your conscious mind is somehow not entirely dependent on the structure of the brain (and the rest of the body), then it makes sense that it would "end" upon disassembly and then a "new" consciousness would begin upon reassembly.
Jeez, this conversation warrants the use of way too many quotation marks.
Suspended animation. It keeps your brain from completely dying by freezing it, now the main question in that is: will thawing you out kill you?
If there's some way to keep the ice crystals from destroying your insides and repairing any damage you will go on living, if not you die.
So inactive =/= dead, then?
That video is fucked up.
When you copy, you make a new person. This person will have different experiences and will therefore be a different individual. Yes, a lot more similar than identical twins, but still different.
You're not really addressing the problems we're discussing, though.
What is the difference between taking the particles that previously constituted you and reassembling them, and taking any particles of the same kind and assembling them into the exact same configuration? Would your consciousness persist, or would a new, separate consciousness with the same personality, memories etc be created?
If your consciousness does persist, then any particles in the right configuration would reconstruct your consciousness. But then what happens if you're replicated, instead of just being killed then reassembled? The replica can't have the same consciousness as the original, because they are separate individuals.
If your consciousness does not persist, this suggests that an individual consciousness is tied to particular particles, even though a given particle is physically identical to any other particle of the same type. This seems nonsensical, as there seems to be no way a particle can possess or project this property, or retain it outside of a larger structure.
The problem here is that both answers have nonsensical implications.
Haha, I accidentally watched that video twice at the same time, one about one second further then the other.
That was fucked up.
Unsupported. Infinite discrete sets are entirely plausible.
QEDMF xbl: PantsB G+