The Teleportation Problem - Self, Consciousness, Duplicates and Death

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Debate & Discussion > The Teleportation Problem - Self, Consciousness, Duplicates and Death

Kilroy: Oct 1, 2000

What if you're frozen in liquid nitrogen and resurrected 500 years later? Assume the freezing process went flawlessly and all your memories and behavior / personality were preserved. Are you 'you'? Is this equivalent to teleportation as described in the OP?

correct answers are 'Yes' and 'No', by the way

# ¿ Apr 6, 2016 04:02

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# ¿ Apr 27, 2024 13:01

Kilroy: Oct 1, 2000

roymorrison posted:

I think consciousness is just an evolutionary trick our brain plays on itself so we don't realize we're just a computer stuck in a physics problem

Even if we were, you'd still be dead. Regardless of whether we live in a simulation or not, at the most fundamental level you are still a mathematical object, configured according to the laws of quantum mechanics. Destroying that configuration, or more accurately changing that configuration such that your agency doesn't seem to exist anymore, and moving stuff around somewhere else to create a new configuration somewhere else, which agent really behaves an awful lot like the one just destroyed, still kills the first agent. You're still dead, even in the computer. Naively, the 'new you' will probably 'feel' like you, will have all your memories and personality, and probably won't be able to tell the difference, and probably no one else will either. The new you should certainly be afforded all the human rights you had, being a human after all. That's all well and good, but you're still dead.

# ¿ Apr 6, 2016 16:37

Kilroy: Oct 1, 2000

Nevvy Z posted:

Then the question becomes a "What is 'you'?"

Well, not for me anyway since I answered that in the second sentence of the post you quoted.

# ¿ Apr 6, 2016 16:55

Kilroy: Oct 1, 2000

vintagepurple posted:

I was thinking about this in the shower.

Say I'm a euthanasia doctor. I'll help anyone, not just the terminally-ill, no questions asked. Angsty teen got dumped? I'll drive over to their neigbourhood, and, with absolute discretion, painlessly and instantly kill them.

But there's a twist. I have in my possession the technology to create a perfect copy of the person to be killed. Before administering death, if the patient desires, I can copy them and send the copy about its day, again with absolute discretion- the copy will be so perfect that no one, including the copy itself, will ever suspect that this occurred. The copy will possess all memories exactly as the patient does, except instead of contacting me, it will remember a brief but benign crisis after which it ceased feeling suicidal and went home. This way, the suicidal patient can end their life without suffering and, as a bonus, avoid bereaving their loved ones or leaving works unfinished.

If a person would, given the option, take my copy-euthanasia services, is that person suicidal? Would you recommend they seek mental treatment rather than going through with it? If yes, in what way is teleportation in this manner not merely assisted suicide?

The easy way to weasel out of this is to insist it's not the same person, not because you killed the first person, but because you mucked around with a few synapses and altered some brain chemistry on the second. Anyway, yes of course that person is suicidal.

But, are they still suicidal if they request, instead of killing them, an operation to put their brain in the state that their doppelganger would have been in?

# ¿ Apr 6, 2016 17:13

Kilroy: Oct 1, 2000

GlyphGryph posted:

Are we the game cd, or the piece of software on the game cd? The physical arrangement of atoms or the information that arrangement contains?

The information on the CD is only information to the extent that it can be interpreted by something else. If you copy the CD and then play the game on another (also identical) computer then you're pretty much doing the same thing on both, but you've still got two things. Anyway I don't find the analogy very helpful.

I think the problem people have (including me) with the teleportation experiment as described in the OP is that it really does seem to involve a death, even if that death "doesn't matter" because another person exactly like you reappears somewhere else at the same time. The question seems to have a lot in common with philosophical questions on the consequences if QM Many-Worlds is true. Take quantum immortality: if Many-Worlds were true then I should be able to rig up an experiment wherein based on the spin of an electron or something I die with 50% probability if the spin of the electron is up. The result of that experiment, so the story goes, is that I should always observe the spin to be down, since in the universes where the spin is up I'm dead and can't observe anything. Nevertheless, I'm not very likely to want to do this experiment, broadly for two reasons:

1. I'm pretty sure MW is true, but I'm not willing to stake my life on it.
2. I'm intentionally creating universes where I die, each time I do this experiment. That sort of feels like murder.

To me this is almost identical to the teleporter problem, except we're taking it as a given that (1) above actually really does hold (we know the teleporter will work). So all that's left is objection (2). In the MW thought experiment no one really gives a poo poo about point (2) usually, and in fact it's rare in my experience that anyone brings it up. However the teleportation thought experiment brings it into sharp relief. Whereas in the MW experiment, you are guaranteed to be the "you" that lives, in the teleporter version though, it's more like you're getting a guarantee that you're the "you" that dies.

# ¿ Apr 9, 2016 15:50

Kilroy: Oct 1, 2000

Oh dear clone posted:

To me this experiment is utterly different, and I would absolutely not do it, because I'd be bereaving 50% of my families. But perhaps I am more aware of this because I would see them all, equally, as my family, whereas the transportation-averse might not?

Your last statement doesn't make sense to me. It doesn't have to be one or the other. All you've presented is an additional reason not to do the quantum immortality experiment, which teleportation-averse people could also agree with.

Another thing worth mentioning is that the two experiments can't both work. If MW is true and if it also implies quantum immortality, then a teleporter couldn't kill you. It would break down or something would otherwise happen that prevented you from ever teleporting. So even if they are complementary in a way, they also contradict each other.

# ¿ Apr 9, 2016 17:00

Kilroy: Oct 1, 2000

Oh dear clone posted:

Indeed, which is why I edited my original statement before you answered. I was just a bit amazed that you did not include it in your list, or see that it makes a massive difference.

Nah you're just hung up on going out of your way to point it out at every available opportunity. I can do the same thing: if a loved one were to go through one of these teleporters and emerge apparently unharmed out the other side, I would still mourn their death. Moreover, if I were to go through one of these teleporters, the me that came out the other side would mourn the death of the me that just got evaporated.

Anyway, I said the MW experiment feels like murder and results in death; there no need for me to belabor the point and list all the consequences that entails. It's weird to me that your biggest reason not a kill a person is that you are causing grief to the people close to them, instead of the fact that you're ending a life. I'm not trying to slight you here, either - I honestly can't emulate whatever is going on in your head.

Oh dear clone posted:

No, they don't. An anti-transporter would say I can never observe any worlds where the transporter worked successfully, because I'd be dead, but not that those worlds don't exist; and as far as I'm concerned, in the MW where the transporter worked successfully, I would be somewhere else.

I think it's orthogonal to being anti-teleporter or not, but I get what you're saying. However, you're the one who has basically admitted that the teleporter counts as a death, but that it doesn't matter since your memories live on and your family still gets to have you around. So, in that case it seems you would also have to agree that (assuming QI is a thing, of course) the teleporter will never work for you.

# ¿ Apr 9, 2016 17:41

Kilroy: Oct 1, 2000

I'm curious how you would react, if some family members took you aside and told you on no uncertain terms, that if you were to use the teleporter they would view that as a "true" death and would still mourn your loss, but also promised to treat the new you coming out the other side the same as they treat the current you. Would you still teleport?

# ¿ Apr 9, 2016 17:47

Kilroy: Oct 1, 2000

It's been said a dozen times already, but bears repeating on a new page: the premise is flawed and it is literally physically impossible - as in, prohibited by the laws of physics - to create a clone of yourself to arbitrary precision. You can make another person with all your memories, and they might even think they are you, but they will be distinguishable in principle from the original you.

So, with that in mind, for the most of you who will still insist that classical teleportation is a perfectly great thing and not a theoretical holocaust, what I'm curious to know is, how imprecise can you be when make the copy, and still be "you"? Is it enough to just map out the neurons? What?

# ¿ May 1, 2016 14:23

Kilroy: Oct 1, 2000

Oh dear me posted:

It can't be a physical answer, we don't know enough about the physiological basis of our mental worlds. I would want my memories of things I value, my intelligence, and my moral and political attitudes, to survive. I'd want my remaining family not to notice any changes in memory and attitudes, nor any personality changes they found distressing. But if I could be improved, from my and their point of view, that would be cool.

In your case I'm not sure it matters since you don't seem to even be talking about teleportation anymore, and would be satisfied with a sufficiently advanced hologram.

On the other hand, if most of the pro-teleportation crowd has retreated to "yeah I'd die but who cares" then I think this argument is pretty much over, isn't it? Otherwise, if you can claim that the teleportation isn't a death, and that an imperfect cloning can still create two original "yous" somehow, then it seems you can describe at least in very broad detail at what point the copy would become too imperfect to actually constitute a second original.

# ¿ May 1, 2016 15:20

Kilroy: Oct 1, 2000

Oh dear me posted:

No, it obviously remains exactly where it was, with you continually ignoring the fact that the death of an organism is granted by both sides, while the death of a person is not.

What does this even mean? Are you suggesting the existence of a soul? Are you a dualist? Because otherwise, the death of the organism is the death of the person. Creating a facsimile of the person somewhere else doesn't change that.

Oh dear me posted:

Yes, as I just did: something like a family Turing test.

Say another person studies you in great detail, to the point that they actually look at a scan of your brain to figure out what your memories are, and then memorize those memories. They get cosmetic surgery to look like you, and it is so convincing that no human could tell the two of you apart. Then one morning you accidentally fall into a volcano and this other person begins to impersonate you. No one ever finds out about the switch.

Did you really die?

Kilroy fucked around with this message at 22:04 on May 1, 2016

# ¿ May 1, 2016 21:55

Kilroy: Oct 1, 2000

crowoutofcontext posted:

As long as every neural pathway is exactly the same and functions the same way I don't see why it wouldn't be me.

We've already established that "exactly the same" can't be accomplished via classical means. Do you just mean that, if you were to map out the neurons, connection by connection, that that would be the same?

# ¿ May 1, 2016 21:58

Kilroy: Oct 1, 2000

Oh dear me posted:

Certainly at the moment the death of an organism is the death of the person, because we have no replicas. In teleporter world, it will not be. This is the point under dispute and using italics doesn't change that. If there were some process by which one person could transform their own mental world (memories, attitudes etc) into someone else's, I think it would be reasonable to say that they became that person, and ceased to be the person they were. But memorizing facts about memories is not the same as having those memories, so no, your impersonator is not me.

But, the impersonator would pass your family turing test. So, somewhere between this impersonator and the impossible-in-principle "perfect copy", there is a copy of you with enough fidelity that you consider it "you" and are not distressed anymore if you die and are replaced by it. Can you elaborate what additional tests this higher-fidelity version of you would need to pass, for you to consider it good enough to start using the teleporter?

# ¿ May 2, 2016 00:24

Kilroy: Oct 1, 2000

Oh dear me posted:

if a teleporter assembled an organism, giving it a structure almost identical to mine, and tada! that organism seemed just like me, the most plausible explanation would be that it is just like me - not that it's some fiendishly clever impersonator.

Forget the demon / actor, then. Suppose a sufficiently powerful intelligent entity took a static scan of your brain, and projected a very convincing hologram of you into the world. All actions taken by this hologram are performed by the intelligent being after performing a lookup against the backup it has of your brain. In a sense, I suppose you might even say it's you doing the stuff, although the computational process the entity performs to figure out what you will do, need not match what your brain would have done.

The point I'm getting at, is that now that we have finally agreed on a thing that isn't you, I want you to walk back from that description to the thing that is you, and tell me what the difference is.

# ¿ May 2, 2016 01:26

Kilroy: Oct 1, 2000

OwlFancier posted:

If you build a human that thinks like me, talks like me, looks like me, and feels like me, you have built me. If you build a human that can convincingly act like me but thinks and feels differently, you haven't built me.

If we can't make the copy with perfect fidelity, what is the minimum level of accuracy required for the copy to still be you? What are the consequences of not meeting the standard? Is there any benefit to achieving a better copy anyway? I mean, say that mapping the neurons is sufficient. Is there any reason then to prefer also cataloguing the levels of different neurotransmitters in each neuron, if we know we're going to get you back either way?

# ¿ May 2, 2016 03:29

Kilroy: Oct 1, 2000

crowoutofcontext posted:

I'm defined by my limitations as much as my capabilities. The entity you describe wouldn't be me because he could theoretically make decisions I would never make for reasons I would never conceptualize. A clone doesn't have that ability. A clone and I have the exact same capabilities and the exact same limitations.

The entity is just taking your static brain scan and inferring what you would do from it. You might consider it a form of mind uploading, if you want. It's never going to decide to do something else, and in fact might not be capable of doing that or even wanting to do it. It's simply a scan of your brain and a table of every input to and output from the brain since the scan, and a diff of the change in your brain after each step (for computing later brain states). Is it you?

Kilroy fucked around with this message at 03:38 on May 2, 2016

# ¿ May 2, 2016 03:36

Kilroy: Oct 1, 2000

Phyzzle posted:

I believe the answer is, "yes, you did die, but it's not permadeath. You could be resurrected later by using the stored information to recreate all of the processes that constituted your mind and memories."

I assume you would call that a death followed by a possible eventual cloning. Would you say that suspended animation is a form of death?

I think anything where you could in principle be cloned instead of teleported, is a death. So anything that writes you out as a string of bits then destroys your body is a death. Entangling your body with some distant matter and then doing the teleportation that way (i.e. quantum teleportation) is not a death since it's impossible to clone someone that way, though I'm not certain what resolution would be required for the teleport to succeed... maybe getting the valance configuration of every atom is good enough? But that's a matter of implementation.

So, suspended animation is not a death.

# ¿ May 2, 2016 06:32

Kilroy: Oct 1, 2000

Phyzzle posted:

But suspended animation does write out a great portion of you as bits. The velocities of the particles must be recorded, stored, and put back in. Otherwise, how do the atoms in your heart 'know' if they are in mid-contraction or mid-filling? A lot of states and conditions in the human body can't be summed up by matter positions alone. I assume most velocity configurations would just result in a corpse.

Ah sorry, I didn't read your linked post carefully enough. I was referring to cryogenic freezing.

e: However, I don't see why suspended animation as you've defined it wouldn't also qualify (though, as you mentioned, it is physical nonsense). Cloning is ruled out by it, after all.

Kilroy fucked around with this message at 16:10 on May 2, 2016

# ¿ May 2, 2016 15:57

Kilroy: Oct 1, 2000

Oh dear me posted:

But this does not mean that all my processes would have to be preserved identically. If I could have an illness cured or a missing limb restored while teleporting, that would be cool. If my mental world were truly recreated in a completely different physical substrate, that would be good too, but the problem of how we could tell would become pressing.

So a static brain scan, followed by a table of subsequent inputs and outputs, and a diff of your brain state after each transaction. Good enough?

# ¿ May 2, 2016 16:07

Kilroy: Oct 1, 2000

Oh dear me posted:

Edit: Oops, I see you were addressing the 'test' part, rather than what I want to survive. I don't know whether such a test would be good enough, I'm not hugely interested in the epistemological side.

Actually I wasn't. The original brain scan accompanied by the subsequent series of diffs seems to encapsulate your "mental world", doesn't it?

# ¿ May 2, 2016 16:49

Kilroy: Oct 1, 2000

crowoutofcontext posted:

map is not the territory, like.

You're telling me this?

I'm the one trying to get a sense of why you privilege some representations of you over others. Oh dear me's soup analogy falls flat for me, because it doesn't seem that I'm suggesting a recipe for anything. Sure, if you had just a static table of inputs and outputs and the diffs lying on a HDD somewhere, that would not constitute a dynamic you. But, why wouldn't the process of calculating the input and output, and creating the diff after each step, while you're doing it, capture your "mental world" just as well as anything else?

# ¿ May 3, 2016 00:57

Kilroy: Oct 1, 2000

Oh dear me posted:

Why would it? My mental world isn't a process of calculating the input and output, and creating the diff after each step. (And surely the whole point of a diff is that it's not the full thing.)

Then what is your "mental world"?

And, if the static scan along with the diff after each step isn't the full thing, then what is?

# ¿ May 3, 2016 16:23

Kilroy: Oct 1, 2000

wateroverfire posted:

A teleporter is invented that THROUGH MAGIC (ie: the particulars are not important. This is not an engineering question)

There is no such thing as magic though. The particulars probably are important. If you propose a thought experiment which relies on breaking physics in some way, then it might make for an interesting discussion, but not much more than that. Not for those of us living in reality. You can't make a complete copy of yourself. Full stop. You also can't encode your complete present state on an HDD somewhere, or a sheet of paper, or any string of bits.

I think we agree on this point, or at least we agree that the copy is a new object, and you are dead. We might not agree whether quantum teleportation, which does not (and cannot) create a copy, also kills you. I think it probably doesn't kill you any more than moving around normally does, or for that matting sitting perfectly still would.

# ¿ May 5, 2016 17:31

Kilroy: Oct 1, 2000

GlyphGryph posted:

In what sense is the dead guy me where the clone isnt?

Because the dead you, just before being killed, is distinguishable in principle from the cloned you just after being created at the destination.

Your reasoning relies on the assumption that a thing that has all your memories, and that believes itself to be you, is you. If it wasn't obvious, when I was "rehashing tired unsupported assertions", I was trying to define different creatures that would meet that criteria, but which the so-called "pro-teleportation" crowd could agree is not the same thing that went in the teleporter.

# ¿ May 5, 2016 18:21

Kilroy: Oct 1, 2000

Phyzzle posted:

And cloning isn't ruled out by suspended animation; you can do both. Surely you don't mean, "anything where you could in principle be cloned instead of teleported, is a death." Did you mean, "any means of continued life which is in principle equivalent to a cloning is a death"?

Actually I just meant that suspended animation and cloning have nothing to do with each other, and so suspended animation wouldn't kill you, or at least it wouldn't kill you for the same reason that cloning you somewhere else and then vaporizing you would.

Phyzzle posted:

Qualify as what? As not a death? So the process of life can stop and go, but the person is the same as long as the matter is the same? But that does raise difficulties with the amount of matter that constantly goes into and out of our bodies. Perhaps having your matter swapped out is death, unless it's done 'slowly enough'. But what on earth could 'slowly enough' be?

To get back to teleportation first:

If I understand correctly, with quantum teleportation there is no point where your body could be said to be gone. There is no vaporizing you or whatever like with classical teleportation. You are entangled with some matter somewhere else (and with pretty much nothing else in the universe) and then decohered at the destination once the instructions for how to do it are received at the target site. Contrast this with classical teleportation where you are vaporized and written out as a sequence of bits: even in the case where you're vaporized before "arriving" at the destination, and so there are never two of you, you're still written out as a sequence of bits while being "transported", and I don't think you can justify calling a sequence of bits a person. You can use those bits to make a new person if you want, but it is a new person - the amplitude distribution that was "you" has been scrambled unrecoverably.

So far this is kind of orthogonal to suspended animation and cryostasis, however just as with quantum teleportation, there is no point where your amplitude distribution is scrambled. Instead, it is put into a low-energy state and held there. It may be that this kills you for other reasons, though it is not clear to me what those reasons might be. What does seem clear is that even if suspended animation and cryostatis, and for that matter quantum teleportation, do kill you, they would do so for very different reasons than classical teleportation would.

Kilroy fucked around with this message at 18:23 on May 6, 2016

# ¿ May 6, 2016 18:21

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# ¿ Apr 27, 2024 13:01

Kilroy: Oct 1, 2000

You wouldn't even have to be in a coma, you could just be rewired such that you're convinced you're OwlFancier. It's a very poor metric.

# ¿ May 7, 2016 16:15

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