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Ah, the teleportation problem. Is there any more entertaining philosophical topic to argue about? Even though it's probably been discussed to death on the forums already, it always seems capable of drawing in new people. For those unfamiliar, the basic example asks that you imagine a machine. This machine works in much the same manner as the "teleporters" from Star Trek. To achieve rapid transit, it breaks you down atom by atom, and then reassembles you somewhere else in space. Ah, but this and it's many variants bring up some interesting considerations. Sister Miriam Godwinson, "We Must Dissent" posted:"And what of the immortal soul in such transactions? Can this machine transmit and reattach it as well? Or is it lost forever, leaving a soulless body to wander the world in despair?" Even if you're not worrying about immortal souls, people have similar concerns for consciousness and identity, and slight tweaks of the problem can make things interesting - what if the machine rebuilds you at the other end using local materials, and your details are only transmitted as data? What if the first part, where it breaks you down atom by atom, isn't actually required? What if it happens after you're re-assembled on the other side? Are you still you on the other end? Are there now two of you, or an original and a duplicate? It's a question many people have asked, including in some neat little cartoons! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pdxucpPq6Lc It's also been touched on in popular media like in the movie The Prestige. One of the most interesting things about this problem in philosophy is just how far back it goes, and I think some of the original questions asked are relevant to consideration of the most recent scenarios. The Ship of Theseus is relevant, for example, and also the following from 1775: Thomas Reid letter to Lord Kames posted:I would be glad to know your Lordship's opinion whether when my brain has lost its original structure, and when some hundred years after the same materials are fabricated so curiously as to become an intelligent being, whether, I say that being will be me; or, if, two or three such beings should be formed out of my brain; whether they will all be me, and consequently one and the same intelligent being. So we'll start with the normal introductory question to get things rolling: If you had the opportunity to use a teleportation device that worked through destroying you and then reassembling you elsewhere, would you do it? GlyphGryph fucked around with this message at 01:35 on Apr 6, 2016 |
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Apr 5, 2016 15:20
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Talmonis posted:What happens when the system malfunctions, and you're not only created on the other side, but the original is not destroyed? Who's the real "you" then? The original? If so, what of the new "you?" Does it have any rights? The best possible outcome - I get to be two people. I would hope to hell I'd still get to have rights despite there being two of me, that would be pretty hosed up otherwise. WampaLord posted:What a goony loving answer. "What matters if I cease to be?" Uh, you're dead, idiot. Yeah, we all are sooner rather than later though, If you consider death to be a discontinuation in consciousness, hell, I arguably die every single night and am born anew every morning. That doesn't seem to be that big a deal. Deaths that we (or at least someone very much like us) get to live through really aren't so bad. GlyphGryph fucked around with this message at 18:57 on Apr 5, 2016 |
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Apr 5, 2016 18:54
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WampaLord posted:No, this is a really dumb argument because when you go to sleep you aren't broken apart molecule by molecule like you would be in the hypothetical transporter. So? Is this like when people want to be buried rather than cremated because of some weird attachment to their atoms? My consciousness is systemic, not atomic, which is a good things considering that many of those atoms end up getting replaced sooner or later. Braindead doesn't seem any better than atomized dead to me, assuming I recover completely from both of them. quote:And it's that "or at least someone very much like us" part that concerns me. If I can guarantee that my consciousness lives on through the transporter, then no worries, but from the way you've described it, I will die. The duplicate is me for every value of "me" that actually matters (to me). The you that's going to respond to this post is different from the you that originally posted in the thread in ways that do not, presumably, matter to you. If your important attribute here is "continuation of conscienceness", do you have a similar objection to the knockout gas you get at the hospital? Because in terms of consciousness continuity, it doesn't really leave you with any.
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Apr 5, 2016 19:11
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Paradoxish posted:I still don't think this is that big of a problem, though. How perfect is the technology? Is it guaranteed to create a perfect copy of me at the destination end? Will my brain be in the exact state it was at the source end? As long as that's the case and there's no discontinuity before the source copy gets vaporized then I don't have an issue with it. The problem is that if the source "me" lives for even the tiniest fraction of a second after the copy is made, then I'd consider that "me" to be a unique individual that's about to get murdered. Interesting. Would you consider the MiB style "erase the last 10 minutes" mind wipers to effectively be murder, for killing the individual you were and replacing it with someone from the past?
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Apr 5, 2016 19:20
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WampaLord posted:So? That a large difference. When I go to sleep, my last thoughts are "Well, time for bed." When I'm transported my last (and final) thoughts are "Oh my God, I'm being ripped apart atom by atom." quote:You're consciousness would die and cease to be, there would just be a brand new clone of you with their own consciousness in your place. Just like when you take knockout drugs, which you've already said you're fine with.
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Apr 5, 2016 19:27
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Talmonis posted:Their experiences are false. They're just a copy of the original that felt, touched, saw, heard and smelled their entire life. The events in the beings life didn't happen to that body, they happened to the original...which is dead. If instead of a teleporter, I... uh... budded?... another me, froze it, and shipped it off, would that one count as me when it woke up? Not generally a concern for most humans, I admit, but it's the sort of thing that isn't exactly uncommon in nature.
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Apr 5, 2016 19:32
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Who What Now posted:You wouldn't get to be two people, though, you'd still only ever be you. Its just that now there's a separate person who happens to share an identical set of memories up until the point of replication with you. I think it's pretty inarguable that I (and all "I"s up to the point of divergence) would get to be two people, but maybe they would not get to be each other. I'd argue otherwise, though. I honestly think I may have a weaker concept of self-identity than most people in this thread. For example, I think think there's some of me in my son, and some of him in me. But he's less me than not-me, and thus a different person. When he was in my wife's womb, not yet formed into a being with it's own experiences, he was more her than himself. In the other direction, the person I was at his age could hardly be said to be me since, much like my son, the things that make us different are greater than the things that we share seem to outnumber the things that we don't. You might argue that I am my younger self by virtue of continuity, but if so then my son, descended as he is from the same systems, must be that person as well. I don't think that argument holds together, so there must be more and continuity itself hardly seems required. But to another extent, the person I consider "me" includes my son. I would give my life to preserve his, and I'd be hard pressed to consider the act one of selfless morality. Rather, I consider myself to be a component, an organ, of a greater whole, a larger me, which includes my younger self and my ancestors, and of which he (with his potential future laid out before him and how brightly it's possibilities shine compared to my own) is a far more valuable piece. If a blade was coming at my head and my hand reached out to stop it, would we commend my hand for it's sacrifice in catching the blade? Hardly, because we understand that while it may be "my hand", it's own thing, that identity is less important than it's identity as a piece of the greater me (for a whole bunch of reasons). So we come to my more similar descendants, my clones. After that point of divergence, whichever copy was asked the question would consider themselves to be the same person. Two minds, two bodies, but one larger organism composed of two independent parts, the same way I am one organism composes of a great many individual parts. If one of them were to die, then half of me would die with them. So long as I continue in the other, I'd consider that fair. I'd be less for it, but no less than I am now. By what right would you argue that either I would not be me? Would you argue the same of a split brain patient, since one half of their mind can think thoughts the other can not detect? I'd say there would be a better case for that lack of identity than my own in this hypothetical, for I can communicate more easily with my other half and we both have full access to quite a lot of shared history. Juffo-Wup posted:I have a ship, which is the very same ship that Theseus sailed from Crete. I decide to renovate it by replacing each part, piece by piece, with an indistinguishable piece. As I'm doing this, a thief is stealing the discarded pieces and putting them back together into a ship indistinguishable from mine. Which ship is now the very same ship Theseus sailed from Crete? I am glad you pointed out his hidden premise, because it seems to be at the crux of the argument - what should we use to determine identity (esp. in this scenario), and why? You're obviously well versed in philosophy, I'd love to hear your defense of his premises and argument. So, why should we require that continuity (a lack of gappyness) be a necessary aspect of identity? It's clearly not a requirement for many common use cases - most people wouldn't say that a gun that's been disassembled, cleaned, and reassembled is suddenly a different gun. It should be painfully obvious that the very concept of "identity" (Is this person me? Is this ship the same ship?) does not describe anything close to an innate property of an object (though it may rely on such properties). It is a categorical question, and like most categorical questions there are a great many suitable answers, the definitions we use will ultimately be artificial, and we will often adopt them based not on any great underlying consistency but rather on their utility of purpose or as an expression of our own underlying values. What conditions lead you to accept the premises of identity laid out by Hobbes (at least should you choose to accept them for the purposes of this argument), and why should we do the same? (As far as your earlier question, I'll withdraw the comment, since as tangents go it's not going to be conducive to discussion) GlyphGryph fucked around with this message at 02:53 on Apr 6, 2016 |
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Apr 6, 2016 02:35
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Juffo-Wup posted:Hobbes rejects the notion that an object can have temporally discontinuous parts at least partly on the basis of an analogy to spatial discontinuity: that there is an object constituted by the Eiffel tower, my left thumb, and the Andromeda galaxy is something that we intuitively don't want to grant, plausibly because we think an object has to be spatially continuous. Juffo-Wup posted:I'm not sure what Hobbes would say about the reassembled gun, but he actually struggled with a much worse problem because the temporal continuity requirement seems to imply that a thing cannot cease to exist for a time and then come back into existence, but on some interpretations that's what the Resurrection was. The gun problem seems less fraught; he'd probably happily say that the reassembled gun was not identical to the original. Interesting. quote:As for a definition of identity, the assumption I've been working under is that identity is the relation that holds between a thing and itself. Batman and Bruce Wayne, Hesperus and Phosphorus, etc. Edit: if your don't like this, Parfit and a few others (Lewis, I think?) redefine the problem as being about 'survival' rather than identity. I've added Parfit to my reading list, anyway. Any piece in particular? quote:I don't necessarily endorse Hobbes' argument myself. I'm not personally convinced that there is anything in the world that answers to the name 'self,' in which case they're certainly not persisting through time. I think the closest we'll get is either something like what rudatron was saying, basically 'whatever cognitive science determined is the physical/functional correlate of consciousness' or something like Dan Dennett's 'center of narrative gravity.' The paper describing the latter should be easy to find online if you search for that phrase. rudatron posted:The fact that you may be inclined to protect your son/family doesn't mean you're the same person, or part of the same 'self', or that you're part of an 'organism', or that being part of the same 'organism' necessitates a shared self. The idea that I would need to be able to "experience something directly" in order for to have a shared self seems pretty at odds with what most people would normally consider parts of my self. GlyphGryph fucked around with this message at 03:46 on Apr 6, 2016 |
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Apr 6, 2016 03:42
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Who What Now posted:And the short response to this is that I don't think the definition of "me" that you laid out is the least bit useful for this type of discussion. I'll respond to the rest tomorrow (especially since drawn to it's logical conclusion your arguments would lead me to assume that no "self" exists), but it's probably worth keeping in mind that I would probably think similar of whatever definition of "me" you'd lay out, based on what you've said so far, probably good to remember that pretty much every argument in this thread is going to come down to a difference of definition, of what people consider to the central, important, overriding components of their "self".
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Apr 6, 2016 03:51
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ChairMaster posted:people don't seem to acknowledge the fact that the original still exists and you haven't gone anywhere or done anything meaningful, you just made a copy of yourself. This is pretty a pretty stupid statement. Peta posted:Biology, physics, etc., resolve this problem, at least the version of it presented by Parfit, before philosophy of self can really even get its hand dirty. The organism on one end is numerically distinct from the organism on the other end. If you're OK with dying and being replaced by a new qualitatively identical organism, then go for it, but you're still dying. Does anyone really argue you don't die? The question is whether the parts of you that you value live. That's why concepts like self and consciousness become relevant, because people find those bits or some particular arrangement of those bits important. You claim that biology resolves this problem, but there are fuzzy boundaries. For the biological end, if you split an animal that can survive being split, and the pieces grow back together, did the organism die? Is the organism dead right now, or did it return to life? This isn't as much of a hypothetical as you'd think, there are plenty of organisms who go through worse all the time. What if you keep the halves seperated, and they replace their lost halves? Did the original organism die? When did it go from being alive to dead? If one of these new 'wholes' was killed, did the organism die at that point? It's pretty inarguable that an] organism died, but is the original organism dead? Considering how biology works, organisms are emergent from collectives of individual cells, and there are a great many organisms that can "survive" spatial separation of those cells for some length of time. Biologists just don't usually think about those unless they need to, because biological identity is driven almost solely by matters of convenience and practicality. They don't resolve this problem because they don't care about this problem. In physics this is especially true, since they have whole classes of identical objects. GlyphGryph fucked around with this message at 14:57 on Apr 6, 2016 |
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Apr 6, 2016 14:53
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Mantis42 posted:Anyone who allows some dumb philosophers talk them into getting vaporized so some clone can live it up on Mars deserves to get blasted. Actually the dumb philosophers are almost trying to talk people out of it, it's the practical folks and businessmen with our best interests in heart that would probably end up pushing the technology.
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Apr 6, 2016 14:58
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vintagepurple posted:The part where you aren't dead. There's another human walking around with your memories and feelings but it isn't you. You're dead. If you're okay with it then are you simply claiming you have no fear of death? You'd die for convenience? Death is going to happen, it is pretty damned inevitable, and that inevitable death is a lot more serious to me than the death you're describing here. What I fear is dying with my life unlived, my potential unreached, my goals unaccomplished, any legacy squashed and my contributions to the future left undone. I fear the impact an untimely death would have on my loved ones and that it could retroactively invalidate much of what I have accomplished through it's repercussions. I fear the pain and confusion and agony many types of death will bring. None of the parts of death I fear occur in this situation. So I guess I could say that no, I do not fear death. I fear a lot of things that are pretty tightly associated with death, especially untimely death, but I'm not afraid of the whole ceasing to be bit. vintagepurple posted:I get that after you're dead you won't be able to care, but you're not dead yet. I assume everyone posting here has some sense of self-preservation and would rather keep living than not, all things considered. rudatron posted:They are part of your body, not self, they're as separate from your experience as a bug on the sidewalk. Treat both of them well, but they're not you. All that matters is that set of interactions. The person I was talking with was making an argument based on the concept of a biological organism, you do realize your statement is actually supporting my point, right? vintagepurple posted:Like put another way, if I design a functional AI that's convinced it's Louis XVI, or hell, scan the guy's skeleton with amazing future technology and clone him memories intact, no matter how convinced that clone is that he is Louis revived, the fact will never change that the man commonly known as Louis XVI died under a guillotine's blade, and the last thing he saw was a crowed cheering his death. If I zap my own brain, delete my memories, and believe myself to be Louis XVI, I'm still not Louis. He's dead and he'll never feel grass under his skin or learn the future fortunes of France. I disagree? I think in that scenario he'll have died, and then you'll have brought him back to life, or at least brought a good chunk of him back enough to life I'd have no problem referring to him as Louis XVI and treating the same way as if he'd gotten to that state through some other weird avenue of partial replacement or whatever-the-gently caress instead. vintagepurple posted: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? If they still want to be alive at the end of it, I'm not sure if suicidal works. I think they should seek mental health treatment either way, since it doesn't sound like they're doing it as a lark (and if they were doing it on a lark, I don't think think it matters). You're right in that it's functionally the same scenario, or at least similar enough that I don't know why my answer would change? Hell, I'd pay quite a bit for some sort of insurance policy that mirrored that, since it would comfortable allow me to take a lot more risks knowing I had a recent brain clone ready to take over should I bite it. Solkanar512 posted:This has a lot of interesting complications, but I think for the sake of brevity you didn't mention the sheer amount of trauma the clone would suffer. Take all the personal connections people make in their lives - parents, siblings, significant others, children and so on. That clone would have a lifetime of memories making those connections only to suddenly be stripped of them. Your clone isn't going to be sleeping with your wife, right? What about the bonding they've done with your children, wouldn't they have a strong argument for at least partial custody? They're the clone's children as much as your own, and they were present in their upbringing exactly as much as you were. How does all that work out? This all seems more practical than philosophical, and I image it would involve agreement among the individual whose been duplicated. Like, it's his wife and children too, after all. I think for practical purposes you'd either want to agree to form one big family (if you're the sort that could live with yourself) or split off one of you at random from those immediate attachments and take a more extended family role - one of you becomes the "Uncle" of the children, the family ends up treating it as if your parents had twins at birth, that sort of thing. Mantis42 posted:Also, since I'm functionally identical to whoever comes out on the other side, and since there's already one of me around, I should legally be allowed to do whatever I want to the other me, right? Like, unless they're handing out birth certificates at the teleportation station, dude's got not citizenship and no human rights. Theoretically I should be able to program a teleporter to not destroy the original while creating many copies, then experimenting on them to see how I would react in given situations. Could I beat a gorilla in a fight? Probably not, but I would be morally justified in killing untold numbers of copies to find out. Well, you'd be justified I guess in committing suicide lots and lots of times, assuming it (and the intentional clonemaking) was actually legal. I'd argue you should probably retain the right to renege on your suicidal plans at any time you choose, though. So you'd probably end up with dozens of copies who all refuse to do whatever stupid things you didn't want to do but thought, for some weird-rear end reason, they (with your exact same mind) would somehow agree to? GlyphGryph fucked around with this message at 18:38 on Apr 6, 2016 |
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Apr 6, 2016 18:27
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rudatron posted:The time difference isn't an issue - if I freeze you with magic for 1000 years, then let you continue, you haven't died, because you still have a continuous self. But any break in a continuous self, for whatever period of time, is automatically death. A frozen you, incapable of thought, incapable of action, incapable of anything, isn't. It's an inert object, not a person. Continuance of consciousness ends the moment the freeze begins. Are you seriously going to argue that someone who has been completely frozen, their life stopped in time, is somehow still conscious? This scenario seems to be way more a death of self than teleportation ever would be. SHISHKABOB posted:The new you is distinguishable by the old you by virtue of the old you being incapable of distinguishing anything. This is always true about all possible old me's under all circumstances though. That's what makes them the old me, the fact that they aren't around anymore and this new me has replaced them. Paradoxish posted:I think you're going to find that this is where the fundamental disagreement really comes from. Yeah, that's kind of an integral part of ceasing to be. I'm not making this decision post-cessation though, so it hardly seems relevant. Things that will not occur until after I cease to be still matter to the me that is right now. quote:More to the point, that's something that I can recognize right now, and it leads me to the conclusion that my subjective experience is in fact what I really value. What? This seems like you want it to follow from your previous argument but I'm not in any way understanding the supposed connection,. You seem to be making the argument that since nothing will matter to a dead you, nothing can matter to currently living you if it takes place after you die, which seems weird and nonsensical to me. GlyphGryph fucked around with this message at 02:16 on Apr 7, 2016 |
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Apr 7, 2016 02:05
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Who What Now posted:Yes, but your clone will immediately have a distinct and unique brain pattern the moment it experiences something different than you do, making it a different person, albeit one that is veeeeeeeery similar to the original you.
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Apr 7, 2016 17:06
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Why does numericality a matter here and not with split organisms
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Apr 7, 2016 17:08
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wateroverfire posted:With split organisms the original is destroyed and two or more new entities are created. None of them has a claim on being the original. you have been completely incapable of saying anything that isnt stupid and internally inconsistant while dismissing people for the things you are doing and they are not so this basically exactly the nonsense position i expected you to take despite it being contrary to the already stated position of the person i actually asked.
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Apr 7, 2016 17:18
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wateroverfire posted:If anything, this thread has highlighted for me how 1) smart people can get hung up on language in uninteresting ways and 2) smart people can reason their way into believing the absolute dumbest things in uninteresting ways. This is basically you describing your own contributions to this thread so far. Who What Now posted:That doesn't make a replica literally the original, it's still a replica. Otherwise you'd be saying that anything mass-produced in a factory is the exact same singular item, rather than distinct individual items that are identical in appearance and construction. This applies for physical objects. But not all objects are physical objects, and I think "persons" would definitely fall in the emergent category. It's more akin to "If I download a copy of a video game on my computer, and my brother does the same, and we play together... are we playing the same game?" Assuming both games are unmodified, would you consider them to be distinct games or identical games? Personally, I'd consider them to be the same game, in much the same way I'd consider an exact duplicate of myself to be the same person. Of course, we're talking about a system that changes itself over time (a game like Dungeon Crawl: Stone Soup is a good real life example of this), so for people it would be more accurate to say they start out as the same game but quickly diverge... at which point yes, we downloaded the same game from the server, both are games are historically descended from the same game, but the games themselves are different. GlyphGryph fucked around with this message at 17:24 on Apr 8, 2016 |
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Apr 8, 2016 17:21
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Is telecloning the correct course of action if our original body is pushed in front of a tram to save the lives of six orphan children?
GlyphGryph fucked around with this message at 17:40 on Apr 8, 2016 |
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Apr 8, 2016 17:36
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I feel like whether do you see people more as physical objects or systems analogs is what the debate ultimately comes down to. 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? Peta, do you see multiple copies of software as distinct pieces of software or different instances of the same software? (Which I guess is asking if you believe the second category even exists whether or not it applies to people)
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Apr 8, 2016 18:03
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Tuxedo Catfish posted:Basically, identity is very similar to magical thinking about cleanliness or hygiene. If I eyedroppered a single drop of urine into a swimming pool in front of you, nobody would want to swim in it -- because everything in that pool "touched urine" and therefore inherited its uncleanliness. Identity works the same way, just in a positive sense; the past me touched the present me, so I inherit that sameness. In a way, the continuity people are using the same argument that homeopaths do - that "history" matters irregardless of an objects actual attributes... Obviously a viewpoint with emotional appeal, but I can't see how the people supporting it can claim themselves to be the "practical" ones.
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Apr 8, 2016 18:24
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Peta posted:Off the top of my head I'd say I see distinct objects containing the same (i.e., qualitatively identical) software. The same goes for humans. But you agree that the software is identical, despite being numerically distinct. So it comes down to you thinking that the stratum the person exists in is integral to that person's identity and other people do not, but you agree that a copy of that person (by the attributes I and other on my side have been using to define "person") is in fact identical. The disagreement has nothing to do with numericality anymore, and is solely contingent on whether we consider the particular physical instance to be an integral part of the definition of person. I would go back to split the organism - you said if it was split, and then re-assembled, it would be the same organism. What if it was split for long enough that physical matter it was made of had largely changed (which can be rather quick in some species) and then re-assembled. Still the same living organism? How important is the phyiscal media to your perception of an organism's identity? quote:My problem with accepting your sister's replica as just another version of your dead sister is that there's a fundamental delusion in the suggestion that the replica actually experienced the things that your dead sister experienced. How is this any more a delusion than thinking your living sister actually experienced the things her past self experienced? The only lasting mark is her memories. Why does she have any better claim to have experienced those things than the clone? Both of them carry the scars of their past equally, but neither are identical in absolute terms to the person that actually had those experiences. quote:Like, if I plant a memory of some experience that I've had in someone else's brain, such that they think that they've had that experience, I'm deceiving them - the fact is that they haven't had that experience. This territory seems ethically and aesthetically troublesome. GlyphGryph fucked around with this message at 18:53 on Apr 8, 2016 |
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Apr 8, 2016 18:48
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SHISHKABOB posted:This thread reminded me of an episode of a tv show I like. The clip is about them replacing themselves in an alternate universe where they die, but then they pretend they are the alternate universe people, and the rest of the show continues without skipping a beat. Though Mr. Poopy Butthole is an enigma. This happens in Eureka as well. A few times. They don't worry about it nearly as much though.
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Apr 8, 2016 19:16
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Tuxedo Catfish posted:Neither of the two common positions taken in this thread are dumb, because both sides rely at least a little bit on speculating about things which, presently and perhaps categorically, cannot be measured. I agree, thinking someone's position is dumb just because it's not yours is pretty silly. GlyphGryph fucked around with this message at 19:27 on Apr 8, 2016 |
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Apr 8, 2016 19:24
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Peta posted:Consciousness shouldn't be the focus of the debate. Yet you feel numericality should be and have still made no attempt to defend it's relevance. Peta posted:Man. This is just not true. You're an individual, not a category. You're a dynamic conglomerate that is different in substantial if subtle ways from the dynamic conglomerate you were yesterday. Kit Walker posted:You sound like a fundamentally damaged person. A popular accusation from those who seem to have a terrible fear of stuff they feel matters but can't explain or demonstrate why when they encounter people who don't think it matters at all. Just to be clear, this reads like someone calling me insane when I suggest that no, they should not run back into the burning house to retrieve their troll doll collection. Clearly they have a value paradigm that puts lots of importance on some really stupid poo poo, but it's going a bit far to claim that "I" am the one that's mentally damaged in this scenario. Meanwhile, from what I can tell, if I put you in a situation where you could teleport out or stay where you were and have a 50% chance of getting burned to death (and a 100% chance of severe injury), you'd still choose to stay in the burning building because of how much you value "continuity". So try to take second to see it from my point of view, where you are someone who would literally choose death over losing something that is from my perspective completely worthless, on par with a troll doll collection, and you respond by calling me fundamentally damaged. I'm certainly not going to call you broken for having some pretty silly sentimental attachment to something, but you're not going to convince me to join you in the burning building to rescue those trolls with the sort of arguments you've made so far. Kit Walker posted:Except you did experience something. A permanent blackout. Your clone, on the other hand, has felt nothing other than perhaps a split second of disorientation. But your molecules have been ripped apart, which would certainly constitute death. That there is another you in your place does nothing to change that. You can not, by definition, experience a permanent blackout. Anyways, this thread has finally gotten far enough that I want to share a comic: It's not the best artwork, or even writing, but it's certainly relevant. I at least found it quite interesting when I first stumbled across it. The Machine GlyphGryph fucked around with this message at 17:32 on Apr 11, 2016 |
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Apr 11, 2016 17:29
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Who What Now posted:So where does this stop? When are you no longer you? If we clone you and the clone goes off to live a vastly differently life than you over the course of 50 years are they still you or they their own distinct person? If they are still "you", do you also consider identical twins to be only one person? The never stop being me (or him). They pretty much immediately stop being each other. We've tread this ground over and over again, it has been explained multiple times. What is it about this explanation that so fundamentally clashes with your understanding of the universe that you can't accept it as a valid way to see the situation, since you clearly can't?
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Apr 11, 2016 17:32
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Who What Now posted:And the explanations continue to be unsatisfactory. If the two instances are not one-another how can you then turn around and say that they are the same person? It's a direct and total contradiction that you need to resolve in order to have a claim of consistency. Okay, so you've completely changed what I said. It's like you've got some sort of mental block that so immediately rejects my explanation that you can't even honestly consider it. Let me try to break it down for you. I am me, at this point in time. We'll call me "me zero". I am now me at a future point in time. We'll call me "me one". "me one" is still "me zero", right? That because they have a shared past, because "me one" picks up where "me zero" leaves off and is the result of "me zero"'s actions and experiences , "me one" is in fact the same person as "me zero", even though there are notable differences in experiences and memories between the two of them. Still with me? Now, we put "me one" in the duplicator, and then move a bit further into the future after the procedure completes. Then we'll have both individuals go stand against the wall. At this point, we have "me two a" and "me two b". "me two a" is the one you would see as the "original", and we would agree that because of his shared past with "me one", they are the same person, despite having differences in both memory and physical location, because those differences over time are dwarfed the the similarities created by their shared past. "me two b" is the one you would see as the duplicate, and is where we begin to diverge, but I'm not trying to change your mind here, only trying to discuss the difference in our views, so try to stay with me. "me two b" is still the same person as "me one" for the same reason "me two a" is - they have a shared past, as represented by their current state. The memories, scars, and every physical sign of past actions is mirrored equally on both of them - both "me two a" and "me two b" have "me one" as a fundamental component of their being. Both of them are (and by are, we really mean were) the same person as "me one" (and "me zero"). However, "me two a" is not "me two b" by the exact same argument. They have most of a shared past (and might thus be mostly the same person), but from the moment of cloning that history diverged. "me one" is an equal subordinate precursor of both current beings, but each being has a distinct past that is not shared by the other, making them individuals who are merely mostly the same. Much in the same way one zygote splitting to create identical twins creates two distinct people with a shared origin (they both came from the same zygote. You agree with that, right?), the duplicator results in two distinct people with the same origin, "me one". Do you get what I'm trying to say? quote:See the part about it being contradictory and inconsistent. What exactly is contradictory and inconsistent about that explanation? The Belgian posted:I clicked random and got this one, which is also relevant: This is great, thank you for that. I read a few others but didn't catch that one. Shbobdb posted:This position is so dumb and naive, I don't even know how to engage it. He's already stated his position on your disagreement in advance: Thinking this makes you dumb and you should kill yourself.
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Apr 11, 2016 17:59
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Peta posted:Nope, that's just a different segment of the spatiotemporal extension of "me zero," or "me zero" at a different location in spacetime. Yeah, and if we treat that spatiotemporal extension as a tree, it's the segment that happens before the tree splits into two numerically distinct branches. Also we only ever have a thin slice of the tree in existence at any one time. So consider those "me numbers" to be different slices if you want, the point is that "slice a" is still part of the same living line as "slice b".
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Apr 11, 2016 18:05
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:More seriously the question I want the answer to is who owns the copyright on the scan data. I think the law is pretty clear on this one, it's the person who made the scan. If that person gets duplicated both resulting people would retain full copyright.
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Apr 11, 2016 18:08
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Peta posted:OK but I'm not a tree, I'm a human. And trees don't actually grow through time either, it's a metaphor. Are you seriously going to try and argue that "me one" and "me zero" are identical despite the obvious differences? Because I'm not sure what your original point is now. Peta posted:Nope, that's just a different segment of the spatiotemporal extension of "me zero," or "me zero" at a different location in spacetime. So? I don't care if you call it a person or a "different segment of the spatiotemporal extension of a person's past", why is that relevant? Kit Walker posted:And you are arguing that it's fine to kill "me two a" because we still have a "me two b." That, in fact, if you were "me two a" you'd so no problem with getting killed. So, are you accepting that they are both "me one", which was the entire point of that digression, or is this just a desperate attempt to change the topic? Also, was my earlier assumption that you'd rather be trapped in a burning building with a 50% chance of death/100% chance of severe injury than use the teleporter correct? GlyphGryph fucked around with this message at 18:15 on Apr 11, 2016 |
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Apr 11, 2016 18:11
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:One major problem with the hypothetical is that it presumes perfect transmission of data. This is not only unrealistic, but I suspect scientifically and perhaps even logically impossible, give entropy, Gödel, etc. I'd argue it doesn't matter all too much because the same is equally true of day to day transmission of consciousness. We don't have perfect memories, we don't carry forward all of our experiences, we lose bits and gain bits. I suspect most pro-teleporter people would think the same way. Ultimately what matters isn't tolerance for degree of loss, to me, but tolerance of kind of loss. Do we lose the bits that are actually important? An scratch on my hand wouldn't worry me identity-wise, but severe brain trauma certainly would.
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Apr 11, 2016 18:18
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Peta posted:Great. The metaphor doesn't work because my four-dimensional existence isn't a matter of metaphor. The physical me that you'd see if we were standing face to face is the four-dimensional version of me. There isn't really any other version. When 4D me steps into the teleporter, 4D me gets nuked and a 4D copy of 4D me, i.e., a separate entity, begins to exist, in space and time, discretely from the freshly terminated original 4D me. If you're seriously arguing that 4D you is you, you shouldn't give a poo poo about the teleporter experiment since you cannot actually be destroyed, you can only change in size. Which is getting into some pretty stupid territory. Also, that's a nice link and all, certainly interesting and I'll enjoy reading it, but can you try to explain why it's relevant and why we should care? Because I'm reading it right now and not finding anything, maybe you could refine my search a bit (or, more likely in my estimate, this is like your numericality argument it isn't relevant and you can't justify it so you're just wasting my time)
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Apr 11, 2016 18:22
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Who What Now posted:I get what you're trying to say, yes, but I believe you to be wrong on the assertion that "me two b" has a shared past with "me one". In this scenario "me two b" (I'm just going to refer to them by their numbers and letters for ease of typing on my phone), 2b has no past prior to being brought into existence using the duplicator. 2b has the same memories as 2a of events prior to the duplication process, of being 1 and 0, but that's not the same as actually sharing a history between them. Okay, I'm fine with you thinking something I've said is wrong. The issue at hand was that you saw the argument is contradictory and inconsistent, not just wrong, and I was trying to demonstrate that not to be the case. Are we back to not agreeing with each other, or do you still assert that point of view I've described doesn't agree with itself? (and if so, where, how, and why?) On to the new arguments: I have trouble buying the idea that 2b has a separate line completely independent from 1. If 1 didn't exist, 2b couldn't exist. Saying they don't have a shared history is a struggle for me to understand considering that everything 2b is depends entirely on 1, and everything of the the shared past 2a has is mirrored in 2b. Who What Now posted:Now, on a practical level there's absolutely no real issue with acting under the assumption that they do. You can be reasonably certain that 2a and 2b would react similarly to most situations, perhaps even identically. It would be right to acknowledge 2b's memories prior to the duplication as real and valid. But, in a purely academic sense 2b is no different than someone who had another person's memories implanted in them artificially except that he is also genetically identical to the person from whom those copied memories came from. I think so. Though I sort of lost you in your implantation tangent. I think if you completely implanted my memories into someone, I think we would share history? I mean, those memories were created ultimately as the result of the same events. Not completely, since our bodies do influence our thoughts quite a bit, and you don't seem to specify if we're wiping their mind first, and memory transfer on this level is really no different than duplicating just the brain anyway so at this point which seems to become a completely different question, but I'd see a duplicated brain transplant and a "my original" brain transplant into the same body as having roughly equal outcomes? Peta posted:Even if that's true, there's some location at which 4D me is no longer a living human being. You've agreed previously that you think individuals can branch into distinct beings though. How does this work with your 4d example?
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Apr 11, 2016 18:32
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Peta posted:Huh? You said if you split an organism it could grow into two distinct beings. How does that work in relation to your "four dimensional monolith" thing you've got going now. It's actually really hard to pin down anything you've said in this thread, because you seem really unwilling to to actually explain your individual points, either posting a link or changing the subject just when it seems like what you're said might end up as relevant, so maybe I'm just confused at this point - I just can't figure out any coherent position you're actually advocating here, it basically seems to be an endless stream of non-sequiters, so if my responses don't feel super relevant it's probably just because I have no idea what you're actually trying to say most of the time. I believe you're being sincere, it's just that it seems like a lot of what you say is incoherent nonsense (even as make statements like "This is why so many scientists laugh at 'philosophy.'" in response to people) which I think was accusing him of... actually, you know what, I don't even know what this statement was supposed to mean either. I literally don't know what you were trying to communicate with that statement.) I don't get you at all, man. GlyphGryph fucked around with this message at 18:50 on Apr 11, 2016 |
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Apr 11, 2016 18:46
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Who What Now posted:I'm willing to admit that having explained your answer more fully it is more consistent, albeit I believe it still has problems. That's fair. quote:Ok, but without your father and mother you wouldn't exist in the same way that 2B wouldn't exist without 1, does this mean that you are also your mother and father? I believe that I was once in my entirety a part of my mothers body, and that at least part of my was once a part of my father's body. I think we have a shared history, for sure, although in the least-distinct case scenario it's a strictly biological one. At some point, well before I became a person, I developed my own mind and our shared histories diverged enough that I became an individual. So... somewhat? I think we definitely have a shared history, but there was a rather obvious period of divergence, and after that divergence most of that history in myself was lost. I didn't really hold on to many (any?) of the important elements that determine identity of persons that she has, so I wouldn't say we were the same person, but we were once the same organism (back before I was a person at all), yes. Does that seem like a flawed way to view the situation? I've said before that shared history isn't enough for same-person-hood, that other attributes matter, and that if I developed some sort of extreme mental disorder I wouldn't be the same person. quote:Does this line of thinking only apply to people, or are you also the bottle of scotch that got your parents drunk to lead them to making you? What's the cutoff for causation in this scenario? I view causal events as separate from (but related indirectly to) what makes a person a unique individual. I'm not really sure what you're trying to say here? I feel like we're back to not understanding each other's positions, though I'll try to answer as best I can. I am not the bottle of scotch for a fuckton of pretty obvious reasons, but if it lead to my concept I would certainly consider it part of my history of being? I probably wouldn't consider it part of my personal history though - I, as a past person, didn't exist when it happened and for a while afterwards. quote:Tangentially related, is it possible for 2B to ever no longer be you? Yes, of course. Although any such transition would probably result in them no longer being 2B either. quote:If 2B loses all his memories prior to the duplication, and so loses the "link" between themselves and 2A, are they still the same person? What if 2B loses all memories, still you? quote:As for the memory transference, let's say it's a wipe (ignoring that this would be murder), and then implantation. So you say this new person is still you, despite having none of the same physical identifiers or genetics. Okay, I'm with you... quote:What happens if some of the host body's memories start to resurface? quote:Is this person now both simultaneously you and the person they were before? How much of their old memories would they need to regain and your memories would they need lose before they are no longer you?
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Apr 11, 2016 19:21
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Peta posted:(1) You are an organism. If I become brain dead, I just plain become dead, whether or not the organism lives. If the organism lives, but my personality, memories, thought processes, beliefs, etc. somehow survive, then the organism dies but the identity (person) I care about lives. Why should I see myself as the organism, when the organism can survive what I would see as my death? It's clear that right now, everything that is me is part of that organism, but... quote:(2) If an organism uses a teleporter, then that organism dies. If that organism uses a teleporter, the organism might die, but you need to explain not whether the organism dies but whether I, the person, die, despite all the attributes that make up "me as a person" continuing to exist in a functionally identical organism in another place. quote:(3) If you use a teleporter, then you die.: Basically, you're "point three" doesn't follow from "point two" because we don't agree on "point 1". Make the case that "I" am identical to "this organism", please. Do you really think that "I" cannot die until this organism does?
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Apr 11, 2016 19:27
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Berk Berkly posted:Its more like if you pause a movie playing on a DVD, take the DVD out, move the DVD to another room, and play it there, resuming from the same spot, yet, you insist that its just not the same movie(but also identical to the original). Basically this. Lot of people here insisting it is literally impossible for me to ever experience the same movie they did. Piell posted:Good news you guys, its not murder if the guy you killed was an identical twin Good news, Piell is repeating his nonsense strawman by mixing up different definitions of identical. Piell posted:So let's say I kidnap Yes, you psychopath. You just didn't murder a zygote like you're trying to prove here, you murdered a one hundred year old torture victim. Peta posted:Haha, yeah, I am one organism but also at the same time I am two different organisms. Now you're getting it! Man I thought you were never going to start making sense. Peta posted:No, it's not. It's like if you pause a movie playing on a DVD, make a copy of the DVD, destroy the first DVD, and then resume on the second DVD. I am not merely the information contained by the first (or second) DVD. I am the first DVD. If I wipe the data off the DVD but still have the physical DVD, would you consider yourself to be the same DVD? What if I copied the data back onto it? Peta posted:OK, please just stop it with the "self at time t1 is different from self at time t2" nonsense. Nobody cares about "self." Science can hardly make sense of "self." The organism at time t1 is the same organism as the organism at time t2. I care about persons. I don't care about organisms. You keep insisting I should care about the second and not the first, but you continue to refuse to tell me why.
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Apr 11, 2016 19:32
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Peta posted:
Peta posted:
You've managed to contradict yourself in the same post, that's a pretty new record. (If a person is a category of organism, how can a person come into being without an organism coming into being? This is exactly the sort of incoherent nonsense that makes you impossible to follow.) ... or do you consider zygotes and the brain dead to be persons, or something equally insane? GlyphGryph fucked around with this message at 19:39 on Apr 11, 2016 |
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Apr 11, 2016 19:37
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Peta posted:You don't care about newborns? Dogs? Dolphins? Elephants? Plant life (real stretch here, folks, I know)? If you don't care about any of these things then your morality is disturbingly impoverished. If you are going to promote a definition of personhood, or of a strain of personhood equivalent to full human personhood, that incorporates any of the things I just listed, then I'm gonna laugh in your face. Yes, persons are more valuable than dogs. But they aren't more valuable because they somehow aren't organisms. They're simply organisms have evolved such that they fall within the innermost circle of our moral community. All of those things have value. None of those things have value based on them being an organism. I did not say I only cared about persons, just that I didn't care about organisms - at least in the way you're implying I should. I obviously very much care about the organism that is currently sustaining my personhood, despite the insistence of the 'shoot yourself in the face' brigade, what with the hole 'sustaining my personhood' thing it's got going on. I don't care about this organism in the situation where it ceases to maintain my personhood (see: brain death). My personhood is the thing that ultimately matters, my "organism" is only important to me as a means to that end. Which brings us right back to the contradiction in your thinking you're attempting to skate by without thinking about, so I'm going to end with just one question at a time and repeat it because the point you're trying to ignore is pretty central to the whole argument: Do you consider a braindead body to be a person, specifically the same person and same organism, as the living, thinking human being it was before the accident?
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Apr 11, 2016 19:50
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Peta posted:Wow. Your brain is really something special. So you are redacting your previous claim. A person is no longer a category of organism. It is no longer identical to the organism. A person is now a "stage in the life" of an organism, something that can come (and presumably go) despite the continued existence of that organism. Is this correct?
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Apr 11, 2016 19:53
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Peta posted:"Squares are not rectangles." "Wars are governments." - You I think I'm just going to ignore you from now on. You clearly want to believe something and are struggling to come up with whatever nonsense rationalizations you can to justify it, and there are plenty of people arguing a similar position in a genuinely coherent way. (Also, I forgot to mention specific organisms that can do the split and recover thing because I assumed the question was satirical and you aren't really that ignorant, but I think the process if fascinating so: Starfish, most plants, sponges, amoebas, funguses, etc. the list is pretty drat long, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fragmentation_(reproduction) for anyone interested) Berk Berkly posted:Alright, so now that we've establish Peta is wasting everyone's time, anyone actually sincerely discussing this topic anymore? I think me and Who What Now are having a good conversation even if it's mostly just him asking me questions. --- Who What Now posted:Somewhat how? The way I'm looking at things you either are or are not you. I don't understand how something can be "somewhat" you. If you can follow the identity of the donut through this scenario, why is it so difficult to grasp in reference to people? quote:It does seem flawed to me, because it seems very imprecise. The fact that those things are imprecise doesn't make statements like "this is a fox" or "this bird descended from a dinosaur" or "this is the edge of a table" or "this is the seam between the two metals" wrong. quote:Are some attributes more important than the others? quote:At least we agree that drastic changes to your thought process produce a different person. quote:You pretty much got it, I think. I was asking that if your history was part of "you" how far back it went and what exactly included, I.E. did it only include people or also things. quote:Would it? Let me clarify/change the situation up a little and say that this loss of memory happens 30 years after duplication. So 2B still has 30 years of memories still, but none prior to his creation, thus losing his memetic connection to 2A. Are they now still the same person, or different people? Has losing memories of so long ago really changed 2B so drastically? quote:Again, as with above, what about only a partial memory loss? How much memory needs to be lost before you are no longer you but a different person? quote:So adding another person's memories results in you no longer being you? Then why doesn't developing differing memories result in you no longer being you? If you wiped a persons memories and personality and had them start over (maybe destroying most of their brain and then regrowing it with stem cells) in a new place with new people, nearly tabula rasa, would they be a new person after a few decades? (Since we agree that drastic changes in thought processes produce a new person, I assume the answer to this one is yes) What if you then managed to restore their previous memories (it turned out you froze the chunks of brain you removed, and you can graft them on! or some other bullshit) on top of the new memories, and reintroduced them to their own family? Are they the person they were originally? The person they were since the wipe? Or some amalgamation of those two people? I'd argue that treating them/thinking of them exclusively as either person at that point wouldn't be quite right, but neither would it be right to think of them as someone entirely different either. GlyphGryph fucked around with this message at 20:45 on Apr 11, 2016 |
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Apr 11, 2016 20:41
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