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Oh dear me posted:If it has been thoroughly tested and proved to create someone with my memories and so like the original that their loved ones cannot tell any difference, yes. What matters about my ceasing to be? The bereavement of my loved ones, the loss of such insight as I have gained over the course of my life, and the loss of opportunities for such a person in the future. None of those things apply if someone else so like me springs into being at the same time. Actually I'm pretty attached to my subjective sense of experience (illusory or not), thanks. The other things don't matter so much to me without that. 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.
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Apr 5, 2016 19:15
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GlyphGryph posted: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? Depends on how they work. It also depends on what consciousness is and what processes in the brain are responsible for it. The problem I have with this as a philosophical question is that I think it butts heads with some questions about the real, physical world and neuroscience in particular. If a mind wiper replaced my brain with a copy of itself from ten minutes ago I might be concerned, yeah. I can't categorically say that anything bad has happened to me, but I wouldn't be comfortable with the idea. If it just cut off some connections or otherwise altered my brain to prevent access to those memories then I probably wouldn't care. Of course, I guess I wouldn't remember to care in either case. To put this another way, if you split me in half right now I'd be fine with acknowledging that both halves have every right to be called "me." The problem is that I don't think that really means anything. The instant you split us, we're unique individuals with unique experiences. I wouldn't be any happier about someone deciding to arbitrarily kill Me #1 (even if I'm Me #2) than I would be about someone arbitrarily deciding to kill some other random guy on the street. Me #1 and Me #2 are both having their own subjective stream of experience and one of them is about to be cut off.
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Apr 5, 2016 19:42
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Reason posted:Even if the you on the other side was an exact copy molecule for molecule it wouldn't be exactly you because it would be made from different molecules. Unless it broke you down, then transported all your original matter to the new destination and re-made you. Both ways though "you" would die and the exact copy no matter how similar would actually be a different person. A molecule of water is a molecule of water. You don't need to transport anything (except data) so long as you can make an identical duplicate in composition and arrangement.
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Apr 6, 2016 02:15
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GlyphGryph posted: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. I think you're going to find that this is where the fundamental disagreement really comes from. Once I cease to be (as in, once my subjective experience of my existence ends), nothing that you've listed will matter to me anymore. In fact, nothing at all will matter to me, and there won't be a "me" anyway. 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. The one exception that I'll grant is the effect my death might have on people I care about, but that's less of an argument in favor of teleportation and more of an argument for why I'd be cool with a healthy clone taking my place in the event of terminal illness or something. I wouldn't personally consider this a better outcome, though, except insofar as it's one less thing to worry about as I'm dying. Aside from some specific circumstances, though, it's hard for me to come up with any reason why I'd want a clone of me to live on in my place. Visiting another planet would be cool, but it's not something that "I" would get to subjectively experience, so who cares? It'd be no different, from my perspective, as some completely different person getting to go. And that's fine, but not if I have to die for that to happen.
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Apr 6, 2016 22:33
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GlyphGryph posted:What? This seems like you want it to follow from your previous argument but I'm not in any way understanding the supposed connection,. I'm saying that my accomplishments only have value to me if I can experience them. It's my awareness of my existence that I value, not just existence itself. I don't care at all if a clone that's indistinguishable from "me" goes on to accomplish great things, except in the very limited sense of it being a slightly better outcome than me simply being dead. And just to be extra clear, I'm not making an argument of "me"ness. A perfect clone would have just as much of a right to my life as I do, and I don't think "who came first?" is even a meaningful question if we're talking about absolutely perfect clones. The issue is entirely down to consciousness/self-awareness, and the fact that I'm not at all interested in having mine terminated.
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Apr 7, 2016 23:29
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