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GlyphGryph posted:This bit was shut down pretty early on by the assumption that teleportation would happen to unconscious individuals only, and no one seemed to object to framing the situation that way (that I remember). That's satisfactory to me. Also, side note, if this hasn't been mentioned already: if we had teleporters, but for every million miles traveled someone's data get garbled and they can't be rebuilt, it would still be safer than driving. wateroverfire posted:In all ways, it would seem that you and your clone are separate entities who have Brains with identical characteristics. Once they step out of the chamber and their visual cortices are affected differently by seeing the room from different angles, the identicality of the brains has already vanished. Their numerical identity "branches," if you will, upon facing different (however slightly) causal phenomena. Stinky_Pete fucked around with this message at 16:51 on Apr 13, 2016 |
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Apr 13, 2016 16:20
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skeet decorator posted:Correct me if I'm wrong, but regardless of whether it's the result of an internal biological process or an external physical one, you would see any discontinuity in the position of an animal in spacetime as equivalent to death? All right, I've thought about it for like a minute or w/e and it seems to me that it's logically impossible for life processes (internal biological processes) to facilitate/execute teleportation. Tuxedo Catfish posted:Peta, I haven't read your articles on animalism yet, so if this is answered in them feel free to just say so and I'll leave this tack alone. You should read "An Argument for Animalism"; this is what it's all about. But the extremely abbreviated gist is that if you identify as a consciousness then either you're identifying as both a consciousness and an animal (in which case you're numerically identical with two different entities, one or both of which is capable of thought) or you're not identifying as an animal (in which case you colocate with another entity - the animal - which either generates thoughts separate from yours or cannot generate thoughts despite being an animal). GlyphGryph posted:I see you're committing to your schtick to the bitter end, and you're still wrong. I learned something about you and your views, had the opportunity to refine my own, and experienced arguments I haven't before. You, on the other hand, seem to have learned nothing at all, managed to misconstrue the opposing arguments you attempted to discredit, and had to rely on a third party to successfully communicate the things you already believed which you apparently decided on years ago - I am pretty sure that puts me on the victorious side here. We can both be winners if it turns out we were playing different games the whole time, I guess. Ahh!! What can I do but admit defeat in the face of your abject failure to refute or even discuss my position?
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Apr 13, 2016 16:26
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Also lmao at your attempt to shame someone for linking published work by a respected academic in the middle of an argument on the Internet. You're pretty pathetic.
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Apr 13, 2016 16:30
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Peta posted:Ahh!! What can I do but admit defeat in the face of your abject failure to refute or even discuss my position? Hey look we can have the same not-conversation again on a meta-level I guess. The statement you are making is, like many of your other statements, a meaningless dismissal that serves only as a refusal to engage, while also managing to be factually wrong. It's actually incredibly impressive. (The first bits are obvious, the factually wrong bit is that I have tried to discuss your position and am in fact trying to discuss a much simpler position of yours right now but you will only respond with poo poo like this) So let's see if you can manage a very basic attempt at communication, where I ask you a simple question and you answer that simple question. I believe in you, man. You can do this. Would you be interested in further discussion on organisms and your understanding thereof unrelated to the teleportation problem, but involving the numericalty of organisms that can split and recombine, so that I can better understand your position and beliefs? Yes or No. If you do not understand the question, you can let me know that instead and I'll try to ask it in a different way. Peta posted:Also lmao at your attempt to shame someone for linking published work by a respected academic in the middle of an argument on the Internet. You're pretty pathetic. The thing you are describing is not the thing I tried to shame you for.
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Apr 13, 2016 16:36
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Are the protestors of the Teleportation Act of 2036 out of touch with the realities of digital humanity?
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Apr 13, 2016 16:55
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Peta, on animals and "bio-teleportation": what if there were a creature that could encode the structure of its brain into RNA or something and then mush itself down into something slime mould like, or even disintegrate into cells that would swim/drift through the sea, and then re-grow a functionally identical brain later? What if it re-grew more than one? If identity is tied to animal-ness, what happens when I cut a sponge in half?
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Apr 13, 2016 16:58
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Dzhay posted:If identity is tied to animal-ness, what happens when I cut a sponge in half? This is exactly the thing I want to explore with him (though I think the case where it's pushed through a wire mesh and then later reconstituted is even cooler). You can... see how well that's going, though. If you manage to successfully have a conversation with him about this, I wish you luck and will look forward to reading it, since I think his hatred for me and insistence on "beating" me makes communication between the two of us impossible.
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Apr 13, 2016 17:04
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Peta posted:You should read "An Argument for Animalism"; this is what it's all about. But the extremely abbreviated gist is that if you identify as a consciousness then either you're identifying as both a consciousness and an animal (in which case you're numerically identical with two different entities, one or both of which is capable of thought) or you're not identifying as an animal (in which case you colocate with another entity - the animal - which either generates thoughts separate from yours or cannot generate thoughts despite being an animal). I think the animal is capable of thought (forming ideas, memories, etc.) and the consciousness is capable of having experiences. I also think the animal emits consciousness due to the physical arrangement of its matter, in the same way that a particular arrangement of iron atoms emits magnetism. However, I don't think the animal has experiences, and I don't think that consciousness includes thoughts -- rather, it experiences the thoughts of the animal. What I value, specifically, is the continued or recurring existence of consciousness that experiences particular thoughts. The consciousness is what experiences pain as an intensely unpleasant experience and joy as a pleasant one, and I want less of the former and more of the latter for reasons that I can't rationally justify but which seem fairly self-evident. So the nature of consciousness is very important to my position and controls how I react to the teleporter question. If consciousness doesn't persist, then my moral/ethical concerns are only for the experiences of future consciousnesses and not for myself. I never arrive at the point of considering whether it's moral to preserve consciousness from non-existence that it won't experience, because it's futile. If consciousness persists, but conditionally, then I can ask "by what conditions?" and "should we preserve particular consciousnesses, independent of preserving particular animals?" which is exactly what the teleporter question asks. I don't mind confronting that question, but first, I want proof that consciousness persists, and I want to know how -- or at least, an internally consistent speculation of how it does. There are also weird outlier possibilities that nobody seems to be seriously considering, like "what if consciousness persists unconditionally and something continues to experience no matter what happens to our bodies", or "what if there's only one consciousness and the only reason we perceive ourselves as separate beings is because we don't have physical access to the same thoughts and memories." And it's fine that nobody considers them, but I would like a selection process more rigorous than "eh, they aren't very intuitive." Tuxedo Catfish fucked around with this message at 17:07 on Apr 13, 2016 |
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Apr 13, 2016 17:04
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Tuxedo Catfish posted:The consciousness is what experiences pain as an intensely unpleasant experience and joy as a pleasant one, and I want less of the former and more of the latter for reasons that I can't rationally justify but which seem fairly self-evident. The "avoid" or "go toward" response is the first neural response to evolve, with simple feedback systems involving light and 'smell' receptors, so while we might say that the consciousness is involved in learning via feedback from signals that usually correspond with damage or strain on the self-organization ability, it is not the conscious self as we think of it that's responsible for that learning—it's just another outer loop circuit which can learn at higher levels to override more naive, basal ganglia-driven responses. Stinky_Pete fucked around with this message at 17:23 on Apr 13, 2016 |
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Apr 13, 2016 17:11
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Peta posted:All right, I've thought about it for like a minute or w/e and it seems to me that it's logically impossible for life processes (internal biological processes) to facilitate/execute teleportation. It's logically impossible for any process, life process or otherwise, to facilitate instantaneous teleportation. Everything, even quantum teleportation, has to obey the universal speed limit (the speed of light). That's why this is a philosophical question and not a scientific one. If you can conceive of an external physical means of teleportation, why could an internal biological process not produce the same conditions necessary for teleportation? I think we've nailed down your position, which is any discontinuity in spacetime = death, which is at least logically consistent. However, I find it less plausible than the pro-teleporter arguments, since your position requires some strong assumptions about the way the universe works while the other doesn't. That is, if we accept your position then we have to take spacetime being continuous as a given, which is a pretty strong assumption given everything we know/don't know about the nature of spacetime in quantum regimes. skeet decorator fucked around with this message at 17:18 on Apr 13, 2016 |
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Apr 13, 2016 17:13
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Tuxedo Catfish posted:"what if there's only one consciousness and the only reason we perceive ourselves as separate beings is because we don't have physical access to the same thoughts and memories." And it's fine that nobody considers them, but I would like a selection process more rigorous than "eh, they aren't very intuitive." I think that's a nice, if inconsequential, interpretation of things that should be given heed when considering our own global and political impact on other people. However, I think invoking a consciousness entity that is independent of or separate from material physics can be pretty swiftly dismissed under Occam's Razor. skeet decorator posted:I think we've nailed down your position, which is any discontinuity in spacetime = death, which is at least logically consistent. However, I find it less plausible than the pro-teleporter arguments, since your position requires some strong assumptions about the way the universe works while the other doesn't. That is, if we accept your position then we have to take spacetime being continuous as a given, which is a pretty strong assumption given everything we know/don't know about the nature of spacetime in quantum regimes.  For instance, I think of time as progressing frame by frame, each frame being one Planck time in "length" Stinky_Pete fucked around with this message at 17:23 on Apr 13, 2016 |
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Apr 13, 2016 17:20
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Stinky_Pete posted:I think that's a nice, if inconsequential, interpretation of things that should be given heed when considering our own global and political impact on other people. However, I think invoking a consciousness entity that is independent of or separate from material physics can be pretty swiftly dismissed under Occam's Razor. The Belgian will probably say something about this, but Planck units aren't significant for any reason. 1 Planck unit of time is not the smallest length of time that time can be divided into. It's just a unit system based on the "universal constants" like G, c and others.
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Apr 13, 2016 17:31
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SHISHKABOB posted:The Belgian will probably say something about this, but Planck units aren't significant for any reason. 1 Planck unit of time is not the smallest length of time that time can be divided into. It's just a unit system based on the "universal constants" like G, c and others. Yes, it is simply my interpretation because it is intuitive to name the time in which light moves one Planck length as "smallest time," to me, anyway. And because I don't think any predictive precision can be gained by invoking calculations over frames of time smaller in length than Planck time, though I could be wrong. Stinky_Pete fucked around with this message at 17:39 on Apr 13, 2016 |
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Apr 13, 2016 17:35
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Boogaleeboo posted:No we don't. Kit was talking about conscious perception, and used perception as shorthand; not perception as 'we receive information that our brain processes' but the procedure of consciousness. In deep sleep, you lack conscious perception of events. When you wake, you may remember pieces and fragments, but for a period of time you did not persist as a continually conscious entity. By the weird definition he was using, your past self died.
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Apr 13, 2016 18:04
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This thread would probably benefit if we give eachother the benefit of a doubt and don't nitpick more than necessary.
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Apr 13, 2016 18:19
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Stinky_Pete posted:Yes, it is simply my interpretation because it is intuitive to name the time in which light moves one Planck length as "smallest time," to me, anyway. And because I don't think any predictive precision can be gained by invoking calculations over frames of time smaller in length than Planck time, though I could be wrong. Planck length isn't significant either. Heisenberg tells you how precisely you can measure stuff.
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Apr 13, 2016 18:36
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wateroverfire posted:This thread would probably benefit if we give eachother the benefit of a doubt and don't nitpick more than necessary. From the person who pretty much joined this thread by saying 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. GlyphGryph fucked around with this message at 18:41 on Apr 13, 2016 |
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Apr 13, 2016 18:37
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GlyphGryph posted:From the person who pretty much joined this thread by saying The thread would also benefit from you backing off the aggression and engaging with what people are arguing rather than attacking the posters, while I'm wishing for things.
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Apr 13, 2016 18:42
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Stinky_Pete posted:Once they step out of the chamber and their visual cortices are affected differently by seeing the room from different angles, the identicality of the brains has already vanished. Their numerical identity "branches," if you will, upon facing different (however slightly) causal phenomena. Hmm. I'm not sure that gets us out of the conundrum. Imagine that at each end of the teleporter is a perfect sensory isolation tank, and that the clone must awaken in one tank simultaneously with the original in the other tank, both in perfect isolation. This is a requirement for...sciency reasons...or because they had extra isolation tanks they weren't using. The process of decanting you and your clone takes an hour. During that hour, could we not could ask all the same questions I posited and wouldn't we come to the same conclusions?
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Apr 13, 2016 18:51
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No because of the probabilistic behavior of nature.
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Apr 13, 2016 18:53
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wateroverfire posted:The thread would also benefit from you backing off the aggression and engaging with what people are arguing rather than attacking the posters, while I'm wishing for things. 
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Apr 13, 2016 19:03
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:theironicatthatexpandsforever:
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Apr 13, 2016 19:04
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wateroverfire posted::theironicatthatexpandsforever: You know what, fine, I'll engage with your arguments if you want. I'll believe, just for a moment, that people can change and you are genuinely committed to engagement. Is your argument still that anyone who disagrees with you on this topic should be treated for depression? I disagree. I think as long as you hold some part of yourself as valuable, even if it's not the part what wateroverfire thinks is important, you're probably fine, and I'd further argue that many non-depressed people would be perfectly fine using the teleporter. Can you explain why we should accept your argument over mine>? GlyphGryph fucked around with this message at 19:13 on Apr 13, 2016 |
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Apr 13, 2016 19:11
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GlyphGryph posted:You know what, fine, I'll engage with your arguments if you want. I'll believe, just for a moment, that people can change and you are genuinely committed to engagement. Is your argument still that anyone who disagrees with you on this topic should be treated for depression? Of all the words written in response to this topic, that's really the part you want to take issue with? Did I hurt your feelings or something? GlyphGryph posted:I disagree. I think as long as you hold some part of yourself as valuable, even if it's not the part what wateroverfire thinks is important, you're probably fine, and I'd further argue that many non-depressed people would be perfectly fine using the teleporter. Can you explain why we should accept your argument over mine>? Ok. We agree that the teleporter kills you, in the most immediate sense. If you go through the teleporter you are dead, unable to continue expriencing anything. Someone else with your identical characteristics (your memories, feelings, etc) appears in your place. Someone your loved ones could conveniently assign your identity, if you like, since you no longer have any say in the matter. I think we can also agree that if you value your life, in the most immediate, literal sense, then you will not go through the teleporter given that it kills you. You argue that if you value the memories of your life, certain characteristics about your life, but not your ability to actually continue feeling and experiencing and living your life, you'd be perfectly fine using the teleporter. Fair enough. But the condition of not caring about living your life, being indifferent between remaining a being that feels and experiences things or simply knowing in your last moment that some facimile of you will feel and experience things in your place while you cease to exist, is a sign of mental illness. It's a condition where you have literally rationalized your suicide. It's loving crazy. You might respond that "Oh no no, I AM my memories (and emotions, and etc), therefore I don't ACTUALLY die"... To which I'd respond "Well that's peculiar" for the following reason: If there's more than one copy of your memories floating around, the notion that you simply are your memories...that you are identical with your memories...fails to resolve to an actual being. You can't possibly be be merely your memories if by that definition potentially infinite things are you and we retain the notion that individuality is a thing. There must be some other condition - that even if you are your memories, you are specifically an instance of your memories. A unique instance. Which is killed when it is destroyed by the teleporter. Then it'd be your ball. wateroverfire fucked around with this message at 19:57 on Apr 13, 2016 |
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Apr 13, 2016 19:37
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Laphroaig posted:In deep sleep, you lack conscious perception of events. Depending on your evaluation of lucid dreaming, even that might be pushing things a bit far. About the most you can conclusively say is that your conscious self is busy doing other things and no longer giving much of a poo poo about what goes on outside your head. Which....doesn't really seem like much of a useful statement about anything as far as the grander definition of "self" goes.
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Apr 13, 2016 20:16
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wateroverfire posted:Of all the words written in response to this topic, that's really the part you want to take issue with? Did I hurt your feelings or something? I don't think any other discussion is likely to be productive if your core assumption (that anyone who disagrees with you on this is "loving crazy") is unexamined. Do you really think we can have a genuine exchange of ideas on any of the other stuff being discussed if that's the foundation the conversation is resting on? How could you possible have a productive conversation with someone you believe to be literally insane? Every other post of yours in this thread seems to operate on this fairly fundamental element of your disagreement with the pro-teleportation people. So yes, I think it's worth taking issue with. No, not because it hurt my feelings, but because I think productive argument about any other topic is impossible as long as that is allowed to stand. quote:We agree that the teleporter kills you, in the most immediate sense. quote:If you go through the teleporter you are dead, unable to continue expriencing anything. quote:Someone else with your identical characteristics (your memories, feelings, etc) appears in your place. Someone your loved ones could conveniently assign your identity, if you like, since you no longer have any say in the matter. quote:I think we can also agree that if you value your life, in the most immediate, literal sense, then you will not go through the teleporter given that it kills you. quote:You argue that if you value the memories of your life, certain characteristics about your life, but not your ability to actually continue feeling and experiencing and living your life, you'd be perfectly fine using the teleporter. quote:But the condition of not caring about living your life, being indifferent between remaining a being that feels and experiences things or simply knowing in your last moment that some facimile of you will feel and experience things in your place while you cease to exist But let us ignore all of that I said above, because I don't think it's necessary to oppose your argument. We aren't arguing about whether any of that is true right now, we are arguing whether or not someone like me can disagree with it and still be sane. quote:is a sign of mental illness. It's a condition where you have literally rationalized your suicide. There are many things that could rightly be called suicide that are accepted by society at large as perfectly sane, either because the costs are minimal or the benefits extreme. Do we disagree here? Would you call the euthanasia of a dying patient living a life of extreme pain to be insane? Would you call a mother leaping into traffic to push her son out of the way of a speeding truck to be insane? Would you call a soldier, following suicidal orders knowing it will save the life of his platoon to be insane? You posit that a view that accepts a result of suicide is insanity, but society on the whole accepts suicide as a sane course of action, because society accepts that people can value things above their own lives. So even if we agree that I have rationalized my own suicide, even if I accept all your premises as true, you have to go further than that to demonstrate that said suicide is actually insane. The difference (from what I can tell) is generally that someone who is mentally ill sees death as the goal, while someone who sees death as an acceptable price to pay for some perceived benefit is generally considered to be mentally sane . As far as I can see, if you want to succeed in this argument, you have a few choices: * You could demonstrate that these people, the pro-teleporters, are not only willing to die for some perceived benefit (this is generally accepted as sane) but are actually seeking their own destruction as the primary goal, and are thus suicidal (rather than merely willing to commit suicide, something many sane people are willing to do). * You could argue that the division I've described here is actually a false one, and that anyone who is willing to die for a perceived benefit is actually equally insane (although this would sort of imply that society itself is insane since I think most people would probably have such circumstances, but maybe that's where you want to go). * You can argue that there is some specific difference here among the pro-teleporter crowd that makes them an exception to the rule that "sane people can commit suicide while still being sane".
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Apr 13, 2016 20:35
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SHISHKABOB posted:Planck length isn't significant either. Heisenberg tells you how precisely you can measure stuff. If it doesn't make physical sense for any particle to occupy space smaller than Planck length, then it is significant to me if I want to make analogies with Conway's Game of Life. wateroverfire posted:Imagine that at each end of the teleporter is a perfect sensory isolation tank, and that the clone must awaken in one tank simultaneously with the original in the other tank, both in perfect isolation. This is a requirement for...sciency reasons...or because they had extra isolation tanks they weren't using. The process of decanting you and your clone takes an hour. Not if you're asking me, the bodies in the chamber, which chamber should be instantaneously incinerated, or "Does the original now experience what the clone experiences?" Yes. I can't tell which chamber I'm in, even if I remember walking into the one labeled "the original Stinky_Pete." The two bodies are both clones, and they are both the original, until they are somehow differentiated. I see no difference between this world and a world in which, every so often, all of my atoms are instantaneously swapped with atoms from elsewhere. At every moment, after all, your consciousness is replaced with a very slightly different one, via the configuration of your brain changing a little bit. How do you know you haven't "died" a million times already? Stinky_Pete fucked around with this message at 21:59 on Apr 13, 2016 |
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Apr 13, 2016 20:54
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wateroverfire posted:The thread would also benefit from you backing off the aggression and engaging with what people are arguing rather than attacking the posters, while I'm wishing for things. He's a recklessly idiotic angry toolbox who has probably never kissed a girl and you should save yourself and stop talking to him.
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Apr 13, 2016 21:16
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Peta posted:He's a recklessly idiotic angry toolbox who has probably never kissed a girl and you should save yourself and stop talking to him. Why does your name look funny in the awful app, but normal else-wise.
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Apr 13, 2016 21:21
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Peta posted:He's a recklessly idiotic angry toolbox who has probably never kissed a girl and you should save yourself and stop talking to him. Hahaha, wow you are salty over your inability to communicate simple concepts, honestly engage with other people, or even to answer simple yes/no questions effectively. Do you actually have a criticism about my attempt to engage with him, above, or this really what you've been reduced to? GlyphGryph fucked around with this message at 21:25 on Apr 13, 2016 |
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Apr 13, 2016 21:22
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SHISHKABOB posted:Why does your name look funny in the awful app, but normal else-wise. I'm in the beta for 3D browsing on SA.
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Apr 13, 2016 21:23
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GlyphGryph posted:Hahaha, wow you are salty over your inability to communicate simple concepts, honestly engage with other people, or even to answer simple yes/no questions effectively. You're salty about how obvious it is that you've never kissed a girl.
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Apr 13, 2016 21:24
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If you can't even convince a single girl to kiss you then how are you supposed to win a debate on personal identity?
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Apr 13, 2016 21:27
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There. Gettin' real tired of this Petty guy's poo poo
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Apr 13, 2016 21:59
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I don't think believing that humans are animals requires you to actually act like one online, but I could be wrong.
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Apr 13, 2016 22:00
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Stinky_Pete posted:There. Gettin' real tired of this Petty guy's poo poo It owns that you spent money on me but a cursory read-through of the thread might suggest that the red text you chose better suits GlyphGryph, who, as far as we can tell, has never kissed a girl. 
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Apr 13, 2016 22:45
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Peta posted:It owns that you spent money on me but a cursory read-through of the thread might suggest that the red text you chose better suits GlyphGryph Curses, foiled by my one weakness: five dollars. However, you're the one who literally said, "I win," over a dispute of definitions, which comes off as extremely petty and intellectually vapid. You're also currently meeting his considerably effortful post with no effort, instead responding with non sequiturs or derails, which is actually a big no-no according to the rules here on D&D
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Apr 13, 2016 23:31
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I said that as a joke in response to the absurdly hostile, smug, insulting, hypocritical approach he has taken to me and others throughout this thread.
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Apr 13, 2016 23:35
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What's the average cost of a teleport/suicide booth ticket in terms of somethingawful.com avatar certs?
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Apr 13, 2016 23:53
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Peta posted:It owns that you spent money on me but a cursory read-through of the thread might suggest that the red text you chose better suits GlyphGryph, who, as far as we can tell, has never kissed a girl. If you kiss a girl who then later in life decides they are not a girl, can you still say that you've kissed a girl???
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Apr 13, 2016 23:59
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