|
SHISHKABOB posted: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??? Yes!
|
#
?
Apr 14, 2016 00:11
|
|
|
|
| # ? Jun 1, 2024 20:18 |
|
|
Peta posted: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. No, I think you're just gaslighting
|
|
#
?
Apr 14, 2016 00:12
|
|
|
Okeydoke.
|
|
#
?
Apr 14, 2016 00:23
|
|
|
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. Yeah, Planck length (10^-35 m) is a popular way of saying realy, really small but it's no better or worse than choosing 10^-30 or 10^-40 or anything much smaller than the radius of an atom. Stinky_Pete posted: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. EDIT: Again, I'm , not sure to what extend the science is relevant to the philosophical debate. But if people want to bring in science, it should be accurate. The Belgian fucked around with this message at 01:05 on Apr 14, 2016 |
|
#
?
Apr 14, 2016 00:44
|
|
|
The Belgian posted:It makes perfect physical sense for particles to occupy a space of any size you like. Except if you want to say something like sizes smaller than what I can experience don't make sense but then you already have to throw out microscopic stuff. Wouldn't a being in Conway's Game of Life say the same thing about the length of a cell? I'm basing my notion off of this statement Wikipedia posted:In string theory, the Planck length is the order of magnitude of the oscillating strings that form elementary particles, and shorter lengths do not make physical sense. And no I wouldn't use "what I can experience" as a bar, but "what can, in principle, cause differing outcomes in some experiment." That is, if a string were "really" only occupying one octant of its Planck-length cube versus a different octant, it wouldn't cause any hypothetical experiment to produce different outcomes, so what octant it's "really" in doesn't matter.
|
|
#
?
Apr 14, 2016 01:13
|
|
|
Stinky_Pete posted:Wouldn't a being in Conway's Game of Life say the same thing about the length of a cell? Well, the statement in your quote is just flat out wrong. That wikipedia article has a lot of [citation needed] and if you look at the citation for what you quoted, they actually say something somewhat different. I'm not sure why you care about conway's game of life here? Practically, experiments are way above the Planck scale right now. Hypothetically, there's in principle no problem in doing expirements at lengths below the Planck length.
|
|
#
?
Apr 14, 2016 01:34
|
|
|
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planck_length square root of h-bar G over c cubed has units of length, that's the only significant feature. That's the planck constant (divided by 2 pi), the universal gravitation constant, and the speed of light. Since all of its parts are "universal constants", then it makes for a very Natural looking unit. quote:In physics, Planck units are physical units of measurement defined exclusively in terms of five universal physical constants listed below, in such a manner that these five physical constants take on the numerical value of 1 when expressed in terms of these units. Planck units have profound significance for theoretical physics since they elegantly simplify several recurring algebraic expressions of physical law by nondimensionalization.
|
|
#
?
Apr 14, 2016 02:27
|
|
|
Peta posted:Yes! But what if, as part of their decision, they said that they feel like they had been not a girl their whole life, including when you kissed them???
|
|
#
?
Apr 14, 2016 02:29
|
|
|
SHISHKABOB posted:But what if, as part of their decision, they said that they feel like they had been not a girl their whole life, including when you kissed them??? Don't care. Kissed girl.
|
|
#
?
Apr 14, 2016 03:59
|
|
|
wateroverfire posted:So, I'm responding to crowoutofcontext in that post. I know it might seem I am working backwards by this, but its a start: 1) I am whatever, at this instant, is psychologically continuous with me 2) the clone is psychologically continuous with me 3) I am the clone You are trying to point out that if I applied that logic when a clone was made and my original stayed, by my own logic, I would have to absurdly answer yes to JeffersonClay's questions. I'll try to address the issues. Firstly,I don't think our selves are only our memories. We are a sort of the dynamic perception whose identity is bolstered by millions of feedback loops (memories). I don't know if we could call it an "instance of human perception." Why the singular? When does it begin-the fetus? And does it end before death if we are in a coma and die? Does it begin again if we awoke from the coma? I would argue that we are [b]instances[b/] of human perceptions that are held together by a pattern of relative psychological continuity, for me that definition describes why someone whose in a coma or in deep sleep or has psychogenic amnesia loses their "self" but has a chance of possibly regaining it. It also explains why if I was put in a functional cryogenic chamber, had my dead brain go through millions of cycles of having the particles being replaced, atom by atom, and awoke 5 billion years later would be the same person. And since I see personal identity in that manner it is obviously much easier for me to conceptualize teleportation as not killing me. . To address the clone issue I would answer NO to all the questions. I don't see myself as "becoming" my clone in the first experiment, while remaining "me" in the experiment where two brains are created. In the second experiment two brains, hooked up with the exact same set of feedback loops I associate with myself have come into existence. I literally branch into two people as soon as two brains are functioning in the same universe. If I turn the button that destroys my original brain I am not destroying myself but I am destroying the [b]possibility[b/] of me branching into two individuals. We do that every day. For example, I decided not to go out tonight. Lets say if i went out tonight my brain and personal identity would change in a specific way we can call ME-2, and lets call the me that decides to stay in and post on SA ME-1. I haven't murdered ME-2 by deciding not to go out, because he never existed, I only ruined the potential of his existence. By pressing the NOT DESTROY button I am eradicating a potential branch of my self forming. If you asked me before the experiment if I thought my self would become the original or the clone it would be like handing me a box with Schrodinger's cat and asking me if I saw myself petting a cat or burying a cat in the future. It would be an unanswerable, purely metaphysical question. -- crowoutofcontext fucked around with this message at 09:41 on Apr 14, 2016 |
|
#
?
Apr 14, 2016 04:44
|
|
|
crowoutofcontext posted:I know it might seem I am working backwards by this, but its a start: Ok. I think I understand where you're coming from, but I don't think it gets you out of the quandry posed. We speak figuratively about "the person I could be" or "The me who would have gone to the pub if I hadn't stayed home to play Fallout", or "the person I used to be" as a way to talk about potential future states or possibilities that could have been, things like that. For shorthand we could call one of those ME-2, another ME-3, the third ME-4, and so on. But that is just a manner of speaking. Those are not instances of you - they don't exist so they are not instantiated. In the world we live in there is only ever one instance of you, and that is you. In our thought experiment we're not talking about potential yous. The copies have come into being and are literally existing things, from 1 to n additional ones, coexistant in the same time as you, who are you according to your definition because they share your mental states (shorthand). I imagine you would say of each copy, as you did above, that it doesn't literally experience what the other copies experience, that it can die while the other copies live, etc. Any other answer would entail something really weird. But that is antithetical to the idea that your clones are you - whether because they share your mental states or for whatever other reason. You are behind exactly one set of eyes at a time, experience through one body at a time, form memories from one idiosyncratic perspective at a time. At any given time, only one entity in the set comprised of the original you and your clones can be you. I think we agree on all of that. But in that case you need a concept of identity that always resolves to exactly one entity, right? And that means when that entity dies in the teleporter, you are dead.
|
|
#
?
Apr 14, 2016 14:32
|
|
|
GlyphGryph posted: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. We need to back up and nail down some language if we're going to have a productive debate at all, because there are multiple possible senses of several key terms we're using and if we can't agree on what we're talking about there's no way we can talk to eachother. If you go through the teleporter you, GlyphGryph, the GlyphGryph who is posting in this thread, sitting in his chair, who we can designate GG1, are destroyed. GG1, who is the very same entity who will eventually respond to this post, no longer has the ability to think or feel or impact the world or do anything other than be dead. From GG1's perspective there is no continuity with any GGs who may come after, because GG1 is dead and has ceased to have any perspective on anything whatsoever. Do we agree on that much? I feel like we should move onto the rest after we hammer this out.
|
|
#
?
Apr 14, 2016 14:46
|
|
|
I agree, and think that's a worthwhile next topic of conversation, but like I said I think the accusation of insanity on the part of the opposition is even more problematic and my refutation doesn't actually depend on us sharing any of those same definitions. I would like to deal with that first. Do you agree now that, while the idea might make you uncomfortable and you could still argue it's a terrible idea, being okay with teleportation doesn't make someone depressed or suicidal or insane or anything? That even using your definitions, choosing to use a teleporter could be seen as a sane choice in a situation where merely killing oneself would not be? I'm being serious here, I don't think a conversation is really possible so long as you see the other side as inherently un-credible, and it very much seems that you do. Assuming you can acknowledge my essential sanity.... wateroverfire posted:We need to back up and nail down some language if we're going to have a productive debate at all, because there are multiple possible senses of several key terms we're using and if we can't agree on what we're talking about there's no way we can talk to eachother. The following may seem kind of dumb to you, I will admit I'm not communicating this as effectively as I should be, but I will try my best to try to understand and communicate how I actually see things. It will take a while to come back around to your actual question (probably not in this post) since I want to start by looking at some underlying assumptions. So I guess I'll turn this back with a question of my own: Do you consider "identity" to be a real, actual thing that represents some real and fundamental aspect of reality, or do you consider it to be something we use to refer to complex objects in a simplified way for utilitarian purposes? Because I am firmly in the second camp here. I, me the GlyphGryph sitting in this chair, am not a simple, idealized, unchanging object, but a dynamic interaction of physical forces, moving parts, and emergent systems, and there are multiple perfectly valid "things" can be considered me, and as I go through my life I and others will pretty effortlessly shift between one definition and another as appropriate for the context of the situation. From an identity perspective of strict equivalence, G1 is dead moments after he comes into being as the person that has replaced him is no longer exactly identical. From an identity perspective of continuing conscious thought, G1 is dead (but can be quickly resurrected) the moment he loses consciousness. From an identity perspective of continuous implementation, what you say is true From an identity perspective of the important attributes, such that I would consider their loss to result in a being that is no longer me, and this is the identity perspective The only identity that could be said to be "true" and not artificial, at a fundamental level, is strict equivalence. That's fine for fundamental particles that can remain what they are over time, but doesn't really work out so well for complex things like people. That's where we get into describing things as "the same, but not exactly the same". I know I was arguing with someone about "partial identities" not long ago. They refused to believe they existed. Do you? I think that might be a pretty important underlying assumption we have to agree on, the existence of partial identities, before we can build to anything else. So, would you except as true the statement that "I am not exactly the same person I was yesterday, last year, or the day I was born"? If you think that statement could be true, under any circumstance, we can move on knowing we agree on the existence of an Object Concept A that is the very same object as Object Concept B, but is also different from Object Concept B. GlyphGryph fucked around with this message at 15:30 on Apr 14, 2016 |
|
#
?
Apr 14, 2016 15:07
|
|
|
GlyphGryph just said almost exactly what I wanted to, but I'll try to rephrase it: This is not a physics problem. No-one, so far as I can tell, is disagreeing about any physical property of any object at any point in either of these scenarios (the teleporter and the cloning machine). Nor, I think, is anyone disagreeing about the experiences of any person in the scenarios at any given time - we all agree about what they'll remember, what they'll see and so on. So: the question "is the person who comes out of the teleporter really the same person who went in?" is a red herring, it's just a question of definitions - most of the arguments in this thread have been (explicitly or otherwise) "if we define personal identity like so then yes/no". Which is fine, I guess, but doesn't seem to be revealing anything interesting. The real question here is a moral or ethical one: should we treat the guy who comes out of the teleporter as the same guy as the one who went in? Or, more abstractly: you've defined some notion of personhood. Other people have defined other ones. Why should I treat yours as the important one? wateroverfire posted:You are behind exactly one set of eyes at a time, experience through one body at a time, form memories from one idiosyncratic perspective at a time. At any given time, only one entity in the set comprised of the original you and your clones can be you. I think we agree on all of that. But in that case you need a concept of identity that always resolves to exactly one entity, right? And that means when that entity dies in the teleporter, you are dead. I don't see how that follows. What's stopping me having a notion of identity that can bifurcate, so that at any point at which they can consider it the guy going into the clone machine or the guys coming out can map themselves to a unique identity that would still "trace back" to the same one at some point in the past?
|
|
#
?
Apr 14, 2016 16:55
|
|
|
The Belgian posted:Well, the statement in your quote is just flat out wrong. That wikipedia article has a lot of [citation needed] and if you look at the citation for what you quoted, they actually say something somewhat different. I'm not sure why you care about conway's game of life here? Suppose we have a hypothetical instrument that can subdivide a region of space into measured voxels, and those voxels into smaller voxels, and so on indefinitely. Are you saying that there is no theoretical limit to the size of the voxels, for which the next subdivision will increase the accuracy of the model? That's a bad sentence, so I'll put it another way as well. Suppose the position of a physical entity (e.g. a string) changes the outcome of an experiment (I mean, I know this would be samples of a wavefunction, so let's say I'm talking about the integral of amplitude along a certain volume), and the instrument determines which voxel it is in. Now if the voxels are subdivided into smaller voxels, the outcome of the experiment can be measured more precisely, giving another decimal place for the measured outcome. I believe that there is a theoretical voxel size, for which the 'true' amplitudes in the smaller voxels into which it is subdivided will come up uniform. Am I mistaken about this? I care about Conway's Game of Life for other reasons, but also because I think a stepping view of time makes it much easier to illustrate why there is no genuine difference between experiencing normal 'continuous' human consciousness and being deconstructed and reconstructed instantaneously "between" every step. I dunno, maybe it's not that salient to others.
|
|
#
?
Apr 14, 2016 17:46
|
|
|
GlyphGryph posted:I agree, and think that's a worthwhile next topic of conversation, but like I said I think the accusation of insanity on the part of the opposition is even more problematic and my refutation doesn't actually depend on us sharing any of those same definitions. I would like to deal with that first. Do you agree now that, while the idea might make you uncomfortable and you could still argue it's a terrible idea, being okay with teleportation doesn't make someone depressed or suicidal or insane or anything? That even using your definitions, choosing to use a teleporter could be seen as a sane choice in a situation where merely killing oneself would not be? I'm willing to go so far as to say you could be essentially sane but misguided. Can we settle on that? I'm busy this afternoon and may be a little late replying with a long post.
|
|
#
?
Apr 14, 2016 17:59
|
|
|
Sure but that has nothing to do with the number ratio that gets you the Planck length lol. No one said anything about dividing up space into little pieces, just that the Planck units are not significant. The meter is about as significant.
|
|
#
?
Apr 14, 2016 18:02
|
|
|
I guess I don't need to rely on discrete time. To expand on what Dzhay said... At t0 there is GG0, which is numerically identical to only GG0, but at t1>t0, GG0 is dead and has been replaced with GG1. This is what's going on all the time without teleporters, by the definitions I'm seeing. So since I, SP34987532498563789465 or whatever, have memories for which a dead SP34987532498563782617 is responsible, the fact that I'm dying and being replaced by SP34987532498563789468 and ultimately a much more obviously different SP89687532498563789468, and finally ultimately SPcorpse23423402384 is superfluous to me, whether via a teleporter or not.
|
|
#
?
Apr 14, 2016 18:02
|
|
|
SHISHKABOB posted:Sure but that has nothing to do with the number ratio that gets you the Planck length lol. No one said anything about dividing up space into little pieces, just that the Planck units are not significant. The meter is about as significant. Okay, I'll just call my almighty smallest the Stinky length yes, it is a dick joke
|
|
#
?
Apr 14, 2016 18:07
|
|
|
wateroverfire posted:I'm willing to go so far as to say you could be essentially sane but misguided. Can we settle on that? Misguided implies there's a guide. Let's just call it mistaken. I think you're mistaken in your view of how things work, you think I'm mistaken, that's fine. I still think you are most likely reasonable, though, using the information that's available to you to come to the best conclusions as far as you can tell. I think you're wrong, and that I can through conversation help to make you (and myself!) less wrong, but I do not doubt that you are reasonable. I ask only the same consideration in return. Take your time replying. I'm glad to see at least Dzhay and Stinky_Pete seem to have understood what I was trying to communicate, so I couldn't have botched it that bad.
|
|
#
?
Apr 14, 2016 18:35
|
|
|
wateroverfire posted:You are behind exactly one set of eyes at a time, experience through one body at a time, form memories from one idiosyncratic perspective at a time. At any given time, only one entity in the set comprised of the original you and your clones can be you. I think we agree on all of that. But in that case you need a concept of identity that always resolves to exactly one entity, right? And that means when that entity dies in the teleporter, you are dead. Not at any given time. We are two beings that once were exactly the same person, so I can look at my clone and say he was me at the age of eight and vice-versa, even if we now are separate entities. I suppose you could work your way backwards and say that we were two identical entities behind one set of eyes before the experiment. 
|
|
#
?
Apr 14, 2016 22:41
|
|
|
Stinky_Pete posted:
There's no evidence in that direction as far as I know. So, why do you think this? Sure, it might be interesting to come up with modles based on that assumption for the fun of it, but there's no evidence. In fact, crucial to string theory is conformal field theory, meaning the scale at which you look doesn't really matter. Of course, stuff gets added that does make things at the metre scale diffrent from the micrometre scale and so on, but nothing that suggests discretisation.
|
|
#
?
Apr 14, 2016 23:32
|
|
|
The Belgian posted:There's no evidence in that direction as far as I know. So, why do you think this? Sure, it might be interesting to come up with modles based on that assumption for the fun of it, but there's no evidence. Is there evidence that space and time are continuous? I'm not even asking for teleportation problem reasons, just suddenly curious.
|
|
#
?
Apr 14, 2016 23:36
|
|
|
Tuxedo Catfish posted:Is there evidence that space and time are continuous? I'm not even asking for teleportation problem reasons, just suddenly curious. Every succesful model describing it so far has been continuous? Newtonian, general relativity, quantum mechanics, quantum field theory and if you want to go that fat, string theory are all continuous. Of course you can always claim that at scale X far enough removed from experiment, things become discontinuous and you can't explicitly disprove it because there doesn't exist experimental evidence either way at that scale.
|
|
#
?
Apr 14, 2016 23:43
|
|
|
The Belgian posted:There's no evidence in that direction as far as I know. So, why do you think this? Sure, it might be interesting to come up with models based on that assumption for the fun of it, but there's no evidence. Okay, that makes sense. The Belgian posted:Every succesful model describing it so far has been continuous? Newtonian, general relativity, quantum mechanics, quantum field theory and if you want to go that fat, string theory are all continuous. Of course you can always claim that at scale X far enough removed from experiment, things become discontinuous and you can't explicitly disprove it because there doesn't exist experimental evidence either way at that scale. We use continuous functions because they are analytic, not for a special physical reason. For example, a thermodynamic model of an object would involve continuous integrals over the volume of the object, but those integrals are merely approximating a physically "true" Riemann sum over the atoms of the object. So there is no reason to suppose continuity of space-time just because the most accurate/precise models are continuous, which it seems you have already granted. Finally, something I can say I'm truly "agnostic" about, in the colloquial sense.
|
|
#
?
Apr 14, 2016 23:58
|
|
|
Stinky_Pete posted:Okay, that makes sense. Well as I said, you can't really say anything as long as you pick your scale far enough away from anything experimental. But they why go for discontinuous instead of continuous? Especially as there's no reason to assume the continuous models that work incredibly well will stop working at some point until some evidence comes up?
|
|
#
?
Apr 15, 2016 00:04
|
|
|
The Belgian posted:But then why go for discontinuous instead of continuous? As I said, I no longer do. But ultimately, for reasons I currently find difficult to articulate, the discrete interpretation helps me make sense of the existence of a universal speed limit. Stinky_Pete fucked around with this message at 00:43 on Apr 15, 2016 |
|
#
?
Apr 15, 2016 00:40
|
|
|
The Belgian posted:Well as I said, you can't really say anything as long as you pick your scale far enough away from anything experimental. But they why go for discontinuous instead of continuous? Especially as there's no reason to assume the continuous models that work incredibly well will stop working at some point until some evidence comes up? My original point wasn't that spacetime is discrete, merely that it could be. I don't have an opinion one way or the other, however Peta's argument for persistence requires spacetime to be continuous, which is a much stronger assumption than any of the pro-teleporter arguments make. Spacetime certainly could be continuous, but I don't think we should dismiss theories that question that simply because we don't have enough evidence yet, the fact is pretty much any theory of quantum gravity is untestable at this point. It seems like much more magical thinking to me to assume spacetime must be a certain way because of one particular theory for the persistence of animal life.
|
|
#
?
Apr 15, 2016 01:18
|
|
|
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wrVqD67zils&t=114s
|
|
#
?
Apr 15, 2016 02:52
|
|
|
Black holes are discontinuities 
|
|
#
?
Apr 15, 2016 04:32
|
|
|
I took Biochem not philosophy but if you took me apart atom by atom and cloned me at a distance I would die and there would be a clone somewhere else. If you raised two identical twins completely identically and then killed one of them the dead one would still be dead. Seems pretty straightforward and who ever said anything about continuity of consciousness being a relevant thing? If I get knocked out or get blackout drunk I am still alive and still me, living things only become dead things when they die, generally, like if you were disassembled in a Star Trek disintegration chamber. I used to worry about the wrong me waking up every time I went to sleep when I was a kid but since then I've woken up thousands of times without incident. I dunno the whole argument seems to boil down to pointing at living things and go "hm, can we really consider this living or a self?" and personally I just go "Yes, because that is the only meaning the concept has," everything else is a debate about how it works.
|
|
#
?
Apr 15, 2016 17:57
|
|
|
Yeah basically the pro-teleporter side puts significantly more stock in the preservation of their data over their lives. While yes the "teleported" version of you is a perfect clone and thus would in a sense preserve your "self" by a definition it would also terminate your life. You're sacrificing the rest of your life's worth of ability to experience things in exchange for your data getting to travel somewhere faster. It's a completely stupid thing to prioritize but it explains all the idiots in traffic who pull the riskiest stunts to save themselves maybe 2 minutes of commuting time.
|
|
#
?
Apr 15, 2016 18:30
|
|
|
My feeling of continuity between now and later is always felt by me after the fact, and of all the memories I haven't preserved, there are plenty of past versions that believed themselves to be carried forward by the coherence of cells but in fact were not. It's just as easy to say "which meatsack will carry on what I think is 'truly' me is a stupid thing to prioritize, and ultimately petty and fearful," so please spare us the condescension. Besides, even if "I" the experiencer were to black out, "I" can't possibly be disappointed about that fact. It's win-win.
|
|
#
?
Apr 15, 2016 18:52
|
|
|
Kit Walker posted:It's a completely stupid thing to prioritize but it explains all the idiots in traffic who pull the riskiest stunts to save themselves maybe 2 minutes of commuting time. umm, no If I pull that risky traffic poo poo I risk having my family and friends losing me in a violent and sudden manner, let alone being unable to do all the poo poo I'd love to do for them and owe them. I think most people would pick data over numerical identity if they had to choose one over the other- think of it as choosing between keeping your life but losing the data ( gracing their family with a Terry Schiavio) or to you know, be an actually continued loving presence. crowoutofcontext fucked around with this message at 20:10 on Apr 15, 2016 |
|
#
?
Apr 15, 2016 19:43
|
|
|
Kit Walker posted:Yeah basically the pro-teleporter side puts significantly more stock in the preservation of their data over their lives. Do you... not? Obviously, you must value your "data" (let's call this personality for convenience even if it might not quite match up) as you put it on some level. I'd imagine you value it quite a bit. Do you really hold your personality as relatively unimportant compared to your life? I honestly find that hard to believe. If you were offered the choice between a lobotomy or the teleporter, you would pick the lobotomy without any hesitation? If I were like you, I suppose this would be the point where I say "If you value your personality so little, why don't you just icepick your own brain right now?", but that's pretty stupid. I think you should consider it not as a question, but maybe as an idea of how your arguments look to the other side right now.
|
|
#
?
Apr 15, 2016 19:57
|
|
|
Stinky_Pete posted:It's just as easy to say "which meatsack will carry on what I think is 'truly' me is a stupid thing to prioritize, and ultimately petty and fearful," so please spare us the condescension. It would be easy to say and pretty dumb, yeah. crowoutofcontext posted:I think most people would pick data over numerical identity if they had to choose one over the other- think of it as choosing between keeping your life but losing the data ( gracing their family with a Terry Schiavio) or to you know, be an actually continued loving presence. Okay but the hypothetical we're discussing is either getting to keep both or losing one for the sake of someone else's convenience. GlyphGryph posted:Do you... not? Fortunately with my choice I'm not picking one over the other but both! Y'all are the ones selling your lives out for seemingly little reason. The question has never been "would you get into the teleporter if you were going to be killed anyway," which would be a pretty obvious "yeah sure why not" to my side. If I had to arrange a hierarchy of decision/scenarios it would probably go: Don't teleport and live your life > Teleport and a clone lives your life > Become a vegetable > Total obliteration Kit Walker fucked around with this message at 20:19 on Apr 15, 2016 |
|
#
?
Apr 15, 2016 20:16
|
|
|
Kit Walker posted:Don't teleport and live your life > Teleport and a clone lives your life > Become a vegetable > Total obliteration Okay, so you are pretty straightforwardly admitting here that you value your personality more than your life, right? That fundamentally, we are not so different here in that respect? We all agree that that bit of us is the more important bit? The actual disagreement has nothing to do with the value of the personality, which we both value highly, and everything to do with the value of life, which we both agree is less important than personality? I'm not sure if that would be obvious to everyone on your side - from Peta's argument, it seemed pretty obvious he would prefer the lobotomy (and continued existence of his organism) over the continuation of his personality, for example. (at least if he was being sincere in his assumptions and conclusions)
|
|
#
?
Apr 15, 2016 20:25
|
|
|
Going back to the "you're only behind one set of eyes" concept, I'd just like to say that there's more to "me" than meets the eye 
|
|
#
?
Apr 15, 2016 21:28
|
|
|
It really seems to come down to whether or not you hold your "self" or your perceived, subjectively continuous existence to be simply an emergent phenomenon of the particular sorts of computation going on in your brain, in which case there's no reason to believe it wouldn't continue emerging, with subjective seamlessness as far as "you're" concerned, if the computation ceased in one location and started up again light-years away. Very generally speaking, the pro-teleport side seems to hold this model to be the case, while the anti-teleport side believes that there's an... essence, a je ne sais quoi that is also essential to the perception of self-identity, and that essence wouldn't make the jump across those light-years. For whatever it's worth, I think that the anti-teleport conclusion is the correct one if you begin by presupposing the existence of that essence, but what I haven't seen is any sort of explanation for what that essence (or whatever term you care to use) is, why it's necessary, how it functions, how science could point to or test it in the event that teleportation did happen to be a reality. It just seems to sneak in as an assumption every time the anti-teleport side begins presenting their argument.
|
|
#
?
Apr 15, 2016 21:53
|
|
|
|
| # ? Jun 1, 2024 20:18 |
|
|
JerryLee posted:It really seems to come down to whether or not you hold your "self" or your perceived, subjectively continuous existence to be simply an emergent phenomenon of the particular sorts of computation going on in your brain, in which case there's no reason to believe it wouldn't continue emerging, with subjective seamlessness as far as "you're" concerned, if the computation ceased in one location and started up again light-years away. There is no conflict between these views.
|
|
#
?
Apr 15, 2016 22:15
|
|
