The Teleportation Problem - Self, Consciousness, Duplicates and Death

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

SHISHKABOB: Nov 30, 2012; Fun Shoe

^ hah, I was thinking of that last thing you said in a way, too, but I felt it was a little too crazy. But, what is moving through space? In physics we imagine infinitesimally small pieces of time/space (calculus, etc.). But still, how do you get something from x to x + dx? What is space? Reminds me of Zeno's paradox about the turtle and the race.

Nobody understands the connection between mind and body, so we don't know a solution to the problem of actually teleporting your self. Breaking down the body and rebuilding it would kill you/your self, no matter how carefully you arrange things. The unscientific way of resolving this problem is assuming a "soul" exists which is tied to the body.

I mean that's really the end of the line, I think. There's no scientific theory of the self so I don't see how you'd be able to rebuild it in the first place. It's a big assumption that just the arrangement of matter/energy in your brain will reproduce an exact copy. I imagine this process resulting in, at best case, the creation of a body identical to the person sent into the machine, but ... without a mind? Maybe it would be like a baby, a blank slate. Or maybe there would just be nothing there but autonomic processes, like a "vegetable".

I mean, how do you transfer a will to exist? Reproduction apparently does it, because most (all?) living things are born with the will to live. Living things will fight ferociously to survive.

These are hard questions! And that I have no answers for them is what frustrates me and drives my will to think the gently caress out of them. What the hell does "consciousness is an illusion" mean anyways?

SHISHKABOB fucked around with this message at 17:47 on Apr 6, 2016

# ¿ Apr 6, 2016 17:42

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# ¿ May 18, 2024 03:14

SHISHKABOB: Nov 30, 2012; Fun Shoe

Dzhay posted:

Bolding mine.

The first bolded statement is interesting. Are you claiming that the pre-teleport "you" would actually experience something (the ending of consciousness, whatever that is) that the post-teleport "you" wouldn't recall?

The second bolded statement reads like the sort of thing I was complaining about. Why should I care about this notion of "killed" where the person* is still there afterwards? What, exactly, has been lost?

*you're going to debate this, I guess. But if the post-teleport version is in every way indistinguishable ** from the pre-teleport one, I really don't understand how you're going to.

**other than location, I guess. Though the teleporter could be aimed back at the same place - would that make a difference?

The new you is distinguishable by the old you by virtue of the old you being incapable of distinguishing anything.

# ¿ Apr 6, 2016 21:20

SHISHKABOB: Nov 30, 2012; Fun Shoe

Lt. Danger posted:

To be clear, I was saying "which is original and which is the copy" would be irrelevant to Oh dear me, since the sister-entities are both the same set of thoughts/memories/opinions and therefore, as far as I think Oh dear me is concerned, the same person.

You seem to be suggesting these perfect duplicates would immediately become different upon awaking in two separate rooms, since they're now experiencing different thoughts/memories/opinions, and this then retroactively makes the duplication imperfect. They're different because they're now different somehow translates into them being always, essentially, different, even though at one point they were identical.

I really enjoyed this season of Farscape.

But they aren't the same set of thoughts because their space-time world-lines diverge.

# ¿ Apr 7, 2016 19:36

SHISHKABOB: Nov 30, 2012; Fun Shoe

Oh dear me posted:

As far as I am concerned 2+2=4 is the same thought, whenever and wherever it is had.

Yeah but that's not how it works, and also not quite what I meant. If you have two states that are initially identical, but then expose them to different conditions, then they will not be the same anymore.

# ¿ Apr 7, 2016 20:06

SHISHKABOB: Nov 30, 2012; Fun Shoe

Oh dear me posted:

Of course: no one disputes this. But what of it?

It means they're not the same thoughts, so they aren't the same person.

# ¿ Apr 7, 2016 20:11

SHISHKABOB: Nov 30, 2012; Fun Shoe

Oh dear me posted:

I will be having different thoughts in two minutes time. Yet I will be the same person.

You can't have two of the same person. I'm not saying which is which because I don't know, but they are distinguishable.

# ¿ Apr 7, 2016 20:22

SHISHKABOB: Nov 30, 2012; Fun Shoe

Oh dear me posted:

Of course not. Sorry, I don't understand what you are trying to say here.

I was just nitpicking a specific point.

# ¿ Apr 7, 2016 20:27

SHISHKABOB: Nov 30, 2012; Fun Shoe

Oh dear me posted:

That's just an assertion about a word. I suspect we wouldn't want to call two different bodies the same person, because it would be inconvenient; we'd want some way to distinguish them, in order to interact. But if we decided to call them the same person but in two natures, or some such thing, that would be entirely legitimate - as it would in the transportation case if we chose to call the clone the same person as the original. These word choices obviously reflect our opinions on whether anything of importance would have been lost, but they cannot change them.

I guess there's not much to the uniqueness of "self" beyond the perspective of that "self".

# ¿ Apr 7, 2016 20:41

SHISHKABOB: Nov 30, 2012; Fun Shoe

Shbobdb posted:

Who/what is "me"?

What is the nature of the self?

What is it?

I think that pondering these questions can lead to a greater sense of connection with the world. Like I wanna say enlightenment basically. Thinking about those things and their relationship with the world, other people, and stuff, is good for you. Especially if you talk about it with people.

# ¿ Apr 8, 2016 00:12

SHISHKABOB: Nov 30, 2012; Fun Shoe

Control Volume posted:

What if you teleported yourself faster than light across worlds, and then teleported back, and somehow ended back up in time, only you haven't done this yet and future you is the one telling you to step in the suicide teleportation box and that you need to teleport or this universal construct will collapse upon itself. Would you go in the box?

What happens if we have two ppl the same age: one sits on earth, the other gets on a spaceship and flies away at near the 4/5 the speed of light and then at some point 20 light years away they stop their space ship and turn around and fly back. Which person is older????

Answer: the person on earth. Proof left as exercise.

# ¿ Apr 8, 2016 17:03

SHISHKABOB: Nov 30, 2012; Fun Shoe

wateroverfire posted:

What does it matter?

I dunno dude existentialism and angst and poo poo like that? What's my purpose! Why am I here! Is there no reason? Is there meaning to life? Even one that I can construct? How would I construct that meaning of life? How can I justify it? What justifies it? How can I justify a constructed idea if it came entirely from inside my mind? blah blah blah

Now shut the gently caress up and get me those TPS reports by next Monday.

# ¿ Apr 8, 2016 17:08

SHISHKABOB: Nov 30, 2012; Fun Shoe

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.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vbzIgKRXUzc

# ¿ Apr 8, 2016 19:08

SHISHKABOB: Nov 30, 2012; Fun Shoe

Oh dear clone posted:

If you plant a false memory in someone's mind, it will be false, yes; and until they discover that you have done so they will mistakenly believe themselves to have experienced something. But this has no relevance whatsoever to a the condition of a transported person, who will know perfectly well that they were assembled by the transporter and that all their memories dating from before that were experienced by a different set of atoms. There is no deception or falsity involved.

Moreover what matters to me, in my memory of some person or event, is the person or event, not the molecules I consisted of at the time. My memories of what happened , or who said what, would be just as true after transportation as before.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vbVvF5wWqf0

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=szzVlQ653as

I love this show.

# ¿ Apr 8, 2016 23:41

SHISHKABOB: Nov 30, 2012; Fun Shoe

OwlFancier posted:

If you answer yes to the first question, the answer to the second question is also yes.

What if you kill each other?

# ¿ Apr 9, 2016 23:34

SHISHKABOB: Nov 30, 2012; Fun Shoe

OwlFancier posted:

Whoever dies first wins, and is you, so you win.

No I mean like a at the same time kind of death. Like omg he got the killing blow, but wait hidden poisoned dagger! You look into your eyes and realize what fools you were, imagine the power you might have had working together, and die.

# ¿ Apr 9, 2016 23:47

SHISHKABOB: Nov 30, 2012; Fun Shoe

OwlFancier posted:

I think i would probably use my dying moments to place my testicles in my own mouth and fart on my head.

Thank you, this made my day much happier.

# ¿ Apr 10, 2016 01:04

SHISHKABOB: Nov 30, 2012; Fun Shoe

Kit Walker posted:

The brain absolutely would still have consciousness without sensory input. You'd still have your memories, right?

This is just a misdirection, though. None of this addresses the fact that being killed after being cloned wouldn't allow my perception of my consciousness to continue. Show me how I would somehow find my thoughts moving from my current body to the clone and I'll change my mind, but there's no such physical process that would allow that, especially given the terms of the thought experiment. All I've seen so far is people argue that it doesn't matter if you get killed because your perfect copy would run around in your place. It would certainly matter to me, who would be dead!

"sensory input" is really vague here. Because the brain is made up of cells, and cells can sense change. If the brain is existing then it's sensing stuff. Not in the classic 5 senses kind of way, but still.

# ¿ Apr 11, 2016 23:22

SHISHKABOB: Nov 30, 2012; Fun Shoe

I have no doubt that every idea in your post has been talked to death already in this thread at least two times.

# ¿ Apr 12, 2016 01:39

SHISHKABOB: Nov 30, 2012; Fun Shoe

When you toss a rock up into the air it goes up and comes back down. How much time does the rock spend at the point of reversal? You can't go from positive to negative without passing zero. But how long was it there? Physics deals with this issue by dividing time into infinitesimal pieces. But that's a mathematical approximation designed to produce the same thing that we see.

# ¿ Apr 12, 2016 16:48

SHISHKABOB: Nov 30, 2012; Fun Shoe

GlyphGryph posted:

good to see your incoherent inability to explain your arguments continues unabated

I don't think it's humanly possible to make a coherent argument on this subject.

# ¿ Apr 12, 2016 16:52

SHISHKABOB: Nov 30, 2012; Fun Shoe

Piell posted:

If I write a message on a piece of paper, then fax it to someone else, I have made an identical copy. If I then burn my piece of paper, that piece of paper that I wrote on no longer exists.

The counterpoint is that your body replaces itself (ship of Theseus). So is there an actual difference between replacing pieces gradually or replacing the whole instantaneously?

Reminds me of the idea about how if you put a frog into a pot of water, and then very very gradually increase the temperature of the water, the frog would not notice and eventually be boiled to death. Of course it's easy to see that that's a silly idea because it doesn't matter when the temp changed, at some point it would be too hot and it would hop out.

Maybe we can see it in geologic change. The reason we humans aren't aware (immediately) of the huge changes and transformations that the earth has gone through, is because a human life is like 10^-7 times shorter than the earths life.

# ¿ Apr 12, 2016 18:35

SHISHKABOB: Nov 30, 2012; Fun Shoe

Peta posted:

(1) The body does not fully replace itself. As far as we can tell, neurogenesis occurs only in some parts of the brain. Connecting the ship of Theseus to human cell regeneration requires a repudiation of specific scientific knowledge. The whole argument is broken from the get-go. But supposing it's not ...

(2) The instantaneous replacement necessarily leaves a moment during which your entire body does not exist. The same is not true of gradual cell replacement. The two scenarios are not analogous.

(3) This isn't a problem for those of us who define ourselves as human animals. Animals are able to survive cell replacement. They are not able to survive instantaneous incineration in a teleportation chamber.

I took for granted earlier a statement by tuxedo catfish about "retention time" of about 5 years for the body.

Instantaneous does not mean a lack of existence at some point. That's the whole idea of the word instantaneous. One moment of present time it's they're, then it's over there. How can something be instantaneous? Well the motion of an object at rest takes it instantaneously to its next position.

Think about the parabolic trajectory of a projectile, specifically one that goes straight up. There is only an instant of time where the projectile is motionless.

Talking about instantaneous points in time doesn't seem very useful anymore. Especially given special relativity. Or black holes. When does the astronaut land on the black hole, from the perspective of a distant observer? The answer is that the astronaut will never finish their journey from that perspective. If we pretend that the astronaut could survive falling into a black hole, then it would take a finite amount of time to fall in. From the astronaut's perspective.

What's the meaning of an instantaneous moment of time here? What's the meaning of gradual? How do things even change in the first place? Why the gently caress do things even happen holy poo poo someone call the ambulance I'm having an existential crisis.

# ¿ Apr 12, 2016 20:05

SHISHKABOB: Nov 30, 2012; Fun Shoe

Peta posted:

I think people who say they would use the teleporter - but really people on both sides of this debate - should take a good look at Eric T. Olson's case for animalism ("An Argument for Animalism", "Pr�cis of The Human Animal"). It maybe crystallizes the concerns of a lot of people who wouldn't want to use the teleporter but who deny a mind-body distinction and doubt the explanatory value of psychological continuity.

The basic premise is that humans are animals, i.e., one human is numerically identical with one animal.

The entailment is that identity over time has nothing to do with psychological continuity, qualia, consciousness, the self as some sort of a bare particular, the self as a bundle of traits, etc.

Instead, the persistence of my identity hinges on my persistence as an animal. I am a human. Therefore, I am an animal. Psychological continuity is neither necessary nor sufficient for animals to persist (survive): When a human is conceived, even when it's born, it lacks the properties of a person, and there's a decent chance that in the twilight of its life it won't have those properties either. A human can enter a vegetative state and emerge intact. Olson:

"It also seems to follow from our being animals that we are only temporarily and contingently people. Or at least that is so if you have to have certain mental properties at a given time to count as a person at that time. If that's what it is to be a person, each human animal starts out as a nonperson and may end up as a nonperson." ("Pr�cis of The Human Animal")
This is why it's perfectly coherent to say that (1) I am an animal/organism, (2) I am a person, and (3) persons are a category of animal.* I'm still baffled that the mutual compatibility of those claims needs to be explained at this level to some people in this thread, but there you have it.

* I said this badly. More precisely: Some animals are persons, or able to be persons, but being a person doesn't seem to depend on being an animal (think gods, angels, highly advanced AI).

Animalism seems like a very pragmatic answer, and works for me. But I'm not happy with it.

# ¿ Apr 12, 2016 20:27

SHISHKABOB: Nov 30, 2012; Fun Shoe

Peta posted:

Not happy with the logic or with the implications?

It doesn't answer my questions.

# ¿ Apr 13, 2016 00:38

SHISHKABOB: Nov 30, 2012; Fun Shoe

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.

For instance, I think of time as progressing frame by frame, each frame being one Planck time in "length"

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.

# ¿ Apr 13, 2016 17:31

SHISHKABOB: Nov 30, 2012; Fun Shoe

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.

# ¿ Apr 13, 2016 18:36

SHISHKABOB: Nov 30, 2012; Fun Shoe

No because of the probabilistic behavior of nature.

# ¿ Apr 13, 2016 18:53

SHISHKABOB: Nov 30, 2012; Fun Shoe

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.

# ¿ Apr 13, 2016 21:21

SHISHKABOB: Nov 30, 2012; Fun Shoe

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???

# ¿ Apr 13, 2016 23:59

SHISHKABOB: Nov 30, 2012; Fun Shoe

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.

[...]

This is why Planck units or any other use of natural units should be employed with care; referring to G = c = 1, Paul S. Wesson wrote that, "Mathematically it is an acceptable trick which saves labour. Physically it represents a loss of information and can lead to confusion."

# ¿ Apr 14, 2016 02:27

SHISHKABOB: Nov 30, 2012; Fun Shoe

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: Nov 30, 2012; Fun Shoe

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

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# ¿ May 18, 2024 03:14

SHISHKABOB: Nov 30, 2012; Fun Shoe

Black holes are discontinuities :eng101:

# ¿ Apr 15, 2016 04:32

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