Yes, without question.
Actually I’m not really sure since they constantly switched places. I would assume the one that died was the one who was a little bit of a dick.
Also, if you think about it too much, why would the daughter become a ward of the state? Why couldn’t Borden just request she lived with assistant “Fallon”?
To an outside party it’s non-trivial. As far as we are concerned for all intents and purposes it’s the same dude. It’s only non-trivial to the original Dalton who is going to die painfully when he drops in the tank.
Although I guess if it happened instantly and painlessly (say like a Star Trek transporter), would it matter?
You’re just repeating yourself. I’ve already explained why one shouldn’t insist on the view you’re expressing. Is there anything to add?
I thought Danton used his power and influence as Lord Caldlow to make it play out the way he wanted.
As for the “both originals” vs. “one is a copy” debate, here’s a new and easy way to think about it. Suppose Tesla didn’t just say “they all are”. Suppose he explained it in detail:
Visualize a checkerboard. Got it? I’m going to duplicate this checkerboard by taking all the black squares and moving it to the right. I’ll move the remaining squares to the left. I will fill in the gaps with identical pieces so both copies look exactly like the original.
Okay, now visualize a three dimensional checkboard. Make the cubes really tiny. (There are a lot more of them) Make the cubes microscopically tiny. And make the procedure super fast. And inhumanly efficient and perfect.
Now perform this operation on a human. Suppose we agree the consciousness resides in the brain. Half the brain went left and half went right. Which is the copy and which is the original? If you believe in a continuous consciousness, which person can trace their consciousness back to the original? If you want to look at the age of molecules, which one is the artificial counterfeit? Both? None?
Which one is which?
If you walked into a room with two Dantons inside, soon after the machine was used, with the task of shooting the copy, how would you make the decision on whom to kill?
How, exactly (and be specific), is the Danton that is shot and killed by the surviving Borden brother not actually Danton?
I don’t understand why there should be any significance to the determination of the “original” Danton’s identity from a neutral observer’s perspective, or why the question really needs to be asked. Certainly, to each of the Dantons, he was Danton. Every second of each Danton’s life was lived with the subjective knowledge that he was the real, continuous, original Danton.
Even if there was a way to distinguish “old” and “copy,” I just can’t see the philosophical value in doing so. Every Danton that lives is the Danton who just flipped the switch, and every Danton who dies is a Danton who has previously flipped the switch and lived. If there isn’t any way at all to distinguish, either physically or spiritually, between the two, in what way is it satisfying to insist that the difference still must exist?
This is also why, to me, talking about apples and CDs misses the boat entirely. For the purposes of a conversation about identity and self and consciousness, all apples are the same apple. The experience of being an apple is not in any meaningful way subjective, nor is it even really an experience. Arguing that the two Dantons are different things in the same way two apples are different things removes the discussion entirely from the context in which it’s interesting.
It’s impossible to argue about what is “actually” happening during the creation of the duplicate because we don’t know how the machine works. Neither does Danton.
It’s possible that each time the lever is pulled there is one pre-existing Danton left in pristine condition, completely unaltered and an exact duplicate is created. Even if the two are indistinguishable it wouldn’t change the fact that one had already existed and one was just created. We just would have no way of figuring out which one (unless we can rig up Geordi’s visor to read its quantum signature or something).
My reading (viewing?) of Danton’s comments is that he thinks that is how the machine works (and certainly he might be wrong). In that case, it makes perfect sense for Danton to wonder if he will end up in the balcony or in the box. Trying to argue about what “actually” happens based on the information given in the film can be interesting but how can there be a “right” or “wrong” answer?
If you want to make the argument that the act of transporting him would in itself create a clone…well, I go back to “we don’t know how the machine works.” The movie isn’t exactly hard science fiction. I am discussing the film here, not quantum physics theories or existential philosophy.
If there was a more specific explanation in the film for how the machine works (more than Tesla’s comment about the hats) I might have a different opinion.
But nobody here is saying that the two men, at the point at which one is dying and the other is exulting, are living the same life. Nobody is saying that, when a Danton is dying and a Danton is up on the balcony, there aren’t two of them.
What many people are saying is that, just a second before pulling the switch, it is not an option for Danton to wonder which one “he” is going to be, because he’s going to be both, inevitably, no matter how he thinks the machine “actually” works. He’s going to pull the switch and a bifurcation is going to occur, and both branches of the split are going to be him; therefore he’s going to be both. Danton is going to pull the switch, shut his eyes, and he’s going to open them and be drowning. He’s also going to pull the switch, shut his eyes, and open them some distance away. There will be two of him, so the experiences won’t flow backward in time to a Danton who has done both, but sticking to the normal forward progression of time, the guy who flips the switch is the guy who ends up in both places. Don’t go backward from the split to pre-split, start at the split and go forward.
The point is, if you froze time at that point immediately after the magic happened, the question “will I be in the box or on the balcony” still wouldn’t be answered; it would be incoherent. Specifically, a Danton would be living the experience of finding out that, oh shit, Danton was the one who ended up in the box, and a Danton also would be finding out that thank god, he was the one who survived. Both were the Danton who pulled the switch. Getting hung up on whether one was the original and one was the copy leads you to the conclusion that there is a meaningful answer to the question, but the question itself suggests a distinction that doesn’t exist. There was one guy when the switch was pulled, and then there were two of that guy.
Let’s say that what happens during the trick is exactly what you describe - the Danton who touches the switch is preserved in every way, and a new one zoinks into existence somewhere else. Now imagine a different model for understanding the trick, where there’s a complicated halving, or whatever, such that the original is cut into two and each duplicate is half of the original. Specifically, other than the fact that I’m saying they’re different, how are they different? How are these not different ways to say the same thing? A little time has passed, and now there are two atoms. They are both the same. They both make up a Danton who has every right to claim that he’s Danton; in fact, there’s no way he could possibly know, even in the scenario where we agree to assume that there’s an original, whether he is the original or the duplicate.
So in what way, then, is there really an original and a duplicate, specifically? You flip the switch, and now there’s two of the exact same thing that there was previously one of; there’s really no getting around the fact that in the end, they’re both the original.
If there was evidence of some kind of split I might agree with you. My point is that Danton himself seems to think (perhaps wrongly) that he, in the body he has now will continue to exist and a copy will be made. He will not experience what the copy experiences. One of them will experience a horrible death, the other will take a bow. From his perspective that is a big difference.
Obviously the copy won’t know it’s a copy but that wouldn’t change the fact that it is a copy. If you watched an exact duplicate of you experience a grisly death it would be creepy and horrifying but you would still probably be thinking “Boy, I’m glad that’s not me!” There would still be a “you” to think that and an “other” to think it about, despite that fact that a moment earlier there was not. One of those two didn’t exist a moment ago even though it believes it did. Only one actually existed and was able to wonder what was going to happen to it.
If it is a copy and not a split I don’t see how you can say it’s the same person.
Under those circumstances, exactly as you describe them, what would the copy experience? From his perspective, what happens from 5 seconds prior to the copy until, you know, curtains?
The copy would not know it was a copy. Say the copy is the one that drowns, the self that had pulled the switch and had the ability to contemplate its fate would not experience its suffering. The copy would feel like it was the same person but it wouldn’t be. He would have a memory of contemplating his fate but he never actually had those thoughts because he didn’t exist at the time they were being thought.
OMG THEN WHAT’S THE DIFFERENCE? THERE ISN’T ANY SO IT DOESN’T MATTER!
That’s the inevitable response and it’s getting tired. The argument is going around in circles.
OMG!!! It’s like the story about the person throwing the dying starfish into the ocean saying, “it will make a difference to this one.”
What the fuck? I’ve posted three times and haven’t interacted with you on the subject, but this is so tiresome and circular that you had to post on the matter? Jesus christ.
Unlike you, I’ve posted way more than three times in this thread, so I wasn’t just jumping into a conversation I wasn’t a part of and declaring it circular, if that’s what you’re implying. The argument is circular. On both of our sides. It’s not going to go anywhere and I said so. So sorry if it offended your sensibilities. Jesus Christ.
The thread you’re talking about sounds like the Dollhouse thread where I brought up the idea, based on a short story I remember clearly but to date have been unable to identify.
Here’s the Dollhouse thread, I first brought up the idea in post 26, and then described the short story in post 75.
IMO the only way the Prestige is interesting is if the original stays in the box and a duplicate is created elsewhere. This necessitates that he actively commits suicide every night, which is interesting. If the duplicate is the one in the box, that’s not much of a hardcore sacrifice. Hell, it’s not a sacrifice at all.
I will never be able to get on board with the philosophical idea that both are equally legitimate heirs to the original consciousness, and I do think it makes a huge difference. If I could copy you and create a perfect duplicate, once I’d scanned you would you be okay with me shooting you in the head? If not, then you can’t claim that both new versions are equally the original.
OK, here is another way to explain it. Let’s say there is a person who is suffering from the delusion that they are me. They are completely and absolutely 100% convinced they are me. They are in a horrible accident and my life flashes before their eyes as they die. How does this directly affect me? How is that any different to me than it would be if an instantly created body that shared my memories died?
Again, I am not talking about some kind of split or off-shoot of me. I am talking about a duplicate that is made without touching or changing me in any way.
It sounds like possibly the same short story, but this thread was strictly about this concept, and was posted some years back.
I pretty sort of agree with this, but I’ll go a step further and say it is interesting if we do not know. This way, when I ask a question about how Danton knew which night NOT to reappear on the balcony, no one will answer it and instead have a heated philosophical debate on the nature of individuality.
And wouldn’t it have been funny if they’s named Tesla’s assistant’s cat Schrodinger?
I agree that it’s not nearly as interesting if Danton knows that he’s being sent to the balcony. If he is the one who is going to drown it’s a lot more of a sacrifice. But you know what I think is even better? Him not knowing at all. He doesn’t know, stepping into the box with his back to the crowd, whether he’s about to die or not. It would be perhaps one of the most intensely terrifying things imaginable.
Going back to the OP, the film did not present evidence that Borden’s presence was known to Danton. This seems to be an instance of the unexpected hanging paradox. However, once it got to the last show, Danton had nothing to gain from the Prestige, so he didn’t perform it.
But why would he set it up this way? Borden could have appeared at the 99th show. Perhaps Danton posted guards backstage for every show but the last. Or maybe it was explained in the book and the director did not feel the need to explain it in the film.
As for the copy vs. original debate, once a perfect twin is produced, it is a separate entity. It doesn’t matter if I am the copy or the original, I will regard the other version of me as “separate”. It doesn’t matter to me if my twin arose via splitting, offshooting, bifurcating, copying, cloning, duplicating, magicking, dollhousing or simulacruming.
If I have an identical twin, I do not care if the original egg split naturally, or if a new embryo was formed in a lab and added. It doesn’t even matter if the new embryo’s DNA was harvested out of the original and injected into the new versus if the DNA code was read from the original, copied, then written into a new set of DNA strands and injected into the new embryo.
As long as the process is “perfect”, it doesn’t matter to me if I am the resulting twin from the original embryo or the new embryo.
The tests for empathy, like “would I shoot myself so the other would live” is irrelevant. That’s only a test of how much empathy one has for the other person. Some people may only sacrifice themselves if the other is exactly like themself in appearance and experiences. Some may sacrifice if the other is a twin in appearance only. Or maybe even if the other is completely different, and the sacrifice is motivated purely by compassion.
I don’t think most people would say “I am okay with you shooting me in the head, because I have a duplicate”. Most people want to live. Unless the person is an obsessed magician, apparently.