Thats where I got the question from, (and “The Cassini Division” by Banks friend, can’t remember his name though), one of the characters in it alludes to the very same difficulty I immediately thought of when the mindstates were mentioned.
“I intend to live forever or die trying” Yossarian, Catch-22 
In ForgottenLore’s scenario, how do you distinguish between the “original” and the “copy” if, to add to it, you put both bodies on a turntable, and spin it until everyone loses track of which is which? Yes, differenent experiences after the split make different people, but are you really a different person from the one you would be if you made a different choice in your life? This is kind of like a Turing Test - what test would you apply to a person and a duplicate, with the same memories, to distinguish them? A lot of people seem to be assuming that the clone would know he is a clone somehow.
The difference between the brain and a computer is that the hardware is closely tied to the software. Unless the hardware is identical, the software is not identical. And it is more than the brain - your hormone levels make a difference also, if you want to make an exact duplicate. I doubt it is feasible to make an exact copy physically - but I don’t see why it would be impossible to do an exact simulation of each neuron and connection, including the weighting between connections.
Seems pretty obvious to me. From the very first post, you, yourself, would die, but someone else would take over (who to all extents and purposes, would have the whole feeling like you’re waking up and just carrying on that is describe above). It is they who would have the feeling of dying and being born again, and from everyone else’s point of view (including the newly created copy), you would be brought back from the dead. The thing you would describe as “you” would still be dead, in the same way that if you create a copy but mix them up as suggested above, it doesn’t matter which one dies, someone dies. One of those people will no longer be aware of being alive, whether or no the other one is the copy or the original. I think this has been stated many times above, just trying to stop peoples obsession with how everyone else will perceive the person being copied. Outside perception has nothing to do with how it feels to be “you”, and it is irrelevant to this discussion whether your friends will recognise you, whether your copy believe he is “you”, or whether the brain patterns are the same/molecules in the brain are the same/any other outside influence. Someone will cease to exist, and if that happens to be who you see as “you” then your dead, regardless of what else comes along that sees you as “you”. Clear?? Thought not. Sorry, I’m bad at this.
I am a firm believer that the “I” cannot be duplicated. I couldn’t even imagine of a way to re-create my “I” anywhere else, or for that matter in anyone else. A clone, snapshot, whatever you wish to call it, and no matter how perfect the process is at matching my every cell and neuron at any given state, is basically another person all together. They might act EXACTLY as I would act in any given situation thereafter, and I believe the duplicate would even think it WAS “I”. I will even go so far as to say that given ForgottenLore’s example, if you were to somehow mix the two (or three, or four!) of us up (as long as the “process” were perfect enough), an observer or any one of the copies or original would have no way of knowing which was the dupe or the real deal. But that is entirely beside the point. The real point is that there IS a difference between “selves”. I will always and forever remain “ME”. I can never become “YOU” so why should I reason that making a duplicate of myself before or after death would result in “ME” again? As far as I’m concerned, that duplicate is someone else, whether it thinks it’s me or not. Once “I” am extinguished, that’s it. No more. Anything else is not “ME”. Maybe the “Self” is an illusion of trillions of cells, maybe I am a soul, merely seated in this body… who knows? The real questions are: Why did I come to consciousness in THIS body, at THIS point in history, on THIS planet, in THIS species, and so on… time for another beer…
That said, I find the idea from the Hyperion (by Dan Simmons) series of “Farcasters” a much more plausible and safer way of teleportation. Forget about disassembling the human body, death, rebirth, clones, the “Self”, the “I”… Bah! Why trifle with all that complicated science and philosophy when you can simply bust open a tunnel in space-time and walk right through to any place in the galaxy? Now, that’s my brand of teleporter™!
But continuity of thought is totally subjective, and the duplicate would not perceive any loss of continuity… and there’s no way for you to distinguish as to whether or not there was a loss of continuity, either.
Think of a mental Turing test… as long as Person B is externally indistinguishable from Person A, then they might as well be the same thing. Small solace to the poor original that bit the dust, but for all intents and purposes beyond personal ego, Person B is just the same as Person A.
Oh, and by the way, I thought that they handled this subject excellently in The Sixth Day, though I will admit to being one of the few that actually liked that movie.
Oh, yeah, it is nice to see more Vultures. I thought of Look to Windward the second I saw this thread title.
IIRC, Douglas Adams tells a similar story in Last Chance to See. Paraphrasing badly: He’s in Japan, visiting the site of a famous temple. “It looks so new!” he exclaims to his guide. “Well,” responds the guide, “bits of it have been replaced over the years, and of course it burned to the ground a while back. But it’s still the same building.”
I too have wished there was a way to make a copy of the stuff, or at least the memories, between your ears. I’ve got nephews I’d like to share some bits of wisdom with, but its just not the same as having a life experience. Now if I could download certain memories from my brain and pass them on to the boys so they can recall them as easily as I could, that would save a LOT of explaining.
Hey, there’s a story idea! GIve it the spin of how we readjust memories over time…
Patty
This brings up an interesting computer theoretic point. Assume the preceeding is true: A destructive brain scan that allows the brain to be replaced by hardware. (And this goes for any idea about a brain running on a computer.) Any computing process can be thought of as Input -> Output. For a human being, the input is all the sensory data our eyes, ears, and other senses provide us with. The output is our actions. Here’s the thing though. Any computer program can be replaced by one of the simplest computing machines, a lookup table.
A lookup table is essentially what RAM is. Given a set of inputs, (for RAM, an address) return a set of outputs (for RAM, what is stored in that location.) So, if you believe that at some point a computer will “run” a human consciousness, then you have to believe that given a certain set of inputs, an appropriate output can be provided by an extremely large lookup table. And in the case of the thought experiment provided above, it would be a lookup table that would absolutely insist that it had never lost consciousness!
Generally people don’t respond well to this idea. They want to think of some “arbitrarily complex” (meaning they don’t understand it) computer system running a human brain, not something as simple and easy to understand as a lookup table. So if anyone wants to still believe that a complex computer could “run” a human brain, but a lookup table couldn’t, then please feel free to show how they are functionally different.
Again, a great many of you are completely missing the point. Sure, an exact of clone of you will be indisitinguisable from you; there will be no objective means to tell who is the original.
HOWEVER, this is irrelevent. The whole point is to obtain immortality. An extact copy of me, objectively indestinguisable from me, does not give ME immortality. There is no way for my “I” to leap into a different existence. The original is still different from the clone. If the original is killed, then “I” no longer am alive and the whole purpose of cloning is defeated.
The continuity of thought can be the only valid argument.
Exactly. The philosophers talk about how “there is something it is like to be a person”. To me that something is the software and data I talked about earlier. The “operational self” as I called it. Recreate the software/data and the “something it is like” is back and “you” are back. Duplicate the snapshot and there are now two “you” or more. Bizarre concept but it seems to follow. Asking “which one is the real you” is like asking which of two identical floppy disks is the “true” floppy.
In spite of what I just said I have to admit this is the way I’d want to be uploaded rather than the scan-and-vaporize approach. It appeals because I can’t see how it would differ from sustaining, say, a small amount of brain damage. And we know people still feel that they are still “themselves” after such events. Except that this is kind of the opposite, an ongoing brain upgrade that ultimately probably makes you think faster and better, well at least faster.
Unless the “I” is simply a product of the brain software. Then recreating the software and the exact state of the database(memories) should do the job. And as others have pointed out, thought isn’t very continuous anyway in a living person.
Dr. Zoidberg,
I disagree. It may very well be a “simple” case of recreating the necessary software and exact conditions of the hardware. But one of those conditions is time and location. Since it is physically impossible for more than one object to occupy the same location at a time, then right off the bat we have a distinction. Thus, by virtue of this fact alone, the two cannot possibly be the same.
In other words, part of “recreating the software and the exact state of the database” assumes recreating the exact location in the space-time contiuum. This is impossible.
i mentioned this before but i didn’t elaborate.
if we are ever able to make this perfect ‘copy’ legitimately and in due course, we would be gods. as gods we will have no illusions about self and this looks around, dillema will not be.
however, should we be thrust upon this ‘technology’ before our time then we will eventually adapt anyway, all in the name of convenience as we had done so for everything else. the line we draw will be pushed back as needs and rationalisation grows. in this case, the line is firmly crossed when the first ‘copy’ is made and irreversible when the ‘original’ die. this will happen for better or worse, for we have never (AFAIK) unlearned a new technology.
OK, an analogy to the simple case of making a backup is where we put you under general anesthesia for an operation. We pack you on a dolly and wheel you into some odd part of the hospital. When you regain consciousness you are “rebooted” in a different space-time location. Your solution above to the cloning problem seems to mean that you are a different person after surgery too. You can try to resolve it by saying that the physical container of your mind (your brain) moves continously through space-time with no breaks. But so does a stream of data in a wire or EM signal. One of Egan’s novels has people “beaming” themselves across lightyears of space by taking a snapshot and transmitting the data using a laser, for instance. And if we put a beam-splitter in the laser we have two continous streams that could both arrive at some distant place and be used to make “you”.
My claim isn’t really that the two “you” copies are the same but that they both fulfill all the requirements that we can think of to be “you”. To illustrate, 3 and 5 are not the same number. They are both numbers though. 
Right. But that’s completely irrelevent to me if I want to preserve MY immortality. If my “I” doesn’t continue, then it’s pointless.
As for the anasthesia, although your consciousness may temporarily be suspended, there is no cesation in the continuity of thought: Your brain remains active even when anaesthetized.
No it is not irrelevent. You are assuming that there is more to “you” than carbon and some tricks of geometry. Your “I” doesn’t have to leap anywhere for your copy to continue it’s existence. And if It cannot tell that it is not the original, to it, (the last copy) it has existed for hundreds or thousands of years (all of the different 'you’s experiences).
Subjectively speaking, to every individual, there is no present, and no future. The only thing that exists in a truly tangible way is the past, our memory. As I type I only have my sensory inputs to determine what I have typed, but no true way of knowing (beyond assumption) what exactly it is that I am doing just now.
Right now, I am thinking about how I would be able to tell if I were an original me. I am thinking about this subject in depth actually. If someone made a ‘copy’ of me at this very second, the copy would have no way of knowing any difference between itself and the original, to it, time would be continous from this thought to the next. While this body may or may not be destroyed, and this particular brain and it’s memories may go with it, as long as the copy has no way to tell it’s a copy to it makes no difference.
Is it ‘true immortality’, no I would say it isn’t. But functionally it provides the same effect. The copy would have all the same memories and experiences as me. Including the thoughts about it going on in my head now. It wouldn’t (and shouldn’t) matter to it whether or not it’s the true original, as to it, there would be no perceivable difference.
But thought != brain activity. There is no evidence that anesthetized people are “thinking” at all. From what we can tell anesthesia seems to have to remarkable ability to blank out all conscious thought. You don’t even dream. The brain activity may just be random neural firing, some kind of low level background noise or it may amount to some type of “maintenance” activity akin to a disk defrag but it doesn’t seem to be connected to thought at all. My position is simply that the “I” is discontinuous all the time anyway and the kind of interruptions we might see in the post-human world will just be new forms of the same kinds of interruptions we get now when we sleep or are put under anesthesia. The “I” is the creation of these patterns of brain activity when the brain is functioning in the normal conscious state. Run the right mind patterns and the “I” is recreated even if the physical substrate of the original mind is gone.
I find it fascinating that there is obviously two different views on the nature of “Self”:
Your “I” is a one-time-only existence. Once extinguished (death), that’s it… for “YOU” there is no more. Sure you can make copies of yourself given proper technology, but it would contain a different “I”, therefore actually someone else, who merely thinks of himself as you, and would have no way of knowing otherwise. Conclusion: your “I” is something MORE than the sum total of your memories and physical brain, and even if you duplicated your every neuron, “ YOU” will not awaken, it would be someone else.
Your “I” is nothing more that the state of your brain functions, and memories. Theoretically, one could take a snapshot of your brain to duplicate as needed, thereby reinstating their “I” or perceived existence in another mind altogether… indefinitely. Conclusion: your “I” is nothing MORE than your memories and physical brain, and you could thereby “awaken” in a copy if one were able to duplicate.
I find example 2 pretty frustrating and filled with possible logical contradictions: If I were to duplicate myself into another copy without destroying “ME” (the original) there would be two “I”s, and I can’t imagine how that would be possible. I’m sure other contradictions exist as well, but you catch my drift.
…off to go watch Multiplicity…