If microscopic differences count, then you aren’t the “same person” you were eight minutes ago.
(Hey, I just clipped my fingernails…thereby committing suicide and creating a duplicate who isn’t really “me” but just thinks he is…)
I agree that a different environment would initiate differences, leading to divergences, which would, in time, lead to significant distinct individuality.
I think that such differences would arise anyway, just out of chemical variations, quantum uncertainty, etc. Even the two guys in “the same place and time” would quietly begin to diverge. At some point, one of them would think, “Man, I’m really hungry” a microsecond ahead of the other guy, and from that it just widens and widens.
Meanwhile, in practical terms, we can build sufficiently identical environments – sealed rooms with identical features and fixtures – to count as “the same” for working purposes. There really would be no possible way for an individual to know if he is in room A or room B. That’s a trivial engineering problem.
“The Ultimate Anthropic Principle” – your consciousness exists in those universes where it is possible for your consciousness to exist.
I like this one as an answer to “Free Will v. Predestination.” You can (sort of) have both in an infinitely branching multiverse, where “you” exercise all options open to your will. You are strong and resist temptation…and you are weak and succumb to temptation.
(On Judgement Day, God assesses to total envelope of all of your actions, and judges you on the full composite.)
Your second & third paragraphs don’
t go together.
Each of the multiverse branches of “you” dies at a different time for a different reason. Kinda hard to somehow assess the total “you” and render a single thumbs up or down that converts multi-you back into single you for your eternal reward.
Well that position is essentially the same as “you are transported” just multiplied.
But actually, it does remind me of a far simpler objection to the “you are transported” position than the one I was just trying to outline.
If we’re saying that the same instance of consciousness that walks in to the transporter is one and the same as the one that walks out, then I’ve moved, right? I mean, that’s the whole point: location L becomes location L + delta.
But if the only requirement for a transport to happen is an identical brain configuration, then we can also apparently transport to parallel universes, outside of our light cone, backwards in time or to a universe physically entirely separate to our own. Because in any of these situations a configuration identical to your brain right now is not physically forbidden and could arise by chance if nothing else.
I think these kinds of “fantastical” transports should give pause to the notion that it’s you, and not merely an entirely separate, but identical, person.
Well, it’s certainly an “experimental” theology, and I don’t actually subscribe to it.
To begin with, it depends on “probability density.” Not all outcomes are equally likely. The makeup of your character is what makes “armed robbery” a relatively thinly populated branch of the vast probability tree, whereas “obeys the law” is a much more heavily travelled branch.
For another person – a right rotter! – the relative probabilities go the other way: for every four world-lines where he robs the liquor store, there are only three where he obeys the law.
(Yes, you can say, “But in another world-line, his personality is different.” Agreed. Genetics and environment will have a huge influence also.)
In a way, it’s a variant of “They Also Serve Who Only Stand and Wait.” i.e., the guy who does nothing but sentry duty, or even the guy who only peels potatoes, still contributed to the war victory – and their positions might have been overrun by the enemy, so it’s fair to wonder, “What would they have done if there had been combat in their sector?”
I’ve never had to fight for my life…but I’d like to think that a fair-minded God would take into account what I might have done if I’d ever had to.
(A “fair-minded God.” Is that too much to desire in a theological system? Maybe!)
Oops, sorry, nothing to do with teleportation and only little to do with many-worlds.
Ha! Got it! In a “many worlds” system, there is a world where I’m already in New York. So, to “teleport” to New York, I only need to “rotate the universe” to one of those worlds where I’m already there!
Poof! I’m already there! Teleportation via contingency!
Overall I like & agree with a bunch of your thinking. Your post #74 was especially insightful. My dig in my #84 was mostly tongue in cheek. Quite the leap from multiverses to traditional Judgement Day theology.
These are fun problems. Though I if I had a transporter/duplicator I think I’d use it more to duplicate a stack of $100s than I would to duplicate myself.
Or, since bills have serial numbers, gold bars or gold coins. But if word ever leaks out, then the value of gold (and antiques!) would plummet.
George O. Smith dealt with this in his (fun, but dated) sf collection “Venus Equilateral.” Good stuff, but very “40’s” in overall tone. He solved the problem by having his duplicating machines “watermark” the product, so you can’t just duplicate an ancient painting or statue or gold coin. (You could still duplicate gold bars and melt them down, but, today, we might use some sort of isotope tagging as a “watermark.”)
I’d stock up on really good foods, freeze 'em, and duplicate 'em as desired. Really good pizza, super-duper burger, top-rate fried chicken, over and over, unlimited! (I ain’t so much into caviar…)
I’m trying to think of some way to make this dirty, but duplicate sex slaves have pretty much the same problem in a duplicator universe as they do here: ethics notwithstanding, I just don’t have the resources to keep a bunch of sex slaves around the house.
I don’t believe you guys are thinking this through to the nth degree.
If it’s possible to transport yourself in the fashion we’re discussing (i.e. disassembling then reassembling your constituent particles somewhere else), then it’s theoretically possible to duplicate infinite instances of yourself throughout the universe, correct? [the alternate instances don’t need to be formed from the exact same particles that formed you—because no particle is privileged—, they just need to be similar particles arranged in the same exact fashion as the original]. Correct?
I agree with that premise. There can be infinite instances of you in the universe, all diverged into their own unique lives. Fine. I agree that that’s possible.
But, the real question is, what bearing do any of those infinite instances of you have on you (original “you”, the one currently reading this post)? Do they matter to you at all? Are you, or have you ever been, even aware of their existence? In what way do they matter to you in any way over and above, say, that of any other object in the universe…like your clone…or your identical twin…or your fraternal twin… or a chicken…or a rock?
The answer, as I see it, is that they don’t matter to you one whit. “You” can’t have a first person perspective consciousness in any other object in the universe other that the one currently locked into and onto the brain currently residing in your skull. Your consciousness is a local event, it can’t be non-local—that would constitute a paradox.
(i.e. Don’t off yourself and expect to live on in some other brain).
In this thread, once again, I’ve found myself arguing against the “you are transported” position, because that’s apparently the way this forum leans. (I’ve also argued against the suggestion that it’s a solved problem and only those who believe in souls or magic or whatever think otherwise).
But the idea that you are not transported, but have continuity of existence right now in your current body, is problematic too. What if I took the atoms of your brain, scattered them around the universe and then formed them back into the structure of your brain. Is it still you after that process? If not, what is it lacking? What difference is there between your brain arriving at state C via B versus state C via Z?
In the transporter scenario, what if we squirt your actual brain’s atoms across to the destination? If that’s different to the regular transporter scenario, why is it? Is there something “special” about your own atoms?
If, at some instant, they are truly identical to me, then, yes, they “matter” to me, because they are me.
If they aren’t identical, then, sure, they’re just a bunch of other guys with the same name and memories. They aren’t “fully” me because they aren’t within my environment. i.e., they don’t come home to the same family, they don’t party with the same friends, they don’t have the same property and chattels.
Only in the time in which they are fully and wholly identical to me does it “not matter” which one of us “gets killed.” During that “entanglement” period, when he is me and I am he and we are all together, then you can kill one of us, and the personal individuality does live on in the survivors.
At the point where the “entanglement” is broken, and individuality is asserted, then it is too late for “me” to “live on” in “him.”
That’s kind of my point. I argue that no “instance” of you can be truly identical to you, ever. Even if you and your “twin” share the exact same configuration of particles, you can’t share the exact same location in time and space; ergo, you can’t share the same consciousness.
And this is in contradistinction to you merrily going about your business, living as you do, clipping your toenails and whatnot, because in the normal course of your life, you have continuity from one instance to another with absolutely no interruption. If you have an “interruption”, be it from dying, or bifurcating into another being elsewhere in the universe, your particular consciousness is destroyed.
Wait, what?
In the transporter scenario the person at the destination is located in a different environment by definition. If you now say different environment =/= same consciousness, then it would seem you’re saying the “you are transported” position is trivially false.
If OTOH you mean only as long as memories are identical, it’s a transport, well, all the situations we’ve described explicitly stated that is the case. So, infinite dupes of you, born again as a Boltzmann brain, travelling to universes physically separate to ours…all are possible then?
The only way I can conceive having a legitimate conscious future in more than one location is if >~18 month postpartum mitosis were possible (something discussed a while back). The reason identical twins don’t count is because they split *before *gaining consciousness/self-awareness. Postpartum split twins would still never share consciousness because they’d diverge while splitting, but the implication is still something interesting to consider.
Well, while this would put an end to the idea of duplicating machines, it still doesn’t quite wreck the idea of transporting machines, since (in the Star Trek model, anyway) there’s “only one of you.”
I still don’t see that this is conclusively demonstrated. I was once knocked out in an accident (concussion and everything.) My consciousness was very definitely interrupted! The whole “continuity” argument leaves me completely unconvinced: it seems like an ad hoc requirement that people are putting in without full justification.
What about “magical” teleportation – I Dream of Jeannie style? Blink, and you’re somewhere else. There is a clear discontinuity…but how does that, by itself deny the identity of personhood?
Oops, sorry, this was in regards to “identical duplicates,” especially during the “entangled phase,” i.e., when the two are still thinking the same thoughts. When they both, at exactly the same moment, say, “Uh…where am I? My head feels funny…”
In absolute abstract theory, if they are in two separate places, then that environmental difference will serve to “disentangle” them, and they will begin to diverge into different identities. My pragmatic rebuttal is that we can build two rooms which are sufficiently close to identical as to serve as “identical” environments.
By and large, that’s my opinion. I hold that the Star Trek transporter “transports” you. Others insist that it “kills you and creates a duplicate.” The trouble is that no difference can be discerned between the pre- and post-transport Jim Kirk, so the charge that “You’re not really Jim Kirk!” seems groundless.
Meanwhile, in the model you describe, the duplicates start out as “truly me,” but then go on to discover new environments, and diverge from my own “me-ness.” If we all meet again in ten years, we’ll have a lot in common, but we’ll really be different individuals.
(This also happens in the “what-if” multiverse. What if I’d had a different job when fresh out of college? I might have married and had a house, but wouldn’t be writing vapid philosophical crap on SDMB. Are both of these instances really “me?”)
Again, you’re stating part of the premise as though it’s a refutation of the “Not transported” position. It is not, and it’s this kind of thing that makes me think you still don’t quite follow what the issue is.
…which is the same as the transporter position, right? Identical brain configuration at the exact instant of transport and then divergence.
So…you are biting the bullet and suggesting that transport to physically separate universes, say, is possible?
When you received your concussion, did you literally lose your mind, or was it merely in hibernation mode? I assume it somehow found its way back into your brain? I don’t believe one’s mind completely disassociates from one’s brain during sleep, general anesthesia, concussion, or anything else short of brain death.
I think *I Dream of Jeannie *teleportation may take longer to develop than Star Trek teleportation, but I’ll choose not to travel via either mode.
This is the point at which we disagree. You say that when two instances of someone are in two separate places, “they begin to diverge into different identities.” I argue that simply by virtue of being in separate places, they have already diverged. You can’t have a real conscious future in a separated brain. I don’t say this because I wish it were true (I’d like to Jeannie-blink to Bermuda, for example…with Jeannie…in a bikini, hubba hubba), I say it because allowing for successful teleportation opens a Pandora’s box of paradoxes.
If you can teleport (via assembly or reassembly of particles) to a different location and maintain your original consciousness, then you must also be able to assemble similar particles anywhere, at any time and produce multiple copies. How can you realistically have a conscious future in all those multiple copies? They answer must be: you can’t. And, if you can’t have a future in multiple “transported” versions of yourself, then you can’t have a future in even one transported version (because there is no difference between them). Therefore, if a transporter is developed and you transport in it, it will kill the original “you.” I really don’t see how that conclusion can be logically refuted.
What you can logically refute is the notion of having a real future in your own body over time. If you don’t have a real future, then you are as screwed as if you get into a transporter and you may as well stop taking you medicine and start living it up, because you’re a dead man reading (I extend my condolences and hope you remember me in your will).
I don’t subscribe to that line of thought. I believe that I don’t have a real future in any transported version of me, but I do have a future in my own body tomorrow and beyond (unless I get run over by a truck or something). Not always, but usually things are as they seem to be. I seem to have a future in my body.
I believe the universe we live in prevents paradoxes from occurring by way of the limits it sets with physical laws. Even the post-partum mitosis example I proposed up-thread can’t happen in real life–it can only be a thought experiment. If you split all the cells in your brain, you wouldn’t have two brains with separate consciousnesses; you’d have one big brain with one superconsciousness. True story: it happened to me (horrible radiation accident playing with my glow-in-the-dark clock).
I’ve noticed that you hold strong to the idea of successful teleportation. I’m thinking you’ve been tinkering around in your garage, amiright? Hey, I’m always looking for good investment opportunities. Even if it doesn’t work as advertised, it can’t be proven in a court of law (first class teleportation device or ghastly death machine? You’ve failed to provide sufficient evidence, counselor; case dismissed).
I think a very important question, which I put in my post but no one has addressed is this:
Does the transportation process have to include something “extra” to prevent a duplicate from coming into being?
I.e., does it have to euthanize the transportee so that s/he is not still sitting there after the process is complete? Is “dematerialization” merely a euphemism for such euthanasia? If so, then yes, that person is definitely being killed and should not want to use the system.
I don’t believe one’s mind completely disassociates from one’s brain during sleep, general anesthesia, concussion, or anything else short of brain death.