As I’ve said repeatedly, this is based on a premise that we do not agree on.
I don’t agree that the past is just gone, and if, say, two particles are in the same intrinsic state, then it doesn’t matter why one is here and the other is there.
And on this disagreement, the burden of proof is on you; since I am making no claim. I am simply refusing to make an assumption.
I thought this point was pretty uncontroversial. As long as we assume the existence of an external, objective reality, of course there is such a thing as a fake memory, and of course it’s possible for us to often tell the difference.
For example, one thing which I get a lot, is after a very vivid dream I might wake up and think: “Great! I think today I’ll explore that strange part of town, where there’s a floating train and…oh, wait, that was just a dream”.
Do you think I’ve done the impossible by realizing that although this memory contains real qualia, it does not accurately reflect any external event?
I guess we’re just stuck then, because I’m expecting you to tell me where is the past, if it’s not gone.
You’ve answered a different question from the one I asked. I want to know what **persistent ** difference there is between a real and fake memory (assuming they both recall as the same data).
As far as we know, the same place as the future and present – the space-time continuum (and again note that what is “the” present is, is actually relative).
This doesn’t make much sense to me.
You’re asking what’s the difference, if we put aside all the differences.
The difference between a real memory and a fake one is that one accurately reflects external events that happened to me, and the other does not. So it’s both a difference in how the memory was created but also implications in how that memory is then applied in the future.
In the case of my dream, no photons were ever reflected from a floating train. And, if I tried to find that area of town, I wouldn’t be able to, because it doesn’t exist.
That’s actually the topic of the debate - what’s the difference between the person who walks into the transporter, and the person who walks out, if we ensure there are no differences.
How could they have different implications if they are in fact identical memories?
Is it even the case that the memory of me scraping my knee at age 7 is the ‘same’ memory of the same event as it was when I remembered it ten years ago? Seems unlikely it would be - like withdrawing my money from the bank and expecting the same notes back as I paid in.
That’s why I recommend we all drop it and go home. You and I say, “There aren’t any differences.” That’s the premise. The other guys say, “But there is a difference!” They won’t say what it is. They vigorously reject that it is spiritual, mythical, supernatural, or a difference in soul. But they insist there is a difference.
I see it as an absolute impasse. They can’t define the difference they perceive, yet persist in saying it’s there. It’s becoming like an abortion thread or the thread over whether .999… = 1. Nothing new has been said in a long time.
No, that’s not the same thing. I am saying there are differences: location and causal history. And you are saying “well, forget about those for a second, what are the differences”?
You asked me what the difference is between a real and a fake memory, and that’s what I’ve explained.
In answer to this new question, sure, there are different implications for the same memory. For example, just as I’m “beamed up” in the pod, say someone tosses a ball towards me.
Earth Mijin, i.e. me, catches the ball (assuming I’m not already executed).
Alpha Centauri VI Mijin reaches out to catch it but there is no ball, because no ball was ever thrown towards this person.
And this is why we think you’re talking about a “magical soul” and not about anything physical or real, because, when we ask you to show us those differences, you can only say that they exist in some kind of Platonic ideal or the Mind of God or something, but that you can’t point to them as a physical property of an object.
See? Hopeless impasse. You don’t see the world the same way we do. Fundamental dislocation of philosophies in conflict.
Huh? The fact that there are two sets of particles, in two (different) locations, is not a physical fact about the material world?
The three main, philosophical, positions on personal identity (move, duplicate, never persistent) nowhere posit or require souls. Philosophers on all sides of this debate accept that e.g. Derek Parfit, who credited with the first philosophical essay on PI specifically concerning transporters.
The fact you keep calling for this straw man shows an unwillingness to actually engage in the real arguments here.
It’s not a physical fact about the object in question, given that it has been teleported. An object’s location is not a physical property of the object.
What if I teleport an object…right back to the place it came from? Are you still insisting it isn’t “the same object?”
Well, it’s an extrinsic property of an object. But it’s definitely a physical property and an important one.
Still, if you are asking what qualitative differences there are between this entity and that, then of course there are none – that’s a premise of the scenario. I think you have the wrong idea if you think that the alternative position rests on there being qualitative differences.
You mean if you just break me apart into my constituent atoms, and then reform me on the spot?
Actually, I advanced this very argument in support of the Move position way back in Post #15.
I’ve also given arguments supporting Duplicate (that also do not rely on the existence of souls), such as the millions of l.y. argument.
For some reason, you see me as dogmatically holding a position, but actually I’m trying to show both sides that this isn’t a trivial problem, and none of the major positions require souls (so it’s not a matter of “the souls position” vs “my position”).
Well, what I find most distressing is that we seem to be talking past each other. “What we have here is failure to communicate.” You say you aren’t dogmatically holding a position…and I’ll take your word for it…but we each keep saying things that the other doesn’t agree with. Bad enough we can’t find agreement, but now, we can’t even agree on what we don’t agree on!
I do agree it’s not a trivial question. I’ve said at least once, anyone who comes along and says, “It’s this way and not that way, and only an idiot would think otherwise” is oversimplifying grievously. As an abstract problem in philosophy, we ought to be able to argue either side with roughly equal facility.
I also readily agree that “my side” requires the re-definition of certain commonplace terms. Our received common sense fails under this new technology. A duplicating machine makes some versions of the word “identity” functionally different from what they were in gram’paw’s day.
Frustrating! Enriching, also, and engaging, and fun. But…frustrating!
Now let’s throw time-travel into the mix! The nickel on your right is the future version of the nickel on your left! If you scratch the one on your left, the scratch instantly appears on the one on your right! Four dimensional madness!
(And this other nickel, over here, is from an alternate history, where Aaron Burr was President, and that’s his face, not Jefferson’s, on the coin… Five dimensional madness!)
If you have two entangled photons, there is absolutely no experiment you can run on them individually that gives a different result than the other. Try to measure the frequency, or momentum, or polarization, or whatever, and the two photons look identical.
However, if you run the experiments simultaneously, and compare your results, you’ll find that there is a difference between the two. Measure the polarization on one, and you get a perfectly random result. However, it’s exactly the opposite random result as the other photon! They are different, but not.
For years, physicists tried to come up with explanations such as hidden variable theories (where the photons “knew” how they were supposed to behave through internal state), but for various reasons these theories didn’t pan out. Instead, we just accept that that’s the way quantum mechanics works. It’s weird, but that’s life.
Now, my intent is not to say that consciousness is explained by QM (that way leads to crackpottery). I’m only pointing out that we already have a concrete example where two things can be different and yet where no isolated measurement can reveal this difference, even in principle. And there’s no supernatural stuff required.
If someone does build a perfect copier, then maybe we can discover correlations between the two copies that would not have been revealed by only looking at one copy by itself. Of course, that still won’t prove that subjective identity exists, and I doubt that any experiment at all could prove or disprove it.
At any rate, I’m not getting in the transporter :).
All very true; however, there is one difference here between what you describe and the “Star Trek” model transporter: entanglement. This adds a new level of complexity to all our models. As if the two nickels on the table were entangled, so one must flip heads and the other tails…
I do see your point, really! The photon being examined has a “hidden” property that can never be measured directly. Other such properties might be possible.
But this is very different from saying that a macroscopic object, like a nickel, has an objective record of where it has been. Objects simply do not “encode” their history in that way. This nickel was at Iwo Jima in 1945; that nickel was created this morning in a duplicator, and is physically identical. “Having been to Iwo Jima” is not encoded in the nickel’s atoms, and nor is “created this morning.” The two nickels have the same “identity.” They’re both “my dad’s nickel,” and only in a Platonic, ideal, mystical, non-physical sense has the duplicate not “been to Iwo Jima.”
If future versions of entanglement are discovered that can carry that much information, I’ll re-assess! (Again, I’m not dissing your example. It bears weight.)
(I’m also minded of the poor Capitol staffers who raise and lower flags all day long, so the flags can be given away as “Having flown over the Capitol.” Right, for all of five seconds…and as if anyone could conceivably tell if a lazy staffer scamped the ritual and slyly shifted a couple flags from the “yet to be flown” pile to the “already been flown” pile. It’s a “magical” distinction, arising out of primitive instinctive notions of “contagion.” Blessed silly ritual, I sez!)
Yes, this is my key point. I don’t want to get too caught up in the actual QM connection. It just acts as an “existence proof” for these types of hidden variables (whether classical or quantum). We have no proof of them, but they might be there, and no mysticism is required.
Well, I just don’t know that this is true. Of course, we don’t have an example of a truly duplicate nickel–in practice, nickels do encode their history. The history is scrambled and probably irretrievable, but it is there, and at least enough to distinguish any two nickels.
Maybe there is such thing as an “identity field” that can be used to distinguish two macroscopic objects but that can’t be copied. There’s no evidence either way (so far).
It depends on how smoggy it was that day, I think :).
Another example to think about, though I’m not sure yet if it sheds any more light:
An alien captures you, and says that he will run an experiment on you. You are to be given a gun, and locked in a chamber (standing to one side). A truly perfect copy will be made, rotated 180 degrees and therefore on the opposite side of the chamber. The conditions are so perfect that the two bodies move in perfect unison: if you try to punch your double, you’ll find that he lands an exactly symmetrical punch on you.
The alien says that you will not be released from the chamber until one of you is dead, but not to worry: the gun has a very subtle mechanism (more subtle than any biological structure) that is destroyed in the copying process. Your double won’t know it, but his gun will jam. Of course, he will think he is you, since his memories are identical, and since the conditions are the same, even all his new memories are identical (since the chamber is perfectly symmetrical).
Here’s another hypothetical to make you reconsider that.
– ETA: Doh! This is broadly the same as Dr. Strangelove’s example –
Two entities are in two rooms.
The rooms are identical, and the entities are also identical to the atom, such that all the entities’ movements and behaviours are exactly the same.
Both rooms contain a book that describes the complete physical state of the universe; the location / velocity / whatever of every object.
And both the rooms contain a box, but the one difference between the rooms is that in one room the box contains a red ball, and in the other room it contains a blue ball.
What’s interesting is that neither entity can know whether they will see a red or blue ball when they open the box, because there is no way of knowing which of the two entities they are.
Where is this information stored? How is it that they can discover something on opening the box despite already knowing all the physical facts?
In this case, there’s a physical local difference that they simply don’t know about. There’s a difference in the configuration between experiments A and B. It still seems like you’re refuting a different argument to the one being presented.
I see no differences in the anti-transporter subjects that go beyond the physical reality, so there is nothing to show. And I do not see a need for anything metaphysical to be involved. In fact, a case may be made that it is the pro-transporter crowd who may fare better by including the metaphysical. The questions put forward to the anti-transporter crowd regarding “show me the differences” and “you must be talking about a magic soul” can easily be turned around onto the pro-transporter crowd. Example: press conference with pro-transporter scientist (Pro-T) on planet Nerf:
Press: So, you’ve constructed a fellow here on Nerf based on a fellow named Kirk, a million light years away on Earth, correct?
Pro-T: Not exactly. Our man here on Nerf is Kirk on Earth. It’s just one guy.
Press: Oh, so there is no guy actually on Earth named Kirk, just a guy on Nerf who thinks he’s Kirk from Earth?
Pro-T: No, there’s a guy here and a guy there, but there’s only one guy. [counting on fingers] hmm, one plus one equals…one[/counting on fingers]. Yes, my calculations are correct, there’s just one guy, and his name is Kirk…he’s here, there, and maybe everywhere—he gets around.
Press: Uh, ok…So, Kirk on Earth is Kirk on Nerf?
Pro-T: Yes…no…well, he used to be. He remembers being Kirk on Earth.
Press: Ah, now we’re getting somewhere. When does he remember being Kirk on Earth?
Pro-T: Before he was born. Well, to be exact, he thinks he was born 40 years ago, but he was just created yesterday. He’s a little nutty.
Press: So…you say they used to be the same person but they are separate people now. Why?
Pro-T: Because they have diverged into separate pathways of reality and now have separate consciousnesses. But, they didn’t always!
Press: Ah, divergence implies that there must have been a point of bifurcation before which one entity existed and afterward two or more entities existed, correct?
Pro-T: You would think so.
Press: Is not that the case with the two Kirks?
Pro-T: Not exactly. We got the one Kirk, two Kirk part right…we just didn’t get the bifurcation point correct. It wasn’t where we predicted it to be.
Press: Where did you predict it to be?
Pro-T: At (T-Zero), the moment Nerf Kirk opened his eyes for the first time. Instead, we found the point of bifurcation to be at (T-minus1).
Press: And, that means?
Pro-T: That means Nerf Kirk diverged from Earth Kirk before he existed. It means that Nerf Kirk was a separate person with a separate consciousness from the moment he was born.
Press: Any other differences between Earth Kirk and Nerf Kirk?
Pro-T: Well, Earth Kirk likes to surf and Nerf Kirk is a bit of a jerk, but, other than that, they are much the same. In fact, they both had a nickel in their pocket, but one of them had a bullet hole in it—can’t figure that one out.
Press: So far we’ve just discussed long term memory (LTM). Is there anything else involved in consciousness?
Pro-T: Well you have your short term memory (STM) that involves moment-to-moment conscious thoughts. And you have your sensory perception (SP) that gives each mind a unique point of view. And you have your self-awareness (SA), which is kind of like the conductor of a symphony, turning a cacophony of noise into music.
Press: And these things (STM, SP, SA), they too have a bifurcation point from which one entity diverges into two?
Pro-T: Hell no! That would be really weird. That would mean at some point in time, Kirk on Earth would see through Kirk on Nerf’s eyes and vice-versa. It would also mean that Kirk on earth would remember being Kirk on Nerf STM-wise, at least for a moment, which he does not.
Press: So, physically, you admit that Earth Kirk and Nerf Kirk are and always were separate sets of identical particles, correct?
Pro-T: Correctamundo.
Press: And you admit that Earth Kirk and Nerf Kirk always had separate short term memory, sensory perception and self-awareness, correct?
Pro-T: Indubitably so, my good sir.
Press: So, is it fair to say that Earth Kirk and Nerf Kirk have always been objectively separate individuals and that the majority of what makes up their subjective consciousness, likewise indicates separate individuals?
Pro-T: Sure enough.
Press: And is it true that the long-term memory part of consciousness in this experiment implies a bifurcation point that doesn’t really exist?
Pro-T: Yup.
Press: Most parameters in this experiment point to separate individuals with separate consciosnesses; only one parameter (LTM) kinda-sorta could be seen as supporting the one-consciousness thesis, if you disregard a few things and look at it a certain way. So…how do you explain this DIFFERENCE?
Pro-T: Easy, we just don’t discuss the parameters that support the anti-transporter thesis, and concentrate only on the one that supports the pro-transporter thesis…sorta.
Press: Fair enough. Now, how do you resolve the issue of the bifurcation point being before the physical existence of the individual?
Pro-T: The same way we always do, we’ll fudge something or other. For example, we could include a soul.
Press: How so?
Pro-T: Well, if you accept that you have a soul that will sally forth after you die, you should also have one before you are born, right? So, my esteemed pro-transporter colleagues and I henceforth maintain that it was Kirk from Nerf’s pre-mortal soul that bifurcated from Kirk from Earth at “T-minus 1.” Easy peasy.
Press: But, isn’t the inclusion of a soul what you accuse the anti-transporter people of doing?
Pro-T: Hmm, yes, I suppose you’re right. We’ll need to call it something else. How about the “woo-factor”? That sounds pretty scientific!
Yes, but they have all the physical facts of the universe at their disposal, yet still cannot know this difference. That’s the problem.
There’s only 1 experiment, and 1 universe.
I’m responding to the assertion “only in a Platonic, ideal, mystical, non-physical sense has the duplicate not been to Iwo Jima.”, not the main thread hijack. Histories do matter, and two separate entities are, and will always be, entirely separate.
Mark my words, this will matter, when we come up with a computer program that most of us agree is sentient and self-aware. Were I such a program, I would have no worries about being moved to different hardware. Would you? In fact, I would recommend frequent backups.
In any case, there is no experiment than can resolve the question. (The one above involving K1…K2* involved duplicates, and we’ve already agreed that a duplicate is a duplicate: there are now two K’s.)
If there’s a difference in the subjective experience (of being teleported, where the original copy is destroyed as part of the process), it’s not one that can ever be shown based on any experiment, just as no experiment can tell us what it feels like not to exist.
There are a lot of deep philosophical questions where the experts disagree. For example, there are those who believe we can never make a sentient machine, even though one might imitate sentience perfectly. Well, I disagree with them. If there’s no way to tell the difference, then the difference doesn’t matter.
I do recognize that there can be things that are real that couldn’t be detected. For example, if all of reality was a computer simulation (yeah, in a really big computer), that simulation could run on various types of real hardware and we couldn’t tell the difference. We might be able to tell (for example … this wouldn’t be the real world) that the computer used IEEE floating point (or something mathematically equivalent). But there might be many aspects of the underlying machine that we couldn’t tell.
That doesn’t make those details unreal. But IMHO it makes them irrelevant.