I’m with Mangetout: they don’t have all the physical facts of the universe. In fact, this thought-experiment serves to demolish the notion of “omniscience” more than it does to undermine the functioning of a transporter! No volume of information can ever contain “all the physical facts of the universe.”
The book can only say “You are in a room with either a red ball or a blue ball.” If it were to say, truly, to the guy in the room with a red ball, “You are in a room with a red ball,” then the book could not be identical to the book in the room with the guy in the room with the blue ball. (What an uncomfortable sentence!)
It’s like having a data pointer in a Turing machine that points to two different memory locations. Can’t happen.
Just be sure not to be standing in the experimental chamber when the intrinsic field is removed!
Grin! S’truth!
Problem: when do I learn that there is a difference between my double’s gun and my gun? If I learn of this after the duplication, then we aren’t identical. If I learn of this before the duplication, then both my double and I are under the impression that “My gun will work, but his gun won’t.” So, when we both pull the trigger at exactly the same instant, and my gun goes “click” and his gun goes “Ka-Blammo!” my last thought would be, “Flippin’ alien lied to me…”
Do you see the problem. “You are identical” contradicts “Your double won’t know it, but…”
(In practice, I wouldn’t shoot my double, and, since “myself” knows this, he won’t shoot me. We’ll sit around, talking in stereo, getting more and more bored, until we become so totally fed up, thoughts of suicide become dominant. But this will tend to break the symmetry, as I know my double can’t commit suicide: his gun doesn’t work! He doesn’t know this! Would this expand to shake us from our lock-step? If not, then I die, and he, quite to his surprise, lives.)
The book doesn’t say that. Both books say something like “the room to the south has a red ball, and the room to the north has a blue ball”. An omniscient observer can look into the brains of the clones and see that they have identical brain-states, and that neither one can figure out which room they’re in. The clones have the same information, and yet somehow they can’t tell if they’re the one to the north or south, whereas the observer can.
I dunno, it would be kinda cool to have a giant, glowing blue dong!
You learn that there’s a difference beforehand. So as you said, the brain states are identical until the triggers are pulled, and the last thoughts of one of you will be “flippin’ alien lied to me”. Or is it “damn; it turns out I was the copy”?
Like I said, the brain states are identical until the gun goes off (or doesn’t). So there’s a difference, but no way to distinguish between the two.
For me, the answer is pretty simple, assuming that I trust the alien and don’t have a problem with murdering someone. I walk into the chamber, see the guy appear before me, shoot him (while he shoots a blank at me), and walk out again. I dunno if I would go though the process confidently, but I don’t think I’d worry that I’d be the one that gets shot.
Right. Curiously, this is starting to approach a theory of quantum immortality. The idea is simple: if quantum mechanics really does dictate an infinitely branching universe, then if you try to shoot yourself, the gun will always malfunction in some strange way. In most universes you’re dead, but those brains aren’t around to wonder why they’re dead. The only working brains left are in universes where the gun malfunctioned, and so they’re quite surprised.
'Course, QI invites its own set of crackpottery and probably doesn’t work in general. But it’s interesting how the thought experiments converge.
For the purposes of the experiment, that shouldn’t matter. Most of the rest of the universe can be ignored (only the two rooms, their contents, and possibly an observer is relevant). The book can contain this information in compressed form, which can be embedded using less information than it took to instantiate it.
For a specific example, see the definition of a quine. A quine is a computer program that prints its own source code. It can do this because the code contains redundancy, and than thus be stored within the program in less space than the program. It’s a little paradoxical, but true. There’s no reason why the same concept can’t apply to the real world, at least in thought-experiment land.
Instead of a Captain Kirk on Earth and one on an alien planet, imagine that the subject is you. You have lived your life as you really did up till now and are told that an exact copy of yourself will be made on the alien planet tomorrow at noon. Not only that, but your particles will be perfectly synced for the following 12 hours until midnight. You may consider the person on the alien planet a replicate of you, you at the arrival pod of a transporter, a back-up of you, whatever…but he is undeniably you to all outside observers.
I won’t speak for other anti-transporters, but my belief in this experiment is: The original “me” (simply meaning the first me in existence) has absolutely no connection with the “alien me” in any meaningful way. The “alien me’s” existence for those 12 hours will not affect “me” in the least. I have no future in him. He has no future or past in me, beyond sharing some long term memories. My life would be exactly the same whether he existed, or not. I have a subjective self-awareness that is unique to me alone. Alien me has a unique self-awareness that is unique to him alone. I don’t believe there is any parameter measurable by an outside observer that would indicate any difference between our two consciousnesses, but “alien me” and “me” know that we are subjectively different.
Case 1: “You” and “alien you” during the 12 hours that you are synced physically. In this case, the subjects are as the anti-tranporters maintain—neither one of you matters to the other; you are separate beings who did not, do not and will not affect the other in any way. At no time did you share consciousness.
Case 2: “You” and “alien you” during the 12 hours that you are synced physically. In this case, the subjects are as (I believe) the pro-transporters maintain—you are in some way linked; “alien you” matters to “you” in some real way; “you” may have a future in “alien you.” At some point in time, at least at a bifurcation point, you both shared consciousness.
Question to Pro-Transporters: Assuming I posited your position somewhat accurately in Case 2 (tell me if I haven’t), and you can at least imagine Case 1: Would there be any measurable difference to an outside observer between Case 1 and Case 2 (i.e. is there any way to measure a difference between two subjects having the same personal identity from two subjects having separate personal identities, with all else remaining the same)?
This question is more difficult for me to answer because it’s hard for me to even imagine Case 2 (two beings separated by light years sharing anything at all, particularly something as complex as a conscious mind). But, my answer is: there will be no measurable difference to an outside observer between Case 1 and Case 2. Ipso facto, they are both possible, so I’ll go with the one that makes the most sense (“case 1”), and is entirely allowable without breaking any physical rules of the universe.
But…then the books don’t have all the physical facts of the universe.
(I don’t get the point of that clause anyway. The book doesn’t even have all of the relevant facts.)
Sure, if the clones have the same incomplete information, then, yeah, they wouldn’t know which was which. Whereas, if they had complete (relevant) information, then they would know.
(The argument I’ve been holding forth from the beginning is merely that, clone or not, the guy is still “the real McCoy.” Or Kirk. You don’t die when you go through a transporter…or, at very least, the word “die” has to be redefined to include being alive afterward.)
Okay, I was confused. I thought that one of the two clones knew “I have the real gun,” whereas the other clone didn’t know that his gun was defective. This difference in knowledge means that the two wouldn’t have the same brain states, and, also, the two could be told apart, simply by asking them, “Is the other guy’s gun defective?” If one can say, “Yes,” and the other guy can only say “I don’t know,” then there’s the difference.
If the situation is that both of them know that one of the two guns is defective, but they have no idea which, then the two mind-states are identical.
But…what does this give us? To begin with, there’s a physical test that can now be applied to determine the duplicate: “Shoot your gun into the ground.” One goes “bang” and the other goes “click.”
I’m lost. What’s being demonstrated?
But… So what? You could simply things by having the duplicating machine automatically print serial numbers on things. But that isn’t the premise. You’ve produced two non-identical copies. One is me, carrying a gun. The other is me, carrying a paperweight. Why aren’t they still both me?
Okay, I’m confused again. How do you know you’re the one with the real gun? If you and the other guy are identical, then either he knows the same thing you do (he may have been lied to, but he knows everything you do.)
I’m really lost now in the details of the hypothetical. If, as I reasoned above, you (and he) both know that only one of the two of you has a real gun, then, while you might both reason identically and shoot at each other, you would do so without certainty. You might kill the other guy…or be killed by him.
Hans Moravic mentions this in “The Limits of Computation.” Vernor Vinge also tells a similar story. A supercomputer uses hyper-quantum zero-point-information to solve math problems. It does so by randomly choosing an answer and testing it for correctness. (Like factoring a large number into two primes, it might take a very long time to solve the problem, but only microseconds to check it for correctness.) If the answer is correct, yay. If not, the observed cosmos comes to an end.
Well, no problem! We all have viewpoints only in those cosmoses where the answer is right!
Jack Vance plays with this elegantly in “Rumfuddle,” possibly the best alternate-worlds time travel story ever. And then there is “The Ultimate Anthropic Principle,” which uses a similar gimmick: a guy straps explosives to his neck and puts all his savings on one number on a roulette wheel. If he wins, he’s rich. If he loses, the explosives go off and he has no more point of view in that cosmos!
Yes, even if I were just a program I would still have concerns about whether another instance of my program is me or not.
For example, say I have subjective experiences, such as colour. I would be aware that when other instances of my program see things, I experience no qualia. I would see no reason to conclude that were my program shut down I would suddenly experience all the qualia of another instance.
There are a few philosophers who are basically apologists for religion, but other than those, very few philosophers advocate a position such as you’re describing. Most agree that the brain is a kind of machine.
But “machine” is not quite the same thing as “computer”. And, contrary to popular belief, we don’t know how useful the analogy of “computer is to brain as program is to mind” is. My own view is that it’s a poor analogy, partly responsible for how slow progress has been at times in this field. It’s pretty much all we have right now, but we shouldn’t take it too literally.
So the interesting questions are things like Strong AI: if we have a program that acts like it has subjective experience, to the point we can’t tell the difference, does it necessarily have subjective experience?
(which is of course similar to the question of whether p-zombies are possible).
I may be dense here, but what do you mean “synced for 12 hours?” Everything I do, he does? I eat a sandwich, he goes through the hand motions of lifting a sandwich to his mouth, chews, salivates, etc.? Is there actually a sandwich in his hand? When you sync us up, do you sync the entire environment?
(I am not deliberately playing stupid, please. I am not fighting the hypothetical. I just need to understand the parameters.)
In any case…I don’t see the relevance of the syncing. If we are “exactly the same” – same environment – the sandwich is actually there for us both and we both actually eat – then what does that prove?
My view is that the duplicate – with or without the syncing – is “really me.” He is Trinopus of the SDMB, with all the faults and flaws pertaining. He’ll make the same dumb mistakes I would. He’ll learn, and grow, and eventually diverge from me. But he’s still me.
Who else could he possibly be? There simply happen now to be two!
No, I don’t “share” anything with him, other than the memories of the past, which are most of what defines personality, character, and identity. He mourns the same losses; he rejoices in the same triumphs. He is as much me as I am. We aren’t in contact, but we spring from the same origin.
You err in thinking that I think that the duplicates are “linked” in some way. I don’t hold that at all. The duplicates are entirely separate individuals. Once the syncing expires, we may diverge. They are physically two people.
They just both happen to be one person: me!
At some point upthread the physical separation of “two individuals” seems to have taken on importance. It has none. It could be only one – standard transporter – or it could be hundreds. (Jamie Madrox!) They could be in contact, or causally separated and wholly isolated. Doesn’t matter.
You’re still you, whether at a cocktail party or alone in a locked basement. I’m just saying you’re still you, even if at a cocktail party and alone in a locked basement!
You seem to be defining “you” and Trinopus to be one and the same thing.
This is what I disagree with. They are the same thing on Earth, with our current level of technology, but in hypotheticals like this, I think that there is a distinction.
Make a perfect copy of me, and sure he’s Mijin. If there were important work I was doing here on earth, and I had to die, I’d be fine with the duplicate finishing my work because he is the same as me in every way and will do what I would have done. However, he is not “me”. While we simultaneously exist we do not share qualia, and when I die I won’t suddenly see through his eyes.
Conversely, I can easily imagine having my memories or even personality modified. While there is continuity of consciousness, and bodily continuity, I have no issue with saying that the resulting person is still me (without those forms of continuity it is much harder to say).
But it does! If I want to make a perfect copy of the whole universe, the book has everything I need. It’s just that if I’m one of the people in that universe, the book somehow doesn’t tell me where I am.
Well, I’m not sure I have a well-defined position at all :). But if I had to articulate it, it would be something like: I am the brain currently occupying this body, in this spacetime location. You can make as many copies of me as you like, and they’ll be equally convinced that they are me, and no experiment anyone else can run will discern a difference, but nevertheless I am this body. If I step into a transporter, what happens is that a completely convincing copy is made, while I die. It is only a very small consolation that my friends and family will not know the difference.
As I said, I’m not sure it sheds any light on the subject :). Perhaps the point is that the experiment isn’t tied to the person at all, but rather a physical object in its possession.
So on one hand, the two copies are exactly equal, down to their detailed brain-states. On the other hand, we can differentiate them because one is holding a defective gun.
We can do one better, actually–there’s no gun at all. The original steps into the south side of the chamber. The copy is made to the north side of the chamber. Of course, the copy doesn’t know that it got rotated around, since the chamber is symmetrical. But the external observer can see the activities, and even if the two people move around, it can track which is the original and which is the dupe.
Which hearkens back to the notion of continuity. The original can only move in a continuous motion. The duplicate has a discontinuity in space (though not memory, since we’ll ensure there’s no disruption there), which allows an observer to track the copy independently of the original.
Because the alien gave me the working gun, and never altered my memories or anything of the sort. He just made a copy. Of course, the copy thinks the same thing, and so neither of us are very worried. But me me–the one with the same atoms as the one that talked with the alien–actually comes to the correct conclusion. Which also means that the one that talked with the alien shouldn’t worry about walking into the chamber.
I just had a Twilight Zone moment! I tried to quote Dr. Strangelove’s post, and the SDMB put up Mijin’s post instead. Definitely a transporter accident!
Well, okay, but nobody seems to be able to say why. Why are you “dead” when you’re sitting there at the keyboard, happily chatting away? What is missing from the “completely convincing” copy that the “real you” would have? Your best friend steps out of the transporter: do you turn your back on him? “I’m sorry, Jack, you may have been best man at my wedding and godfather to my kids, but you’re dead now, so please don’t ever talk to me again.”
Is there nothing he can say? He’s the only man on earth you trusted with your old College nickname. He whispers it. Not a soul on earth knows that today. (You – quite properly – killed off the entire rest of your graduating class. Lord knows, that’s what I had to do so that nobody knows my old nickname…)
How is this different from him stepping off the airplane from Miami? Why is the trajectory of the particles more important than the existing arrangement of particles?
So, neither one of them has information the other doesn’t: that would be a significant difference in brain-states. They both “know” the same things, even if they may have been lied to.
Again, how is this really any different from you getting stuck in a revolving door in a hotel? You were facing south, now you’re facing north? Other than being embarrassed at walking right back out onto the sidewalk again when you meant to go inside – you’ve altered your orientation. (Ooh la la!)
This is the most commonplace argument. (I think it was alluded to early in this thread, but discarded.) To me, this is wholly unconvincing. We pass through discontinuities all the time. We go to sleep and wake up. We get into elevators and out again. We endure family tragedies. Some of us win lotteries. (Actually, nobody ever wins lotteries; it’s all actors pretending to be all elated, but the money all really just goes to the Tax Board.) :eek:
You’re driving me completely stone bonkers here. You say both duplicates have exactly the same brain-state – and yet you also say that the alien told a secret to one duplicate but not the other. Do you see my problem here? You can’t have both! How is it that “having the original atoms” allows you to have a memory that the duplicate doesn’t? And if the duplicate doesn’t have that memory, then he doesn’t have the same brain-state!
Please tell me you at least see why I’m confused here!
I included the syncing part only to give a pre-divergent baseline, representing a time period before bifurcation. In other discussions with pro-transporters, some claim once divergence occurs, personal identity has already split. I wanted this experiment to concentrate on the period before bifurcation. If you don’t need the syncing to explain your position, that’s fine; I don’t need it either.
But, I’m still confused by your answer. On the one hand, “My view is that the duplicate – with or without the syncing – is “really me.” He is Trinopus of the SDMB, with all the faults and flaws pertaining. He’ll make the same dumb mistakes I would. He’ll learn, and grow, and eventually diverge from me. But he’s still me”, leads me to believe that it would not matter to you (Earth Trinopus) whether you kill yourself, or Alien Trinopus, since you are the same individual…
But, on the other hand, “You err in thinking that I think that the duplicates are “linked” in some way. I don’t hold that at all. The duplicates are entirely separate individuals. Once the syncing expires, we may diverge. They are physically two people”, leads me to believe you may wish to protect yourself and kill Alien Trinopus, since you are separate individuals…
But, on the third hand, “They just both happen to be one person: me!”, leads me to believe…oh, I’ve lost track. Let’s start from the beginning…
In any case, you haven’t answered the question I posed in #346: do you believe there is any measurable difference to an outside observer between Case 1 and Case 2? It’s not a “gotcha” question, just one that will help clarify your position a little more.
To everyone but me… it’s not! But it makes a rather crucial difference to me, since I’m the one getting disassembled. Or shot in the face, as the case may be.
Correct.
Now, you might argue that once I’m in the chamber, I should suddenly be worried. I can’t be sure I’m not the copy. But I also can’t be sure that the whole universe wasn’t created last Thursday, along with everybody’s memories. All else being equal (and it is, here), I’ll just assume I’m the original.
The thing is, *before *I step into the chamber I suffer no such ambiguity. I know I have the good gun. Even though I know I’ll worry once I’m in there, I won’t worry now, because this brain will walk out again.
It’s not that convincing to me, either. But what else is there? Does anyone think the two bodies exist in some weird quantum superposition until their environments change and break it? No; there are definitely two distinct people that happen to have the same memories. The only distinction that our two copies must have is a different location. Everything else is negotiable (put them in isolated, identical rooms; etc.). And as best anyone can tell, location (in space and time) has continuity.
Well, yes and no!
Perhaps the issue is that I’m thinking four dimensionally. An atom isn’t an atom; it’s a braid of subatomic particles twisting around each other. It is very thin spatially, and long in time. Likewise, I am a braid of many atomic threads. The atoms move around and break away, and over a long enough time, none of the same atoms are there any more. It is like a 1 km rope made from 100 meter strands woven together. It’s one rope, even if none of the starting strands remain from beginning to end.
Just to be extra clear, they have the same memories, the same brain-state, and the same everything else. But to put it 4 dimensional terms, my body-braid interacted directly with the alien’s body-braid (eww). My duplicate, however, is made from atoms that threaded their way in from the compost bin. Nothing wrong with those atoms, of course. They’re good as new, in fact. But they aren’t the same atoms as mine.
Of course it would matter to me. I’m also Trinopus. We’re both Trinopus. Why should I kill myself? I don’t want to, any more than he does. He is me! He knows all my passwords; he knows my deepest secrets.
(Okay, maybe that’s a good reason to kill him?)
Yep. The real problem here is that, to me, that makes perfect sense, but to you, it isn’t easily reconciled (or reconcilable at all.)
The sad truth is, I got so confused by the details, I couldn’t answer it.
Let me try again… I am going to commit a SDMB sin and modify the quotes, to take out the “syncing” language.
To answer the actual question, no, I don’t believe there is any physical difference between the two cases.
However, I don’t agree with what is stated in Case 2! I don’t believe that there is any linkage, and I don’t believe the duplicates “matter” to each other any more than anyone much matters to me. It’s a guy out there who happens to hold my values, so, naturally, I think he’s a pretty clever bloke! But if you tortured him hideously, I would not object very much more than if you were to torture anyone hideously. The fact that he’s me doesn’t mean very much at all. I hate torture for itself, and I can feel empathy for a torture victim who is completely unlike myself.
There’s no linkage. I just happen to believe this guy is me! He’s not the “me” sitting on earth; he’s the “me” sitting on Epsilon Indi, talking to the aliens. I’m sure he’ll do as good a job as I would; he has to! He’s me!
It’s like gay marriage: the words we use will simply have to change meaning to keep up with the changed circumstances.
The first is that, if I actually did doubt that I am the same entity that experienced qualia yesterday, then I have even more reason to think the transporter kills me. The logic of: “I think I’m going to die when I next go to sleep anyway, so I may as well die in a transporter” is lost on me.
The second is that there is physical and consciousness continuity between me and me yesterday. While our brains do not lay down memories for much of our sleep, there is evidence of thoughts and a basic “personality” ticking along throughout (not just in REM).
Having the same memories as me yesterday (broadly; some memories being culled/strengthened is a big part of the sleep process) is not the only reason for thinking me now and me then are the same entity.
