Actually, I think based on your post #175, I think we have at least made progress on that point.
You agree with me that there has to be a line between “John is transported, with errors”, and “John is not transported”.
And you agree that we don’t know where this line is.
So all that’s left is the further point that the location of this line is not merely unknown, but unknowable. We could never know how many errors is still a safe transport (beyond simply saying zero errors is safe) because there is no observation that could tell us whether John had a future or this is a new, entirely separate person.
And finally, in conclusion, this argument doesn’t refute the “you are transported” position. It’s simply a “bad smell”. Requiring an extra fact about the universe, that is in principle unknowable, is something that should make us feel uneasy about taking the “you are transported” position.
Even if this were true – and I don’t see why it must be – so what? Lots of lines are unknowable. Where exactly does Europe stop and Asia begin? Where does the Crust end and the Mantle begin? How many licks does it take to get to the center of a Tootsie-Roll-Pop?
We have two end-points, and thus know that the truth is “somewhere in between.”
I disagree twice; first that there’s anything wrong with additional unknowns in physics, and second that the line is “in principle unknowable.”
We don’t know how much of a man you can chop away and still have a man. But it is not absolutely unknowable; a great deal of very ghoulish experimentation might actually provide an answer. Ditto for Transporter errors: we just keep turning the dial over, in tiny increments, until everybody says “Ew!”
Again, these are subjective questions where human(s) get to arbitrarily draw a line.
This is wholly unlike the question of whether John has a future following the transport. You agree there’s a point where he has a future (e.g. identical copy), and a point where he does not (e.g. completely different person walks out of the machine).
And, crucially, you agree that the idea of him simultaneously having a future and not having a future makes no sense (as you said in post#175).
So there must be a hard line, not at all like a heap problem.
Nothing wrong with it, but it’s Occam-vulnerable. Of course we would prefer a theory that does not require extra ad hoc physics to be postulated (and note this is a physical fact we’re throwing in to defend a hypothesis. It’s not something that we would otherwise have any reason to have suspected existed).
The point at which everybody says “ew” has nothing to do with whether John has a future in that person.
Is the John who stepped into the transporter still seeing the world? No observation of the character of the person walking out of the transporter could answer that question.
I was specifically asking where we draw the line between “transported, with errors” and “not transported”.
Since in your response you just said “John has a future in this process” I took it that you were taking the position that any number of errors is still a successful transport. (Otherwise, I don’t see the point of that response; since I’m taking as a premise that in the “you get transported” position below a requisite number of errors John is transported).
It’s not at all like a heap problem and the fact you agree that there’s a line is evidence of that.
Let’s say a man has 11,842 hairs on his head. I say he’s balding you say he isn’t. We can be equally “right” since it’s a classification problem and it’s arbitrary. And indeed there doesn’t need to be a hard line; maybe tomorrow I make a difference judgement for a borderline case.
With the transporter problem, we’re talking about the life or death difference between John having a future or not.
Imagine John’s walking into our Transporter-with-N-errors machine. He tells you he doesn’t care if he’ll be damaged by the process, lose memories or whatever. He just wants to see his son’s face again. What do you tell him? That’s is subjective whether he will emerge out of the other transporter? That it’s like a heap problem?
Well, I for one deny that. Speaking in the first person, I don’t believe I’m someone else reflecting on memories of my childhood, or even imagining the future—I’m reflecting on those things. My perfect clone and my transported “me” are someone else reflecting on my memories.
With the mind model I accept, there are no heap problems involved; no fuzzy lines to contend with. Even in the case of, say, Alzheimer’s disease you can say I fuzzily lose part of my personal identity as my memories fade, but I unless I also lose my sense of qualia and ability to reflect on that, I remain conscious. It’s yet another reason Occam’s razor would favor this model:
[ul]
[li] In the original brain, there’s simply the line you cross when you first become conscious (a few months post-partum), and line you cross at brain death extinguishing your consciousness.[/li][li] In the perfect clone scenario, your lines are exactly the same as above, and your clone has his first line to cross when his physical brain gains consciousness and his second line is crossed when his brain dies.[/li][li] In the transporter scenario, my second line is crossed when the electro-chemical processes of my brain are broken down (by being converted to pure energy) in the departure pod. The transported version of me crosses his first line when his electro-chemical processes of his brain begin at the arrival pod and he crosses the second line when his brain death.[/li][/ul]
Understood, but you chose the most important line of questioning in this thread to ignore—the time machine questions. Let me explain:
First, let’s list what we agree on and needs no further debate: You and “you in the future” (T+time) and your “perfect clone” and “transported you” are all valid conscious people. They are all indistinguishable from each other to all outside observers (3dr person perspective). They all legitimately believe they are you and nothing can be measured to prove that they aren’t. We all agree on this, correct? But, none of this has to do with the real point of the debate (why would we debate something we all agree on?).
The devil is in the details and in this debate the prime detail is elusive and very specific. “Do you have a future in [fill in the blank]?” We need to agree on the meaning of that in order to properly debate this topic.
What exactly do you mean when you say you have a future in your clone or transported self? What do you mean when you say you have a future in your original body in the future, and is it the same type of future that you have in your clone or transported self?
If you mean that all versions of you believe they had a past in the original you, then again, we all agree on that and there’s no debate.
But, when I refer to having a future, I’m talking about anticipating a real future from, and only from, my first person perspective right now. I don’t care if my clone or my transported self believes (and everyone around them believes) their consciousness derived from current me, I just care about whether my current (first person, local event) consciousness is going to die and not return…anywhere.
I believe my consciousness dies for good if my brain dies or is broken down and recreated—never to return again as something I will feel in my first person perspective.
The only way that I can foresee testing for this type of future is by using a time machine. So, until we actually have a time machine (and can make perfect clones and develop of transporter), this all remains in the hypothetical. But, it’s still fun to debate and we can use tools like Occam’s razor and cite neuro-physiology/-anatomy/-psychology papers to persuade one way or the other.
Again, my time machine answers are: traveling to my original body’s future then back: I’ll report being alive; traveling to my clone’s or transported self’s future (after original me dies): I’ll report being dead.
I can’t make my position any clearer than that. Answering the same question will make your position crystal clear, too. It doesn’t mean the debate is over, but at least we’ll be on the same page.
I think people tend to think of themselves as monolithic entities, but I dont think we really are. There really isn’t any line between whether we can truly say that John gets tranported, or he doesn’t, in the same way as if John has a brain injury, there isn’t any line between whether his personality survives or does not.
It’s possible for parts or fragments of a person to be destroyed or persist, already, without transporters, therefore before we even consider the implications of transporters, we already need a model of personal identity that doesn’t treat it as a monolithic thing.
Heap problems have a line, too: we just don’t know where it is exactly.
There really is a line between a man with hair on his head and a bald man.
Some might insist that one single teeny-weeny hair makes the man “not bald.” And, okay, some might hold that even one electron out of place makes the Transportee “Not Jim Kirk.” That’s a valid point of view.
I would ask how, exactly, you derived that specific number.
Agreed. Just as with the bald-headed man we’re talking about whether the guy is bald or not. They’re both “binary” with lots of messy room between certain end-points.
How many typographical errors are permitted before this book is “Not Huckleberry Finn” any longer? How many scratches and pops on this LP are permitted before the recording is “Not Mozart’s Idomeneo” any longer?
It’s folly to say, “Exactly 248 typos.” But it’s also folly to say, “The question cannot be answered, even in principle.” The answer can be isolated: “More than zero, and fewer than 27 million.”
Yes. It’s exactly like a heap problem. I warn him that this particular system is not flawless, and is known to introduce some errors. They tend to be small ones, but there will be errors. They might be negligible, or they might be horrible and critical and devastating.
I tell him the error rate percentage that we know the system exhibits. He can choose whether the risk is acceptable.
If you offer me a ride in a system that’s 99.9 [twenty-seven more 9s] % accurate, I’ll take it in a heartbeat.
(I have to put up with a worse “transmission rate” than that in real life: DNA to messenger RNA transcription is nowhere near that accurate! Every protein in my body is corrupted by imperfect DNA to RNA copying.)
(I also put up with worse risks every day: I drive on California freeways!)
Although I don’t like the phrase “have a future in” I am taking it as essentially the same as “are.” I don’t so much “have a future” in my Transported self: I am my Transported self. He is me; I’m him. We’re identical.
The same type of future, absolutely. The exact same future? Who the hell can know. I suspect futures diverge, although only slowly at first.
I don’t think we have the “same” future even right here and now. If you could somehow rewind the tape a year, then let it play forward, I think events would turn out differently. The first few days would look very much the same, but little (“butterfly”) changes would start to show.
I do say, however, that the Transported person has the same “opportunity for a future” that the original did – with the bonus that he is somewhere he wants to be.
Happy happy joy joy. Again, so far, so good.
And here we disagree. I believe that the “other guy” is sharing exactly the same “first person” Qualia, consciousness, experience, sense of Personal Identity, etc. The “other guy” is “you” also. “Your” consciousness does not die, because it’s “your consciousness” that the “other guy” is exhibiting and experiencing.
And I believe that you don’t die for good until all instances of your consciousness cease to exist. So long as you are conscious somewhere, you are conscious there. Tautological!
As noted above, I’m not even sure a time machine would work, as time, once reset to a previous epoch, might not unroll the same way the next run through.
Go back to 1962 and re-play the Cuban Missile Crisis. Funny thing: 19 out of 20 tries end in nuclear devastation.
I don’t understand this. “I’ll report being dead?” Who, being dead, is going to report anything to anyone? I also disagree with “travelling” in the same sentence. That partakes of “zoom.” You don’t “travel” to your own time-line: you’re in it already. You were in it when the transport/duplication process happened.
I’ve given it my best try. I honestly believe that this is an “imponderable” that people can only answer out of personal philosophical belief. The fact that good and earnest people can come to such an absolute impasse shows to me that the debate is not resolvable by rational discussion.
Ya gotta believe what ya believe. I believe differently than you do.
Well, that may be the entirety of *your *point, but it’s not mine. And, I have a little more to say…
My point is that I believe if I get into a transporter, I’m committing suicide. I’ll be giving birth to a guy on the other side (who said men can’t give birth???), and he’ll fool himself and everyone else into believing that he’s original me (while I’m looking down from heaven, or looking up from…somewhere else, cursing him for boinking all the hot chicks I should be boinking).
If I have to kill either myself in my original body, or my perfect clone in sync with me, I believe if I kill original me I’m committing suicide; if I kill my clone, I’m coming murder. And I mean that beyond legal classification, I mean it with regard to my real conscious existence.
That was Dr McCoy’s belief in the Blish novel as well; but he still did it on a regular basis.
If there were a civilisation with Star Trek transporters there would be
1/people who refuse to ever use them because they believe they would be killed;
2/People, like McCoy, who believe they would be killed but still use them (possibly a small subset of the whole)
and
3/ people who use them and don’t think they would be killed, or maybe just don’t think about it.
In this situation the people in set 1 are at a disadvantage, since they don’t get to do the cool things. I think even the people in set 2 would get used to it after a while.
The same would apply to a civilisation with perfect mind/body cloning tech.
People in set 1 would be welcome to their opinion, but it would be regarded by the others as a delusion that creates problems that are not necessary.
Then, I think Dr. McCoy is kind of stupid. Either that, or he’s so suicidal he wants to kill himself over and over again (that’s some real self-loathing there)—or, at least kill himself once, and then kill all his “offspring” (filicide).
It can’t be for a burning desire to actually travel to a new location, all the Dr. McCoys are either stuck at location A or location B.
Me? I’m happy to just walk or drive anywhere I want to go. I don’t even fly anymore. Where would I go? California? England? Just a bunch of Transporter cowboys in those places.
Because…uh…he’s not me, he’s him. He’s just a guy referencing all my memories and containing identical particles to mine in exactly the same configuration. Oh, he’s a good mimic, I’ll grant him that. But, he’s not fooling me.
There has to be a line between still experiencing or not.
Let’s say the person at the destination pod can see the color blue. However, the number of differences between this person and pre-transport John is huge: as many as the differences between you and me.
Is John still seeing blue?
I don’t see how he could partially be seeing blue. Either he transported, and is seeing blue now, or he perished and a new person is seeing blue.
If he transported, then that implies immortality for us all, because if such an imperfect copy is still a transport then anybody could be considered an imperfect copy of anyone else.
If not, then that’s a clear “no” and we can ask why Nature draws such a line, and when exactly it is.
There can’t be a fuzzy area of “john did get transported, and is experiencing things (in whatever form)” and “john did not get transported, and has ceased to experience” both being true. That really is simply P and !P.
Mijin: Nothing I have said implies “P and not-P.” Where you are getting this from, I have no idea.
Yes, there is a line, just as there is a line with typos in Huckleberry Finn or scratches and pops in an LP. A “bad copy” can still be a “copy” up to some point.
