And, if you want to get pedantic, there is at least one measurable difference between any two objects in the universe, no matter how perfectly cloned they are. Example: which one is closer to Alpha Centauri?
Thank you for a very good and clear explanation of the issue.
Now I’ll mess it all up again by disagreeing, since I believe that You1’s future is You2’s future. Until they actually diverge, they are “the same.” As I keep saying (fruitlessly, I know, but it’s all I’ve got) if you switched the two around behind a curtain, there is no test that can tell which one is You1 and which is You2.
As long as they haven’t yet diverged, You1 and You2 are both “You.” To say that You1 has no future in You2 is to presume they have already diverged; but until they do, they share the exact same experience.
I totally agree that, once they have diverged, You1 has no future in You2’s existence. But once they’ve diverged, they are separate people, and no longer identical. I don’t have any future in your existence, either, because we’re separate.
The mental image always (seems to me) comes down to “Mark one of them as different from the other in some way.” One magician’s apprentice is drowning; one “You” is labeled differently; a physical continuity is defined. (“Leonardo actually touched this one but not that one.”)
So…excellent as your point and your description is…it doesn’t satisfy my objections. And…no matter how heroically I strive to describe my views…it isn’t satisfying to others.
Very frustrating!
Very, very true!
This is where I get frustrated again. Why does there need to be “physical contact” between two entities for them to be the same? This is the “zooming” problem, as if identity is somehow contagious, and needs to be carried by a messenger signal of some source.
As long as the two entities are identical, they are…wait for it…identical. No signal needs to exist to maintain the identity. The identity was established by the cloning process – or, in the “infinite universe where everything happens more than once” model, the identity is established by sheer massive coincidence. The guy in the vastly distant quasar and I are exactly identical…for now. No signal, no causal link, no process, pure coincidence. He and I are exactly the same…until such point as we aren’t any longer.
At that point, we have different futures. But at that point, we aren’t identical, so it doesn’t matter. To say that I have no future in his existence misses the point: his existence is my future, because I was, at the instant of identity, him.
It’s a nutshell kind of debate! Peanut to Walnut to Almond!
Well, to be hyper pedantic right back, both objects could be on a spherical surface of exactly D distance from Alpha Centauri. Isoceles triangles and all.
(Point granted if you define a unique X,Y,Z coordinate system.)
But, again, this can trivially be compensated for with duplicate environments to whatever degree of complexity.
(The “coincidental” model requires a duplicate environment, so that the duplicate will have all the same memories as his clone. The environment must have produced the clone by an “historical process,” and so the environment’s history must be the same.)
We are making progress.
Ah, but you’ve switched first person perspective to outside observer, and first person is all that matters. Now if they put you and your clone behind a curtain and switched you around, then asked you which one you were, would you point at yourself, or the other fellow? The other fellow would of course point to himself. So the outside observers still have no clue, but you and your clone know the truth.
But what about when they are still converged? (Assume the infinite universe scenario where all particles are in synchronicity though have never touched). Are they the same person then? Do they share the same PI? If so, how can you explain this action at a distance?
This is our primary difference of opinion, I believe. I think we do zoom into our future selves, but we don’t zoom into our perfect clones. I like to zoom! If time were reversed, I’d like to zoom into the past, too.
The reason I bring up physical contact is because that is the one criterion that allows me to *zoom *into my future body. If I have a future in my original body, but I don’t have a future in my perfect clone, there must be a difference between the two. That difference is physical contact. I have it with my original; I don’t have it with the clone.
I believe I zoom into my future body because it feels like I do, and it’s the simplest explanation (Occam ’s razor and all).
My question to you is, why don’t you believe you zoom into your future body?
Alas, no…
No, we don’t. We both believe we are “me.” We both have the “Personal Identity” that is, in all ways, exactly the same. Yes, we both point at ourselves…which is exactly what you’d expect from two people who are both “me.”
Did you expect one of the two to point to himself, and the other to point to the other guy? “You and your clone know the truth.” What truth? We both believe that we are “me.”
What “action?” The two are the same by a process of gargantuan coincidence.
Say I get dealt a Royal Flush tonight at Vegas, and another guy in Atlantic City gets dealt a Royal Flush. “How can you explain this action at a distance?” There isn’t any “action.” Two people have come into existence, identical in every respect, by (absurd) coincidence, no more.
Only if I get to change the past; given that, hell yeah! There are some things I’d really enjoy changing!
But, alas, yes, this is pretty much the difference of opinion. I can’t think of any way to go forward with it, beyond, “We shall agree to disagree,” and, as gentlemen, drink one another’s good health.
Why not a signal? Why not a quantum entanglement “non-signal.” Or…as in the guy in the different galaxy, why not pure coincidence?
To my way of thinking, the emphasis on “contact” is “magical thinking,” along the lines of magical laws of contagion, or really bad homeopathic chemistry. “This water molecule was once in a mixture with bleach, but this water molecule never was. The first has disinfectant properties that the second lacks.”
To put it another way, where, exactly, in a physical body, is “having been touched” kept as a physical property? What physical property does the copy of the Mona Lisa have, to indicate it wasn’t really touched by Leonardo?
And…if it is a physical property, then the two paintings aren’t identical. So (in my world-view!) it can’t be both ways.
I don’t believe in zoom at all. (I’m still not even sure the concept is definable.) My future body is just the chronological development of my current body. The changes take place according to commonplace chemical and physical laws.
If you really want to be strict, the guy I was at time T is dead and gone and lost forever, and the guy I am now at time T+1 is a completely different guy…with so many similarities that continuity of identity is a useful default viewpoint.
(This is certainly true when you talk about decades. I wouldn’t recognize the 20-year-old “me” as “me” at all today! Gad, what a twerp “he” was!)
Take an example: there are two chess games being played, one in New York, the other in Los Angeles. The games are completely different, with no communication of any sort. The development of the games are different. One White player has a strong Queen-side attack; the other White player is conservative and plays a defensive game.
At some point, however, the two board configurations turn out to be the same. How strange! What a coincidence.
Would anyone say that the information has “zoomed” from NY to LA? Of course not.
Well, I’d prefer that we drink to one another’s good health, not drink one another’s good health. We are, after all, not vampires. And, I can’t afford to lose another drop of health, good or bad. 
Grin! Britishism. But here’s to your Health, Education, and Welfare! Salut!
British, eh?..well that explains it! 
Salut!
…but, I can’t let you leave quite yet…
I know I’d point to myself, but I wasn’t sure who you’d point to—maybe a duck for all I know.
I agree you and your clone are both you, and me and my clone are both me (and never the twain shall meet)…to all outside observers. But, is the relationship between Present Trinopus and Past Trinopus and Future Trinopus also a gargantuan coincidence? Or, do they all exist because one grew into the other, incrementally over time with no loss of physical contact, and no critical interruption of the physical scaffolding upon which Trinopus’s PI supervenes (doesn’t matter if you go through periods of unconsciousness, your PI is still being maintained)?
Agreed, there is no action at a distance in that scenario. Only if one of the cards in the Royal Flush was conscious and you claimed that its PI was one and the same with the identical card at other location would there be a need to invoke action at a distance.
When you hear hoof beats, think horses, not zebras (unless on you’re in the grasslands of Africa).
Well, I never said anything about “having been touched”, I said “continuous physical contact.” By that, I thought it was obvious that I’m referring to the physical matrix of your brain being in constant contact with your PI that emerges from it throughout the entirety of your life. Yes, the brain does change over time as does your PI, but both have been locked together since you became conscious (i.e. I will be very surprised if I ever wake up in the body of a duck or anyone else). You don’t have that same relationship with your perfect clone. His PI, though indistinguishable from your PI to all outside observers, has likewise been locked into the brain it was physically “born” into.
This is the same situation as the Royal Flush. Unless the chess pieces are conscious and the ones in New York feel like the ones in Los Angeles, it doesn’t apply.
Again, the debate isn’t so much about whether you have a real future in the perfect clone (you appear to agree with me that we don’t), it’s about whether you think you have a real future in the body you’re currently residing in.
This can best be illustrated with this scenario: you and your perfect clone are the only two remaining on a plane that will crash. Only one parachute remains (and it’s too small to accommodate 2 people). Your perfect clone has a bag containing a million dollars on his back (that you have no time to steal). Do you grab the parachute and jump, or give it to your clone with the expectation of soon being rich? Explain your reasoning.
You appear to believe that you are only being pulled into the future from previous versions of you. I believe I’m also being pushed into the future by the real time current version of myself.
If you really, truly believe that you have no future in your clone or in your original body (because you’re not the same person in the morning, etc.), then you shouldn’t care who gets the parachute because in a real sense, you’ll be dead either way.
At times, in these types of debates, I feel like JS Bach, while the opposing side seems like Milli Vanilli (you kids still listen to them don’t you?).
Sure, my baroque music (symbolic of classical theory of the mind) seems old fashioned and unexciting, while you are the cool guys hip hopping across the stage to the applause of contemporary fans. But, my guess is that Milli Vanilli music will someday be exposed as wrong, if not fraudulent, while Bach will chug along into the future. When Bach spoke, only his words came out of his mouth; when Milli Vanilli opened their mouths, their clone’s words came out.
Trapped! Trapped like a ring-tailed rock wallaby!
A chain of continuity is sufficient to establish identity, just not necessary. Yes, definitely, “me” at +1 second is still “me.”
(Well, okay, up to the discontinuity of death, or major stroke, or other catastrophic incident…)
Is this debated? I readily admit I have a real future in my current body (as noted above, up to a certain limit regarding catastrophic identity-changing events.)
This raises the same objection I’ve been making all along: you’ve established a difference between the two individuals. One has a bunch of money; the other has a parachute. They aren’t “identical” any longer, and thus I have no reason to defend a proposition that I have never held to be true.
Before the point of differentiation, then, yes, we’re the same, and the death of one does not mean the death of the (shared) identity. After the point of difference, “I” have no expectation of surviving in “the other guy’s” body.
I’m sorry to be so damned repetitious on this, but it really is the key to my set of beliefs in this debate.
“Here are two persons who are totally identical. Now, how do you explain the differences between them?” Fallacy! Either there are no differences, or else they aren’t identical. As I see it you keep trying to have it both ways, and I don’t accept that as valid to the premise.
I readily accept that you (and others) see it differently. It frustrates me, because I can’t seem to make my view clear, but there we have it. A really frustrating philosophical roundabout. We’re clearly circling some form of truth, but never actually zeroing in on it.
And I readily accept my own degree of blame for this. There is clearly something here I’m failing to get, something I’m missing, and I can’t place all of the blame on you for not making it clear.
??? I don’t comprehend the difference here.
As noted above, I disagree. By the time “he” and “I” are talking to each other, we’ve differentiated enough to be two separate people.
Now that’s gettin’ right nasty! 
I’ve never listened to MV in my entire life, and I have an extensive collection of Bach recordings! The first Bach recording I ever bought was the Nonesuch printing of Herkules auf dem Scheideweg. (It’s actually kind of witty, and has the remarkable duet where Hercules asks Echo for advice. Give it a try some day, if you don’t know that one already. There’s a YouTube performance.)
(YouTube. Much of the same music was re-purposed for the Christmas Oratorio, most notably the aria “Schlafe mein Liebster.” I would have submitted this reply some while ago, but got caught up listening to the Cantata. Jump ahead to 18:00 for the duet with Hercules and Echo.)
You definitely have a point about differences in beliefs resembling differences in preferences, musical, culinary, or other aesthetic likes and dislikes. Since we can’t seem to arrive at a point of agreement…de gustibus!
(Anchovies on pizza: great idea! Yum! Love it! Milli Vanilli? Giddaddahere!)
On the push/pull thing. There is a third option:
You are being deposited in the present (in the form of memories and other half-completed physical/electrochemical processes) for future versions of you to retrieve/complete.
At present, only one instance of you is physically able to do that. The transporter scenario posits more than one.
I was thinking more along the lines of a baboon. I just had to put some anchovies and a couple Deutsche Grammophon Bach CDs in a small hole…and I got ya!
Your perfect clone with the money strapped to his back is certainly diverged from you in the airplane. But, the you (original body) on the airplane is also diverged from the you (original body) who lands on the ground if you choose to keep the parachute for yourself. Yet, I believe your original PI remains in the original you on the ground, but not in the perfect clone who would land on the ground if you gave him the parachute. That is the crux of the debate. I choose to be poor but have my current PI survive in my original body. Some others, maybe you too, I’m still not sure, would choose to be rich in your clone, thinking your PI will survive in him.
Again they are completely identical (assuming pre-divergence) and no measurement can be made to differentiate them (therefore no physical laws have been broken). Yet, they are and have always been two separate entities. They have never shared the exact same space coordinates (let’s use a triangulation measurement this time) at the same time, and since each was “born” they have only remained in constant physical contact (brain matrix) with their original brains. That is the difference that I believe allows you to keep your PI all to yourself, and your clone to keep his PI all to himself, even though no outside observer can measure a difference between the two.
Graphically, my interpretation looks like this:
You1*_______________________*__________________*You1 + Time
You2 *________________________ *You2 + Time
Conclusion: You have a future in You1+ Time, but no future in You2 + Time
I believe others people’s interpretation (maybe yours, too) can be graphically shown as:
You1*-------------------------------*---------------------You1+ Time
|
|
|
You2--------------------You2 + Time
Conclusion: You have a future in both You1+Time and You2+Time or no future in either You1+Time nor You2+Time (if you accept the staccato dashes to be the death of each temporal instance of you).
I like Bach, but I love Beethoven, Liszt and Chopin. Milli Vanilli ?—meh.
Pizza with no anchovies is no pizza at all. I don’t need a large number of anchovies on my pizza, but they each need to be the size of a bottle-nosed porpoise!
BTW, I got interested in consciousness, and particularly PI when my youngest daughter was diagnosed with moyamoya disease (a congenital disorder involving the carotid arterial blood flow to the brain). She had a stroke when she was 15 months old. This resulted in complete hemiparesis on the left side of her body. Before the stroke (it was later discovered that she had her first stroke in utero) she was behind on all the infant developmental milestones and she just did not appear to be engaged in life (she was in a fugue state). It took a long time to get a definitive diagnosis, but when we did we realized she needed complicated vascular surgery to the brain (pial synangiosis) asap (though we had to wait an agonizing 3 months till she was stable enough for surgery).
I needed the world’s best moyamoya surgeon for my daughter and got him: R. Michael Scott, MD. I credit him with saving the life of my daughter. But, he gave us a bonus that I did not expect.
My post-op daughter was not the same as my pre-op daughter: she was a new and improved version. Within a week of her second operation the change was apparent. She regained nearly all motor function on the left side of her body (she has to this day, just a small amount of left foot drop). Interestingly, she was showing signs of left handedness before her second stroke, but after revascularization of her brain she switched to right-handedness (actually, she’s nearly ambidextrous).
But, most interestingly, within weeks of her final operation, the vacant eyes of her former fugue state were lifted and she became clearly engaged with the world as she never was before.
She’s now a gifted student. I give my daughter and Dr. Scott credit for that. My oldest daughter is also gifted, but I give myself (well, my genes at least) credit for that. Her kindergarten teacher was the first to recognize her giftedness (“she doesn’t work out problems the way other kids do, but she always arrives at the correct answer”). In second grade the principal told us she scored highest ever in the county on the gifted track test.
My point (besides a little stealth bragging) is that my daughter’s condition gave me insight into the remarkable plasticity of the human mind. A damaged brain, with clear areas of necrosis from two severe CVA’s and serious sequela is able not only to survive, but to excel, was a real eye-opener for me.
In follow-up visits with Dr. Scott and local neurologists, I had some opportunity to discuss a bit of philosophy of mind with them. From them I learned that cerebral neurons by and large remain intact throughout the lifespan of an individual, and even ion exchange is minor. When I asked one neurologist if he would get in a Star Trek type transporter, his reply was, “only if I wanted to commit suicide.”
But, still, the jury is still out on the reality of consciousness. Who knows what future discoveries may reveal? In the meantime, it’s a fun to discuss the minutia.
Here’s a photo of my daughter on the train trip back from Boston Children’s. Her hat hides her scars. She’d already regained most of her motor function and her eyes reveal an engagement with the outside world she never had before. We celebrated her 13th birthday this weekend.
I don’t really see how this clarifies anything. You insert a vertical bar in the second diagram, and I don’t know what it is meant to indicate. Is that an instance of “zoom?”
If the vertical bar represents the cloning process itself, then why is it missing from your diagram? Neither diagram displays the “overlay” where the two You’s are still identical, and the divergence where they cease to be identical.
Now, in addition to talking past each other, we’re drawing pictures past each other!
Good to know we agree on the important stuff!
Cute photo, and I can definitely see how the immediacy of care and therapy would bring a focus upon cognition to your attention! I have the luxury of viewing the matter is nothing but fodder for a nice yack.
The vertical lines represent the same thing as the horizontal lines; the continuation of consciousness. Though your objection does get to the heart of the matter.
Now, if you believe that consciousness never really continues, and at every instance a new consciousness is freshly minted, then there’s no meaning to the vertical lines, and they can be omitted – but then so can the horizontal lines. All the lines are equally meaningless in this scenario.
In the bodily-continuity position, the horizontal lines have meaning (because there is direct bodily continuation) but the vertical lines do not have this property and so are invalid. This is the scenario with the transporter where I die on the launch pad and the person at the destination pad is a perfect copy but not me.
You have objected to this latter position, but your position is also not consistent with the former position either. Someone who believed that consciousness is newly created at every instance would not say that either entity in the future is you. Whereas you have insisted that both are.
Your position is essentially that all the lines are valid, but that does imply some connection or “zooming” between the two physical bodies.
Or, to put it another way. Refer to my post #89. ISTM you sometimes take position 2 and sometimes position 3. Can you clarify which of those alternatives do you think is correct?
No, Mijin, I obviously cannot clarify my position, just as you obviously cannot. I don’t get what you are trying to say, and you don’t get what I am trying to say.
I’ve tried twenty times…and failed. You’ve tried twenty times…and failed.
This is just one of those discussions that can’t go anywhere, and, to be honest, I don’t know why. The concepts shouldn’t be so irredeemably abstruse. But it isn’t working.
“Let’s call the whole thing off.”
If you don’t wish to participate in this thread then of course that’s up to you. But I’m suggesting a way that you could make your position explicit by just suggesting which of the familiar positions on the transporter problem you take.
And I disagree that there’s been an issue with clarity. I understand just fine what you’re saying; I just think you’re using first-person terms like “me” in more than 1 way and haven’t noticed the inconsistency.
Finally, no-one has suggested that I have been unclear apart from you, including people like Mangetout who take a different view from my own.
Just to expand on this some more…
How can you be ‘pushing’ yourself into the future? The future doesn’t exist yet. You can’t reach into the future and put anything there (what if you’re dead in the immediate future? You’d become aware of it in the present, when the ‘push’ operation fell over).
Furthermore, nearly everything we do and experience is retrospective - for several reasons:
[ul]
[li]In order for us to experience something, it has to have already happened.[/li][li]No communication is instantaneous[/li][li]Many psychological experiments have shown that what we consider to be ‘real time’ is a fictional state created by our brains either in advance (in the case of actions) or in retrospect (in the case of experiences).[/li][/ul]
Well, the alternative is that I pull the memories from the dead corpse of my former self, and he from the instance before him ad infinitum. That’s not something I wish to mourn over every instant of my existence. I don’t have enough flowers to attend that many funerals.
If there is no “real time” in the reality you propose, how and when does the copying of memories occur between instances of yourself (i.e. how and when does the configuration of the “particles” of your PI transfer over)? Things do happen over time, that’s self-evident. When do these things occur? There must be some cusp of real-time where things move and change.
I don’t have to worry about all that in my model of reality. If you were to plot my PI from yesterday to tomorrow in spatial coordinates, it wouldn’t look like a series of dots or dashes; it would look like a long smear (or, more boringly, as a straight line like my graphic above).
Think of it as a long wave of existence. It’s kind of like the music of a stringed instrument, where your entire conscious life is comprised of sustained notes where the bow never leaves the instrument. Like this. (I had to throw in a little Bach…well, C.P.E., not J.S….for Trinopus’ benefit).
Whereas, I think you guys look at conscious existence kind of like a series of pizzicato notes jumping all about, like this.
But, if forced to consider temporal PI as a series of particle configurations, then I’m compelled to believe your PI gets pushed (or pulled) from one instance of you to another. No real time? The particle configurations transfer from one instance to another somehow, sometime, right? So whenever you believe that occurs (lagging ahead, or behind conscious thought), just consider that your PI gets transferred along with your memories.
You don’t have to die a thousand deaths for that to occur. Your PI and memories just travel along inside your brain like a happily married couple, with no one dying in the process. Your perfect clone has an equal but separate brain. His PI and memories have their own sanctified relationship.
PI/memory orgies are not allowed.
Let’s look at this from another angle.
I don’t particularly like the term “personal identity/PI” as a descriptor for being self-aware. PI sounds like a noun, while being aware (of yourself and your surroundings) sounds like a verb.
You are your memories? Says who?
My conscious mind references my memories, but it is more than just my memories. Others identify me by memories and how I’ve developed because of them. I identify myself by my memories and how I’ve developed because of them. But, there’s more to it than that.
Get in your time machine and go back to yesterday, but this time do things a little different. Develop different memories than those you originally developed. Are you still the same person you were the first time around. Yes, you are, you’re the same person, with a few different memories.
Now, go back a year. Then go back a decade, then go back to when you were 3. Then age from those points until you’re the age you are now. Are you still the same person?
I argue that you are a different person to all outside observers and even to yourself if you were able to hover above and see the differences in each incarnation. But, that’s just how others perceive you—it’s the “personal identity” that you developed as a consequence of your aware state of mind referencing your memories.
Go back to a time before you started encoding memories (or simply have all of your memories erased), before you had anything to reference. Now open your eyes (and your ears, and your taste buds and your sensory nerves…) for the first time. You feel something, don’t you? It might be blurred and incoherent and…, but you feel…something. Qualia.
I believe awareness of self and your surroundings is different and more profound that just your memories. They travel together, but they’re not the same.
Give me the choice between going back to a preconscious fetus or my perfect clone?, I choose the fetus. I’ll get to do it all over again with my awareness intact.
Well, no, you’re using the word “identical” in more than one way and haven’t noticed the inconsistency. You use it and then immediately contradict it.
Every time you try to clarify my position – “So, what you’re saying is…” – you get it wrong.
This always seems to happen in the “Star Trek Transporter” threads; it’s very disheartening.
I wouldn’t say that’s all there is to it, but if someone else had all of my memories, he’d pretty much have to be me. Who else could he possibly be?
I couldn’t point to exactly when, but at some point along that progression, no, the resulting guy isn’t “me” any longer, but someone else with the same DNA. Certainly if you take me back to age 3 and then go forward: I might hold entirely different beliefs and values. I might be vastly different in personality. I might even like Milli Vanilli! (ew!)