Sounds good to me.
But I guess we aren’t arguing.
I don’t believe it matters, because in the case of this hypothetical transporter machine, you would not experience any interruption either - at the moment, there is a chain of states that happens each caused by and dependent upon the states preceding it, and this all happens on (what we can more or less consider to be) a single apparatus.
But if that sequence of states proceeds so far on one apparatus, then is instantaneously transferred to the second apparatus, in such a way that the chain and inheritance of states proceeds the same way, then there is no difference, from the point of view of the process.
Not even relevant.
I’m not saying that killing something doesn’t end it.
If you create a perfect copy of me on Mars, then feed the original to hyenas, that’s horrible for the original, and it’s death in a very real sense, but the copy experiences a forked continuity of being me, which is every bit as valid as the continuity of experience of being me, that I experience every morning on waking.
Deliberate misreading of something I already clarified - to repeat; it would function as you in the way YOU function as you (and that’s all of what you do)
For legal purposes, sure. For convenience, obviously.
For scientific purposes? And for philosophical ones? Who’s to say? The duplication of a conscious entity would be an ethical problem of vast complexity, but, if it could be accomplished, it would compel us to revisit a great many of our conventional definitions.
Einstein made us do the same thing. The Big Bang made us do it also. Scientific advances sometimes have that effect.
Simply declaring “it can’t be done” isn’t a satisfying answer. It may end up being correct, but that needs to be demonstrated, not simply asserted.
This is why the word “individual” would have to be redefined if a duplicating machine were invented.
It’s a cop-out to say, “The word is defined to mean only one, unique individual.” Well, sure, that’s the way the word is defined, because we haven’t yet invented a duplicating machine. You’re engaging in circular reasoning.
Sometimes, the dictionary has to be changed.
The other real Bubbles is gone, The current real Bubbles is in the fish bowl.
The word “real” is redefined in a world with duplicating machines.
Your personal experience is vastly different from mine! In the deepest of sleep, I have absolutely no point of view, consciousness, perspective, or self-awareness. In the deepest sleep, I have no experience of my own existence.
Yep. See the point? You can’t win this argument by appealing to dictionary definitions.
I, for one, haven’t appealed to any dictionary definitions.
I’m not declaring “it can’t be done”. I’m saying if it can be done, it shouldn’t be done, not without the informed consent of the person stepping onto the platform. If the teleporter duplicates the consciousness and destroys the original, and they do not understand that this will kill them, they are not mentally fit to make the decision.
You said, “So long as two consciousnesses experience the world differently, they cannot be the same individual. . . .” That’s simply arguing from a definition. Why can’t they be the same individual?
It’s been acknowledged that, over time, the two will diverge, on the basis of their different experiences. But at the moment of duplication, the two have the identical conscious experience, and are thus the “same.”
Take an example from diverging experiences. Suppose, right now, you won the lottery. That would make a rather large change in your life and your experience.
Now, suppose you didn’t win the lottery.
Since the two experiences are different, does that mean that one of the two of you “isn’t real?” That winning the lottery “destroys the real you,” and “produces a duplicate for whom the money changes the point of view?”
I’d simply say that both are “really you,” just involved in different, possibly life-altering experiences.
It doesn’t matter what you call it, the sentence you quoted is the important part. Everything else is meaningless - if it is possible for you to be copied, and for your copy to live a long and fruitful life without your knowledge, then what you experience does not matter to him and what he experiences does not matter to you. His continued life does not mean you did not die on the teleporter platform.
I’m just going to say this outright: this is an incredibly stupid argument. The “You-who-won-the-lottery” cannot experience what the “You-who-didn’t-win-the-lottery” is experiencing because the “You-who-didn’t-win-the-lottery” does not exist and has never existed. We’re talking about a relationship between two people who would actually exist, not this many-worlds garbage.
I think Tronopus’ point is that this hypothetical transporter/duplicator machine makes it possible for a single narrative to branch into two - forcing us to think about what we really are in a different way.
However, I agree with what you said here:
I may have appeared to be arguing that once we make the copy, it doesn’t matter what we do to the original (I may even have accidentally stated that). I’m going to reconsider and redefine my position…
If we acquired the technology to perfectly duplicate a human, then we would create a branch in the life story of the subject - leading up to the moment of pressing the button, there is one person.
After pressing the button, there are two people - each of them having equally valid claim upon being the real owner of the Story So Far - because all that remains of yesterday is memories, etc - and we’re saying that can be perfectly duplicated. I’m saying there is no meaningful distinction between a ‘real’ memory and a perfect copy of a ‘real’ memory. Neither is any kind of tangible thing like a dollar bill or an oil painting that can exist in ‘real’ and ‘identical, but not real’ versions.
They’re not the same person as each other. If we kill one of them, we’re murdering a person, whose life consists of the life before and since the duplicator event, in an equally valid sense for either of them, in any way that really matters - and since in general, nobody wants to be murdered, this represents a horror and tragedy for either one.
This is a matter of basic logic, not a dictionary definition.
The ‘many worlds garbage’ is only garbage because of the no-cloning theorem; if it were possible to create exact copies of quantum states, then you could have your exact duplicates.
After all, in the double slit experiment a single particle spits into two then interferes with itself. In a quantum world we have to accept that things can sometimes be in two places at the same time.
But unless it is one consciousness perceiving the experiences of both places simultaneously, they aren’t the same individual.
We shouldn’t get too hung up on whether they are the same individual or not, since they would have been divided; they could with justification be called a ‘dividual’, which is a perfectly cromulent word…
…the important thing is if they both have continuity of experience, and I think it should be possible to devise a thought experiment where both dividuals experience the same measure of continuity of consciousness.
That just brings us back to silly word games. The problem is that we don’t have a word for this particular scenario. It doesn’t matter though, because I rather specifically stated that duplication is not a possible outcome. Clones are just a distraction from the real issue. While we’ve been using them to talk around concepts that are difficult to understand, we’ve digressed to the point of absurdity.
Using this device would be no different in perception than walking through a doorway at your home. The only difference is that in this case the door deconstructs you and reconstructs you somewhere else. The process is not able to be observed by the participant, and the process must destroy the user to be achieved. The “scan” or “record” is in the deconstruction.
I began this post intending to defend Trinopus’s argument, but I am presently thinking it may fail. Not exactly for the reason you give, but for a related reason–I think the argument falls into modal confusion.
I think the argument confuses the following two claims:
A. No individual can have two different streams of experience at the same time.
and
B. There are no two different streams of experience (indexed to the same time) each of which an individual could have had.
Trinopus’s argument shows that B is false–but he takes this to mean that A is false. That inference doesn’t work! B might be false while A remains true.
I’ve used the argument myself before, so I need to do some rethinking…
No, the “many worlds garbage” is garbage because Trinopus was talking about what-might-have-been as if it was a living, breathing person.
Copies are not a distraction, and that’s not a silly word game - they’re the whole problem. A Star Trek style teleporter does not move you, it creates a copy of you and kills you.
But the two parts are perceived by two different people!
You walk into the doorway and you are torn apart at the atomic level. You die.
Your copy turns around, looks at the doorway and thinks “Huh, that wasn’t so hard.”
Your copies continued existence doesn’t change the fact that you died, with everything that entails.
Assertion noted. Do you have anything to back it up?
Your discourtesy does your argument no credit.
Why not? Why is it “garbage?” By what logic do you reject the analogy? You aren’t debating; you’re just waving your arms around and saying, “Nope.” Well… Nope why?
In fact, after thinking about this last night, I decided that winning the lottery would, in practice, “destroy” my and produce a very different “me” that would go forward in a totally different way than the original “myself” would have.
The same is true if, say, my home town were hit by a large earthquake. It would change my point of view, my consciousness, my life. All of my plans would be changed. Many of my ethical values would be challenged. It would be a “life altering” experience, vastly more profound than simply using a Star Trek Transporter to go and visit Paris for an afternoon.
Call it garbage, and you aren’t debating, you’re just being rude. Call it wrong…and say why.