Not only are you wrong, the silly arguments in this quoted post are nonsensical.
Swing and a miss.
I am agnostic, at least as far as I understand the definition. I think the existance of the soul is “unproven, at best”. I have never gone to church (except to attend a couple weddings), I was never baptized. So my views are not shaped by ingrained religious “dogma”.
That disclaimer said, I feel that there is a unique “me” (my consiousness?) that has come about, somehow, that is greater than a simple sum of it’s parts.
Yes, to answer a question given a couple pages ago, if you cut off my arm, or even to the extent that you put my brain in a jar, I would still consider myself “me”. My self-identity is not entirely one rooted in my physical form, but also of a complex interweaving of personality, memories, and other psychological things.
I realise the above paragraph may seem silly or vague, and I apologise for not being able to verbalise my “gut” (maybe partly subconcious?) feelings.
I realise that in this thread, the duplicate created on the receiving/destination end is an exact copy down to the subatomic level, and therefore the new “me” will act exactly like me. But my “gut” still feels as if he is him, and I am me. If I somehow escaped from being dematerialised, I would treat him as if he was a kind of “twin brother”.
By the time Kirk and cohorts exist, everyone grew up with transporters being a daily (or near daily) thing to use, and they may take the technology relatively for granted (like kids today being non-plussed with the advancements in computer and communication technology). This means that on a subconcious level, they have no moral or emotional issue with the technology, whereas old coots like me are going “whoa… get off my lawn?”. 
So how can that ‘unique you’ be lost by dissolution of the parts, if it is in fact greater than and separate from the parts themselves?
You don’t fear anesthesia, which certainly separates your ‘soul’ from your physical body. Why fear teleportation?
Edit- is that spelled right? FireFox has underlined teleportation for some reason. :dubious:
If you somehow escaped from being dematerialized, then there would be no “him”, as the teleporter would then have no source for the information needed to construct “him”. I don’t fear duplication when teleporting for the same reason that I don’t fear duplication when I go up to get a cup of tea. I don’t say “If I somehow managed to stay in my seat when I went into the kitchen…”.
This is why I have wheels on the chairs in my house
Well it’s a bit different… we’re not saying it’s a demon who’s infested your body, just a separate but identical stream of consciousness.
And we’ve repeatedly said that our treatment of the person wouldn’t change one iota. To the new teleported person, nothing has changed. But we’d regret the loss of our original loved one’s continuing experiences. 
I did a “find” on all the pages in this thread and couldn’t find the words “anaesthesia” in it, so perhaps I missed it, but did anyone here say they did not fear anesthesia?
If anaesthesia were shown to completely stop the brain, I would fear it only slightly less than decomposition-style teleportation.
As a matter of fact, if radical anaesthesia were to completely stop the brain, I would prefer teleportation if the components of your body stayed in communication with each other – in other words, the molecules that were in the transporter nonetheless continued to interact completely the same as before with the molecules that hadn’t been put in the transporter yet. As long as my brain processes do not stop I would fear this style teleportation less than full-brain-stoppage anaesthesia.
But that is not what we are talking about. We’re talking about complete decomposition-style teleportation. I cannot pin down why I would feel slightly more at ease with the most drastic consequences of surgery than I would with teleportation, but I do acknowledge that there is no real difference between the two.
That said, in the actual world, brain function may continue even under deep anasthesia. Plus, a lot of the time the choice is between that or the cession of the stream of consciousness contained within anyway through death.
Oh come now, surely when your body is decomposed and transmitted as DATA, and then rebuilt, the thought of duplication must occur as a possibility? The transporter isn’t moving you physically, one atom at a time.
Of course it wouldn’t be an issue when you’re crossing the room, but then you’re never transformed into DATA in that scenario are you?
I said it was “greater than the sum”. It is still dependant to some extant on those parts. I am more than a pile of carbon, and water, and calcium, and so on, although I need those to exist. I am more than my memories, although they contribute to who I came to be. I consider myself more unique, more “special”, than the chair upon which I sit, even though no other chair is an exact copy of it. My chair can’t be annoyed with it’s own shortcomings, for example.
I did not mean to imply my “self” could exist independantly of the parts, only that the sum is greater.
It also explains a little bit about why I may feel more alone now that my dad has passed away. Sure, I got pictures, and his ashes are buried in a grave, but he is no more.
Okay, I was specifically addressing the question that was asked about creating a duplicate and then blasting the duplicate rather than creating a duplicate and then blasting yourself.
First off, Star Trek is fiction. Second, it is inconsistent fiction. Star Trek is totally inconsistent on everything about their technology, so you can argue every position with some example from Star Trek. I would rather define the type you wish to argue than assert “Star Trek does it this way”.
But wait a minute. You have the pattern - the full pattern to make a person, whatever that means. Quantum, field, “soul”, whatever. You also have the ability to construct that person with whatever matter is around, not the exact matter that you took the pattern from. So how come you can’t take that pattern and a pile of matter and make one copy, then take that same pattern and more matter and make a second copy? Are you asserting that, by virtue of making one copy, you destroy the pattern? There’s no way to save that pattern information?
I have the way right now to save pattern information. I store pictures and words electronically on my computer. And I can duplicate those pictures and words by making multiple copies of those patterns - electronically. Just because I use the pattern to pull up one copy of a document or image does not mean I cannot turn around and pull up a second copy of that document or image.
I’m sure we could devise a way to make our transporter work where it does not store the pattern after the copy is created, but I don’t think it is inherent in the teleport process. It boils down to how that information is obtained, how it is stored so it can relocate to the new location, and how it is read by the reconstituter.
Now granted, I can move a file, or I can copy an file. That may not be the same process. Except if I am moving the file from one computer to another computer, how does that process work? Doesn’t it read the info, create a copy of the info on the new computer, and delete the info from the old computer? Isn’t that really the same thing as making a copy, just with an additional step of erasing something?
Why? What about a scanning process that reads the quantum data and then stores the quantum data and then relocates the quantum data precludes using that quantum data to reassemble other matter to match that quantum data?
I mean, we already have to have a “Heisenberg compensator”, so why not?
I think that there is something very different between the two cases. Let’s get back to something you mentioned above, the reversibility.
Trinopus was complaining before about the violent examples being used, but they are being used because of their unambiguous results. Suppose I proposed cutting you apart into cubical pieces of smaller and smaller sizes. It would not take long to reach a cube size that would render you dead. By a 1 foot sized cube, I could be fairly certain you would be dead rather quickly. So if I propose making that particle size smaller and smaller, down to the molecular level, I am still slicing you into bits where the bits aren’t talking to each other any more. Doesn’t that equal “dead”?
Here’s where the irreversibility enters in. If I slice you in half with a giant axe, I cannot then slap the two halves back next to each other and magically seal as if nothing happened. Even if all the edges magically aligned perfectly, they won’t instantly reform. That’s a macroscopic slice. But our proposed transport technology uses some magical means of slicing us at the molecular level, and then being able to stack the molecules exactly back, and reform all the chemical bonds. So it is exactly reversible, stick all the parts back in the same place and there is no edge or seam or scar - it is whole, complete, intact.
Here is the trouble - we cannot state what identity is. Whether it is some undefined extra state beyond the matter itself, whether it is a “field” type manifestation from the matter arrangement, we cannot say what it is. People make a preference call, but we don’t know. How is the “self” defined? Even if it isn’t some mystical “energy” being separate from the body that can exist independently (like the religious idea of a spirit that goes to heaven, or a spirit that gets reincarnated, or anything like that), there is still something that is the “self” that is our internal perception, the thing that experiences. The “I” of Decartes’ “I think, therefore I am”.
From the example you provide from B5, the “I” does not appear to be affected by slicing into the torso. Nothing “leaks out”. Whereas in the case of the transporter discussion, we cannot state what happens to the “I”. That self, that identity, could be a mere reflection of the arrangement of the matter, and arranging other matter to that state will give the same self result. But if I arrange it over there and have this one over here, if they are not sharing the same mental space, i.e. a hive mind, then they are separate identities.
The fact that they share a history and memories and think the same and act the same does not make them the same identity, it makes the exact duplicates. They may be exact, but they are still duplicates.’
I can’t speak with certainty on what will happen if we ever devise teleport technology. And there may not be any way to distinguish the one that leaves from the one that enters, apart from the location of where they take place. But I cannot shake the notion in my head that the one that entered came to an end. The one that left started up where he left off, but there feels like there’s a discontinuity that makes a difference.
Maybe it doesn’t make a difference. Maybe you’re conscious the whole way through. Or maybe the world will just be taken over by the ones who decide there is no difference and are willing to step through, while the ones who are not willing to step through eventually die out. I find that the most likely scenario. Likely, in terms of if we ever devise some sort of teleport technology.
This steps into that unknown of the “self” - who is the one experiencing things, and is he separate from the mememories of experience? If I wiped clean the parts of my memories associated with my identity (name, family, where I grew up, etc) but somehow retained the memories and skills of how to do things (read, write, ride a bike, eat, wipe my ass, etc), would I be a blank slate set to develop a whole different personality? Or would I largely receive the world in the same way, and still behave similarly and think similarly and make the same bad decisions and still react to other people the same way?
We know changing brain structure can affect personality, but can erasing memories without changing structure fundamentally change the person? Or is that a nonsense statement, because memories are embedded in the structure, forming memories forms structure? Is it the same structures in the brain, or is there a region of behavior and a region of memory, that work differently?
Yes, that is a way to restate the question. I don’t think it fundamentally addresses the issue of philosophical point raised by the teleport adverse. From the external position, we’re left with exactly the same result - we have the mental processes fully ceased and then restarted. The new result presumably behaves just like the old and thinks he’s the old person. But was there something lost? Did the identity that was there before really stop and get duplicated?
I’m reminded of a book I discussed in a prior thread, Glasshouse, by Charles Stross. The book is set in the far future, where there is replicator and teleporter technology that uses similar principles, whereby a person can be scanned to the molecular and quantum and whatever level, such that he can be disassembled and reassembled. Ergo, people are essentially immortal, because if you lose a limb you can just reconstitute it. If you get cancer, just reassemble a cancer-free pattern. (Just like in Elysium.) There are a lot of fascinating ideas, but the key one for this discussion is that people not only can rebuild their bodies however they see fit, they can store a scan of themselves. If something happens where they get killed dead in a non-restorable way, a new copy is reconstituted from the buffer.
That new person picks up where the old left off, with all the memories up to the point of the scan. They can also make duplicates to run off and act independently, and then later they can reassemble to one identity. (That’s probably the most unusual element proposed - reintegrating separate memory streams to one consciousness.)
Look at the case where guy runs off, flies his plane into the ground at high speed, leaves his body a bag of mush. The brain is not salvagable, there’s no sense using that pile of mush, just run a clean copy from the replicator. Is that person from the replicator really the same person that died in the crash? Or is it a copy that behaves and looks and acts the same way, but is a new person?
That’s where the philosophy problem kicks in.
Of course it’s no consequence to him after the fact. The question is, does it bug him that he’s going to come to an end and some new guy get his wife and his house and his farari and his mistress?
Thank you for not ducking the question. This is the answer we were trying to elicit, rather than distractions about whether a bullet to the head is the same thing.
So you’re really cool with him disintegrating your current existence because someone else who happens to look like you and act like you will be around for your family to be happy with? That’s just bizarre.
What if instead of a transporter, we just took a poor guy, redid him with surgery and acting lessons, and trained him to act and think and look like you. Then we told you we could put this guy in your place so your family would never know. Would you then think it okay to have yourself put painlessly to sleep and killed, knowing your “identity” would continue without you? Merely so he could go to Paris for the weekend?
For the outside world, certainly that is the case. Does the you inside the body to be destroyed really think “Hey, I’m the spare, just kill me”?
I don’t think it’s fair to characterize one side or other as “mostly incorrect”. We’re coming at it from different internal perspectives. There’s no information to dictate what actually happens, so we’re left with speculation and impressions. Define the situation the way I like and then claim victory by definition. Yay me!
I would say the arguments are philosophical rather than religious. Not all opponents are basing it on some mystical “soul” that exists independently from the body. The argument hinges on “identity” even if that identity is purely a manifestation of the body itself. In fact, we have at least one person using the “soul” as a justification for accepting the transporter.
The root of the debate seems to me to be about how we define identity. The pro-transport people define identity in such a way that the before and after are the same. The anti-transport people define identity such that they are not the same. Thus both groups look at each other gawking and pointing.
Since that isn’t what I’m cool with, you are engaging in a straw-man fallacy. The “other guy” isn’t “someone else,” he is me. He is me in every conceivable way. He has my memories, my knowledge, my intentions. He is indistinguishable by every possible test.
Mischaracterizing someone else’s statements is, on the SDMB, “just bizarre.”
Good post Irishman. I’ve read Glasshouse and its one of those well written and very interesting books that I also found to be deeply unpleasant to read.
Re restoring from backups, its tangential but linked to the transporter argument but I also find it bizarre on the face of it.
If you take a mental backup and it is stored, then go off and have many wacky adventures before catching the business end of a neutron bomb several years down the line what good does it do to you that is you to have the backup activated?
Sure its a version of you up until the point the backup was taken but its not the same version of you that was just killed. I always find the idea kind of narcissistic actually.
But then we live in a world with such a fundemental understanding of real and possible science that people think if a clone of their beloved deceased pet is grown from the original’s DNA then its the same pet.
Since you are not the one experiencing it though, it is effectively someone else who looks/acts/thinks just like you. This is where language fails us. He is you 2.0.
I loved Irishman’s question about “What if someone could be trained to look/act/think/speak just like you and no one would ever know the difference?” Are you OK with being disintegrated now? Your place in the universe is secure… held by a very talented actor. If this isn’t OK with you, explain why not.
This is also similar to a question I asked flippantly earlier, but it is stated better here. I asked, “What do you care how exact the copy is afterward? You’re not going to know about it.”
You raise a good point about the importance of making frequent back ups, but I don’t see this as a fundamental flaw in the idea. It’s just a new form of amnesia, really. I mean, what’s the fundamental difference between getting in a car wreck, dying, and being restored from a five year old copy, and getting in a car wreck, suffering severe brain damage, and being unable to remember the previous five years?
I had to think about that one, one difference is that there is no other ‘you’ in that scenario, and your conciousness is ‘rebooted’ in the same body it originally resided in.
The backup is a version of you certainly, but even if you activated the backup the moment the scan was finished and it was emplaced in another body the instant both versions of yourself experienced different inputs they would diverge and become two different people.
I do find one concept raised in Glasshouse and other science-fiction stories fascinating, that of copying your conciousness and emplacing it in different bodies (which don’t have to be the same type of bodies), those different versions of yourself going off and having different experiences then merging the memories of those experiences into the original at a later date.
It would be fascinating, but I still don’t think those other ‘you’s’ in that scenario are the same person and they aren’t the person who originally had the backups/copies made.
That may not make much sense, its late and I’m tired and emotional and about to go bed reassured that in the morning someone who thinks he’s me will get up and go about his business.
I wasn’t looking forward to getting the car taxed anyway.
Because that person doesn’t have my memories, he has a description of my behavior supplied by a third party. Again, my identity, who I am as a person, is a fantastically complex pattern of ideas and memories. That’s not something that can be transmitted through normal human communication, or adequately duplicated by playacting.
I am going to know about it, because “I” am the pattern that’s running in “his” brain.
Good question. I would say that, at a minimum, the brain damage described is a partial death, from the perspective of the original at the time of the accident. Part of his identity has indeed been destroyed. Maybe such trauma also breaks the continuity of experience too, in which case there is no difference (which is to say, either of these is effectively death).
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I agree with this entirely. I don’t think being able to back-up and restore a personality means you have consequence-free immortality. An accident where someone has to be restored from a back up and loses, say, six months of memories would probably be viewed as roughly equivalent to being in an accident and losing the lower half of your leg. It would still be traumatic, to say the least.
I suspect there are a few survivors of traumatic brain injury in the real world who would take issue with you saying they were dead, though.
I do not say that the survivors are dead. I say that the people who suffered the damage might be effectively dead–and the survivors are different people, imperfectly modeled on their predecessors. I don’t know if they are, though; maybe such people ‘find’ most of themselves in the surviving brain. It might make a difference if they have gone into coma or not.
I am pretty sure that the guy who actually died in the car wreck is entirely dead, though.