Derleth wrote:
The Heisenberg uncertainty principle says that you can’t measure the state of an object without affecting its state.
I wrote:
Here it is. Its not flashy, but. . .
Not much to add here except for the “My cells die an are replace all the time, so am I even the same person I was a year ago.” question.
Even if you assume that your mind is nothing more than a biproduct of neurochemical interactions (a tenuous assumption at best), your neurons, in fact, do not dieand replace themselves, they just die. You start off life with 100-180 billion neurons and slowly work your way down to 0 (fortunately most of us die from other causes first). Thus the neurons in your brain and the rest of your body are the EXACT SAME neurons you had as an infant. Those cells areas old as you are. So treat them kindly next time you are at the bar. 
Two points avalongod.
A) It’s not clear why the idea that the mind is nothing more then a byproduct of neurochemical interactions is so tenuous. There is a great deal of data to support that point. (and a death of it on the other side, I might add)
B) There has been a lot of research lately that has shown that humans do, in fact, generate new neurons. Since this had been observed in other species, one wonders if it was merely some peculiar human pride in the concrete and unchanging nature of our mind that resulted in the assumption that we did not do the same. I even seem to remember one research article that speculated that death and regeneration of neurons plays a critical role in memory. I will start digging up links.
K:
I forgot about this thread, so pardon my lollygagging. Obviously we have been debating this very issue in the “Dust to Dust” thread so I am not sure reviving the argument here is fruitful. So,
A.) In fact there is NOT a lot of data to support this (see Dust to Dust for more)
B.) Where did you hear THIS bit of untruth? I would ceeeeertainly like to get my hand on his bit of research. If such a thing exists (I doubt it is credible) it should be in no less than Nature or Science, since it would revolutionalize our understanding of the brain (yet not actually support your anti-mind claims). the only neurons I am aware of that can reproduce are in the nose (of all places) and these are useless anywhere else. As to other critters, the same is true for all chordates to my knowledge. Whether some lesser critters can reproduce neurons I do not know, thought I would have assumed not. Interested in seeing that reference.
When it comes right down to it, I’m all in favor of animal testing on matter transmission.
- I want to be able to come out alive
- I want to be ME when I come out (not changed, not a vegetable).
- I want to have all my bits and pieces when I come out (not much room for error).
- I want to be able to live on the moon (hey, matrans, no need to lift stuff out of the gravity well!)
Surgoshan wrote:
As Larry Niven noted in his article on teleportation, if it really is teleportation and not merely creating a duplicate at the destination and destroying the original, you’d have the problem of Conservation of Momentum. The moon is moving at about 2200 miles per hour relative to the Earth. Furthermore, the Earth is rotating, so a “stationary” object sitting on the equator is moving at about 1000 miles per hour relative to the center of the Earth. Put those two together, and a “stationary” object teleported to the moon will come shooting out of the transporter room at up to 3200 miles per hour.
You’d have to surround your receiving area with some rather heavy nets.
Perhaps this is overly simplistic, but it seems to me that “me” resides in one’s sense of self. In other words, if you can think “I’m me,” then you’re you. Whatever you happen to be.
I tend to think that walking into a teleporter is a high tech way of committing suicide.
Take a look at the following scenarios:
Method 1:
You step into the machine, poof, you vanish, piff, you appear somewhere else. Is the person on the other side you or a copy? Where is the consciousness of the person who went in?
Method 2:
You step into the machine, lights flash, meanwhile at the destination, you gradually materialze a-la Star Trek. Only after your body is completed at the destination is the original destroyed. Now who is the person on the other side? At what point did your conciousness get transferred?
Method 3:
You step into the machine, which “scans” you and constructs a perfect copy at the destination. Unfortunately, the process exposes the departing you to a lethal dose of radiation. Two days later, that you dies. So, who is the you at the destination?
Method 4:
You step into the machine which compresses all of the essential information about you onto a floppy disk. In the process, your body is destroyed. The floppy disk is sent by US mail (third class) to your destination. There, the information on the disk is used to recreate you from a vat of protoplasm. Who is the copy?
I tend to think that there are no real differences between the 4 scenarios, other than the time scales involved. In the fourth, you die before you get there, in the third, you die long after, in the second, you die soon after arrival, in the first, you die instantly. Same thing, from my point of view.
Now, my assumption throughout is that teleportation involves extracting the essential information from an object and using that information to reconstruct that object at a distance. In the process, the original body is destroyed by some method.
My understanding of consciousness leads me to believe that it is an inextricable part of the brain. It is not a physical object, but rather an outgrowth of the complexity of the brain itself. Destroy, or even damage the brain, and consciousness is either destroyed or altered. Copy the brain perfectly, and you copy the conscious self. The two consciousness’ would be identical, but distinct. Each would look at the other and say “That’s not me, that’s a copy”.
If the process were to involve a technology where your body was not disassembled in some way, but simply moved intact from point A to point B, then my objection dissolves. If the original brain is not destroyed or altered, but simply moved, then there would be no loss of conciousness.
Now, clearly, my perception of the consequences of teleportation are based on my conception of how it would work. Sort of like a souped up fax machine with a shredder attached. Doesn’t sound like fun to me. Of course, the me at the other end would think it was pretty cool. Creepy.
gEEk
gEEk wrote
**
Exactly. So, why is this suicide? If YOU come out on the other side, why would you care that the “original” is destroyed?
Side note: Is Steve Young still Steve Young? He loses consciousness all the time. His brain has most definitely been damaged. What about a drunk brain surgeon that slips and kills someone’s ability to snap their fingers? Is that the same person?
Electochemical transmitters do come into play, though, which act in the areas between the neurons. I think you could copy the neurons, but the state of firing of the various interlinked neurons would be the tricky part.
Hmmm…so we have to cease all neuron activity, take a “picture,” transmit the “picture” info to another location (via the Internet?), reconstruct, and finally restart neuron activity.
Sounds easy enough.
You would think so (pun intended?)
I had a whole course in automata theory in school. OK, actually I had it twice, I really wasn’t too keen on it.
Anyway, in any complex sets of “virtual” neurons, you can’t just reset everything and expect things to go back into the same state again, even though the neuron paths themselves have not changed.
Although perhaps the brain has a recovery system for this.
I don’t know if there are drugs which would completely shut down the flow of neurotransmitters. You’d need to be on a good heart lung machine.
I know there are drugs which boost the production of n.t.'s though – LSD and ectasy come to mind. I don’t know if I’d want my brain to go through the diametrical opposite of an LSD trip, although I guess when we die we’ll find out. I don’t know how much of me would be left after a reboot – I suspect I’d be pretty burned out though.
What about this?
Your neural activity is synced up with some type of digital brain machine that basically mimics your brain. You get reconstructed and then are synced up with the digital brain?
Now that would be a weird feeling.
**
Because it’s a copy. Sure, the copy thinks it’s you, and in fact, is a perfect replica of you. In fact, I think what happens is some kind of perverted from of Creation. You step into the machine. You die. Out the other side steps a copy of you with all of your memories and experiences, including stepping into the teleporter. In fact this person has been created at the instant of teleportation. On the other hand, from the POV of the person stepping in, consciousness ceases at the instant of teleportation.
There would be no difference in the person after teleportation from the POV of any observer. The replica would, to any person including itself, be you. So, you are right, to the rest of the world, teleportation works fine. The only problem I see from the POV of the poor sucker who walks into the booth.
It’s easy to think of teleportation from the perspective of an outside observer. The hard thing is to consider it from the POV of the traveler. You step into the machine. Your body is destroyed. What happens next, from the perspective of the now destroyed person?
We already agree (I think) that what happens in any practical ( 
) teleportation scheme is that an exact copy of the object is created at some distance. If that is so, why is the conscious self transferred instead of copied? I don’t think it would be.
gEEk
gEEk wrote
But my point is what is the difference? If the copy of your conscious is exact, what is the problem? You haven’t lost any memories. Your personality is the same. Nothing has changed. For a brief moment there was two of you.[sup]1[/sup] Now thats screwy, regardless, what is the problem with having a conscious copied?
- Basically, this form of teleportation is cloning and high speed (light speed?) data transfer. I think there are about 4 different threads in there. This is getting ridiculous.
Winky:
I think what the other person might be saying (and I agree) is that is doesn’t matter if the copy is exactly the same, it is still a different person. If your very consciousness does not transfer, you are dead. PEriod. What you have, however, it some other dude with all the same memories, feelings, emotions and personality that you had. It might not matter much to the rest of the world, but it would probably matter to you.
Another thing too, from psyche, I can tell you we have no idea how consciousness “gets in there” in the first place. This duplicate consciousness stuff might simply not be “allowed” in a scientific sense. The critical moment might come in utero. As such you would simply be creating a physically functioning individual with no “mind” That actually might be fascinating, help illustrate any chinks in the link between mind and body. I say we do it!
Muuuahahahahahaha. <thunder, lightening>
Lightning even. I think I lost all my mad scientist credibility when I started baking a cake in that last post.
Thank you. That is exactly what I was trying to say. Although, not believing in an afterlife I would say that it wouldn’t matter to me afterwards, but you’d have to shove me in with a bulldozer, ‘cause I ain’t goin’ willingly.
gEEk
Well, hell, if we’re not creating someone with a conscious, then I’m not going in either. But given the following premises:
[ol]
[li]We can replicate every portion of the human body(including neural activity)[/li][li]We can transport that info to another place[/li][li]Your conscious is replicated[/li][/ol]
Then I see no reason why killing the “original” would be bad.
Because your conscious is replicated, not transferred. If I were to create a replicator instead of a transporter, copy you, then shoot the original in the head, what happens? Do “you” survive? Of course, from the perspective of the copy and everyone else in the world. To the original you, however, you are as dead as Ceasar.
This is the same premise that we have agreed on for the workings of a teleporter. A perfect copy is made of an object while the original is destroyed. Key point, the original is destroyed. While this may be perfectly acceptable for rocks, letters, care packages etc, I think it most definitely unsuitable for transport of living creatures.
Actually, take the replicator example a little farther. At the instant of replication I have two people, identical in every way. They share the same memories, emotions, everything. Let’s say that instead of killing the original, I lock him in a closet. The copy I allow to leave, resuming the life of the original. Which is really you? What do you experience? Are you locked in the closet, or are you back at work? Are the two people even the same after replication, since both have very difference experiences?
This divergence of experience is the crux of the matter. For the copy, there is no discontinuity, he remembers stepping into the machine in Denver, then stepping out in Cleveland. The original however, experiences nothing beyond stepping into the booth in Denver. How can this not matter, from the point of view of the original?
gEEk