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Teleportation problem (lemmy.world)
submitted 1 year ago by to c/memes@lemmy.world
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[–] 12 points 1 year ago (24 children)

Define "you." An identical collection and pattern of atoms and subatomic particles? Then yes. A continuous consciousness as experienced by the "me" on the entry side of the teleporter? No.

Would I kill myself to save five lives and create one? Yes

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  • [–] 4 points 1 year ago (2 children)

    There is no way to know that were not constantly dying and being replaced. The experience of continuity may be an illusion because you don't notice that you're only alive for a split second, and replacing the consciousness that was alive a split second before you.

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  • [–] 3 points 1 year ago (15 children)

    You're not a continuous consciousness anyway. Sleep is a thing.

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  • [–] 6 points 1 year ago (11 children)

    I'd go deeper and say that “continuous consciousness” isn't a concept that makes sense. You only live in the moment, with access to part of your past selves’ memories.

    So there's no distinction for you between “you have been destroyed and an identical copy of you has been constructed an imperceptible amont of time later” and “an imperceptible amount of time had passed in which nothing has happened to you”

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  • [–] 1 point 1 year ago (10 children)

    I'd go deeper and say that “continuous consciousness” isn't a concept that makes sense. You only live in the moment, with access to part of your past selves’ memories.

    I posit that consciousness is a chemical process occurring in your brain. This process is continuously ongoing, and when it stops, you die. If a transporter constructs a perfect copy of you, down to the chemical process that constitutes your consciousness, then there is no continuity between your original body and this new one, because it's a wholly different brain.

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  • [–] 1 point 1 year ago (9 children)

    When people talk about continuity of consciousness, they usually mean the ego, and believe that when teleporting “you die, but someone else completely indistinguishable from you but somehow not you” is born.

    I say that this little piece of magic “you”-ness that doesn't make the jump just doesn't exist.

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  • [–] 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (8 children)

    I already explained how the thing that makes the consciousness continuous doesn't transfer over to the new body. It's not magic.

    Really, all of this philosophical posturing is pointless. When you step into the entrance of the transporter, the entity that experienced stepping into the entrance of the transporter does not experience stepping out of the exit. If that entity is successfully deconstructed, it dies.

    Assuming we're talking about Star Trek/The Prestige style transporter. Some kind of space-bending wormhole that physically transports a body doesn't kill the user.

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  • [–] 1 point 1 year ago* (6 children)

    If you interrupt a chemical process and then let it continue, it's indistinguishable (and therefore identical) to letting it continue in the first place.

    If you'd e.g. freeze your body, it doesn't matter if you call the frozen state “dead” or don't: your life would continue if it's possible to unfreeze you.

    Death or no death is meaningless if an indistinguishable individual resumes life after.

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  • [–] 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (5 children)

    My transporter clone and I may be indistinguishable to you, but I can distinguish between us pretty easily. A transporter is not interrupting a chemical process and then letting it continue, it is stopping a chemical process and then starting another one elsewhere. Death or no death is very meaningful to me, the person who is about to be disintegrated at the entrance of this transporter.

    The person who shows up at the lever looks like me, acts like me, thinks they're me, and they are not me. No matter how arbitrarily similar we are, they're a different person. If the transporter fails to disintegrate me, I do not see through that person's eyes. I do not hear through that person's ears. Because they're a different person.

    So it stands to reason that if the transporter does disintegrate me, I still will not see through that person's eyes nor hear through that person's ears. And because my eyes and ears are gone, I will never see or hear anything again. There's a word for this state of existence, in which you do not experience anything.

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  • [–] 1 point 1 year ago (4 children)

    No you can't. Only through the logic of knowing that the transported one must be the copy. Both will feel like you do. If you eliminate that location part (e.g. like in “The Prestige”), nobody will know or care who is “copy” or “original” (if concepts like that even apply in whatever fictional mechanism that movie uses)

    I don't know what you mean by the talk of “chemical process” and how it's supposedly meaningful if one ends or not. I'm a brain believing it's alive. If one recreates or simulates that brain’s functionality sufficiently well and puts it into roughly similar simulated or real body, that person is me.

    I'm saying that you're essentially believing in souls. That the ego in your head that believes it's an entity because it has access to your memory and philosophy is just an illusion. No less real, but not in any form required to be continuous.

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  • [–] 1 point 1 year ago (3 children)

    If you eliminate that location part (e.g. like in “The Prestige”), nobody will know or care who is “copy” or “original”

    I will. Or rather, if my original body gets disintegrated, I won't. Because I'm dead.

    I'm saying that you're essentially believing in souls.

    Nope. I'm explicitly denying the existence of a soul. My experience is bound to my physical body, and nothing else. If my physical body is disintegrated, then my existence ends, even if someone constructs a perfect copy of my body somewhere else. That will not be my physical body.

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  • [–] 1 point 1 year ago (2 children)

    A you died. A you remains. Nothing is lost, so calling it a “death” is like calling sleep “a small death”: purely philosophical and with no relevance to your ability to live your life after.

    It's a trick of perspective. If you acknowledge that “you” is just a electrochemical reaction, you're just like a computer program: only defined by what's happening, not which CPU is running it.

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  • [–] 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 child)

    This is equivocation. Under one definition, a me died. Under a much more meaningful and relevant definition, the only me died. Someone else that looks and acts and sounds like me is alive, but I am not experiencing life through his senses. He's a different guy, even if no other person can tell the difference between us. I already explained this.

    If you acknowledge that “you” is just a electrochemical reaction, you're just like a computer program: only defined by what's happening, not which CPU is running it.

    I said that consciousness is a chemical reaction, and also that my experience of life is bound to my physical body. If you destroy my physical body, my experience of life ends. I do not care if an identical program is running on a different CPU right now, I am running on this one.

    I want you to imagine for a moment that I'm about to shoot you in the head, but I explained that "it's fine, because I just scanned your body and at some point I will make a perfect reconstruction of it. Nobody will ever know the difference between the you that I shoot in the head and the you that I reconstruct later." You don't want me to shoot you in the head. I know that for a fact. You know there's a difference between the you that's experiencing life right now, and the you that I will reconstruct elsewhere.

    It doesn't matter whether I reconstruct you later, or I've already done so, or if I do so at the exact moment the bullet enters your brain. I know that you know that when you get shot in the head, you die, regardless of how perfectly I can recreate you elsewhere. Does this analogy help you to understand why I think that a transporter that disintegrates your body kills you?

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  • [–] 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

    Believe me, I've been there. I've thought what you think for decades, but at some point it clicked and I knew.

    My point is that there is no part that makes the one that died “the only you”. Your “point of view” is an illusion. Your belief in your ego being a unique continuous thing is product of how our brains functions, not a fact.

    Think about the freeze example some more. Think about what would happen to “you” if you ship-of-theseus’d your brain while frozen by dividing all molecules randomly into two piles, adding copies of the respective other pile, and reassembling everything: what molecule holds the “you” particle?

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  • [–] 0 points 1 year ago (2 children)

    I hate that comic. Equivocation is a fallacy. Your alarm clock is proof that you don't lose experiential consciousness when you sleep.

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  • [–] 1 point 1 year ago (1 child)

    What comic and no it doesn't. And reading through your exchange with the other guy it's clear we have very different ideas about the nature of self-identity. I don't think of my body as necessary for "me" to exist, I am my thoughts and memory rather than my neurons and chemistry. If that information can be copied and transmitted then there will be a "me" that continues from a new location.

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  • [–] 1 point 1 year ago

    There will be a you, but it's not the same you. If you read my exchange with the other guy, then what are your thoughts on the "shot in the head" topic? Would you be okay with this you being killed in a very real and visceral way, as long as a you would be reconstructed elsewhere?

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  • [–] 1 point 1 year ago (2 children)

    What makes you think that “continuous consciousness” is a thing and not just the way it feels like to exist?

    Do you fell like you're made out of cells? Do you feel the hormones influencing your thinking? Then why do you think that the perceived continuity of having an ego is a real thing that exists? No soul has been measured so far.

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  • [–] 1 point 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 child)

    I'm not a philosopher, so this response will be imperfect and is subject to revision.

    Then why do you think that the perceived continuity of having an ego is a real thing that exists?

    My current response to this is that something can exist without being made of something. Consciousness is an emergent property of a sufficiently complex, chemically active neurological system. (Someone can poke holes in this definition if they like, but come on dude, principle of charity. You get what I mean.) Essentially, "how it feels like to exist" is a real, if immaterial, thing. Just like mathematics and language.

    If someone makes a perfect copy of my brain and body over by the lever, using none of the materials from my original body, then it is a different brain and body, no matter how arbitrarily similar it is. The consciousness that was by the entrance to the teleporter will never experience pulling the lever.

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  • [–] 1 point 1 year ago*

    What makes that “new” consciousness less “you” than the old one? Why do you care if the atoms aren't the same?

    If a perfect copy of me was made, both world be me, and then slowly diverge by different experience. But it doesn't matter which one has most of the atoms of the body that existed before the duplication (or indeed if any of us was). They'll both be “me”s with their own perspective and then they'd both continue to exist being “me” from their point of view.

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