Eternal Life...

[gdnp]

Indeed, you will know that you copy is "not you". But what objective criteria could a third party use to make this distinction? If they are identical, how would your wife, for example, go about deciding which one you are married to? Is she married to both?

I just want to make something clear, though. I completely understand the "but it's not *me*" argument. I would, in all probability, not have myself scanned if it meant I would die. This sort of subjective bias is pretty hard-wired into our thinking. I just admit I cannot give an objective criteria to distinguish between the two.

Obviously, if the copy was perfect a third copy could not tell the two apart. If the copy was not perfect, they could be differentiated based on the imperfections: minute differences in the ratios of carbon isotopes?

The question is largely moot. The computing power necessary to describe the position of every molecule in a single bacterium at a given time does not exist, the technology to determine the position of every molecule in a single bacterium at a given time does not exist, with or without destroying the cell, and the technology to replicate the positions of individual molecules within a bacterium does not exist. Nor do I believe any of these is ever likely to exist, with the exception perhaps of the computing power necessary to store the information. For one bacterial cell. To store the information for a human body would require at least 100 trillion times as much storage just for the cellular information, not to mention the non-cellular components like bone and fibrous tissue.

According to wikipedia the average weight of a human cell is one nanogram. Let's assume it's all water. 18 grams of water has 6 x 10²³ molecules and 1.8 x 10²⁴ atoms. 1 nanogram thus has something like 10¹⁴ atoms. How many bytes necessary to describe the identity and position of an atom to the requisite precision? No idea. Still, we're talking about thousands of terrabytes (petabytes) or more of storage just to describe a single cell.

Feel free to correct my math. I may be off by a decimal place or two.

 

[The Atheist]

How is that a meaningful distinction in anything other then a purely subjective sense? Also, your scanned brain will think it is you.

Haha!

It never convinced Arthur Dent either.

Wow. Dead topic already.

Allright, forget it.

I'm hoping the MODs will delete this. I feel foolish for even mentioning it.

Edited by Gaspode: 

Removed personal attack

Notice that since you buggered off there's been lots of discussion....

 

[Neverfly]

Haha!

It never convinced Arthur Dent either.

Or Deckard.

Edited by Gaspode: 

Removed personal attack

Notice that since you buggered off there's been lots of discussion....

Your personal distaste for the person who created the OP is irrelevant as to whether or not the discussion strayed off topic.

Personally, I find the meta-physical philosophy about whether you are "you" much more annoying and ridiculous than the much more substantial question of what would immortality be like.

 

[theMark]

If so, consider this further scenario. You have a machine which destructively scans your entire body, transmits it some distance, and then reconstructs it. You know, the standard "destructive teleporter".

a) Would you use it? If not, why not?
b) Is the being created at the end you? Remember there are not two copies, only one copy perfectly preserved from your body's "state" at the entrance point.

A) NO WAY IN HELL. You'd have to throw my cold dead carcass into such a thing. Oh, wait, that device would do exactly that
Why not use it? Because I like my physical integrity. Existing is FUN. Well, granted, not always. But it's the only thing I have.

Y'know, I don't burn faxes after I send them either.

B) No, it's still "only" a copy. A new being with my memories. My physical integrity, i.e. at least half of what I'd call "me", was destroyed in the scanning process. There IS a discontinuity of my existence between the departing and the arrival. "I" am dead and gone (and therefore, for all we know, irrelevant). A copy in some faraway place keeps on doing what I did. OK for all the others around. Me, I still don't like it. I'd side with Arthur Dent here.

Phew, good thing we're only talking philosophy here. In real life, we'd most likely have a "matter source" at the destination, so we'd only transmit x/y/z + element type, so we'd still only fax a "build-a-copy" manual. Because if we could transport the real pieces, we might as well transport the whole shebang intact.

Re: the OP: What is eternal life? Nothing else but a huge memorizing problem, and effin' boring after a bazillion trillion million years, and it's still not going to end any time soon... eternity is *scary* once you realize what it truly means. The only state to enjoy it would be with a limited memory that lets the oldest things drop out, and then you'd be quite some repetitive moron anyway.

No wonder it appeals to the religious...

"People don't want to live forever. They just don't want to die."

 

[The Atheist]

Your personal distaste for the person who created the OP is irrelevant as to whether or not the discussion strayed off topic.

Ha! You again.

People are going to start calling you "The Atheist's Nemesis" shortly.

I have no taste for the OP either way all, but the reason for not returning to the thread looked good enough for a dig.

Looks like I dug a couple of cm too deep and got yellow carded.

It did, however, break my cherry with Gaspode, which is good.

Personally, I find the meta-physical philosophy about whether you are "you" much more annoying and ridiculous than the much more substantial question of what would immortality be like.

Probably a good idea to stay away from R&P then, or be ready to put lots of threads on ignore.

 

[Taffer]

A) NO WAY IN HELL. You'd have to throw my cold dead carcass into such a thing. Oh, wait, that device would do exactly that
Why not use it? Because I like my physical integrity. Existing is FUN. Well, granted, not always. But it's the only thing I have.

Y'know, I don't burn faxes after I send them either.

B) No, it's still "only" a copy. A new being with my memories. My physical integrity, i.e. at least half of what I'd call "me", was destroyed in the scanning process. There IS a discontinuity of my existence between the departing and the arrival. "I" am dead and gone (and therefore, for all we know, irrelevant). A copy in some faraway place keeps on doing what I did. OK for all the others around. Me, I still don't like it. I'd side with Arthur Dent here.

Phew, good thing we're only talking philosophy here. In real life, we'd most likely have a "matter source" at the destination, so we'd only transmit x/y/z + element type, so we'd still only fax a "build-a-copy" manual. Because if we could transport the real pieces, we might as well transport the whole shebang intact.

But if you distinguish between yourself and your copy on purely physical grounds, and the teleporter machine creates a being in which your thoughts exactly follow from your own (there is just time between one thought and the next, a bit like being unconscious), how are making the distinction between "I" and "it"? Either you have some personal reason, or you are using some criteria that I am not aware of. The problem is you are talking about "me" as if that consists of more then your physical body. Further, remember that if you look finely enough, there is no continuity anywhere. Plank time and all that.

 

[dezrah]

If we're still doing "copy-based immortality" sci-fi recommendations, I have to mention "Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom" by Cory Doctorow. It's an refreshing exploration of a post-mortality world with a very interesting economic plan. Wealth is based on a mix of charisma, usefullness and likeability called "Whuffie", as if one could be "dugg" in real-time.

 

[XLDS03]

I never fully bought into this idea of personal immortality, although through technological means rather than pure magic.

Just because I have the same identity markers (name, face, SSN, etc.) doesn't make me the same person I was years ago. The me now would laugh in the face of the me then.

The universe will end. Matter with it. "Mind" with it.

It may be woo of me, but I view the whole concept of DNA as achieving the closest to biological immortality anyway. Albeit through successive duplications and corrections. Nature is far more clever than I am.

I don't believe in personal immortality.

 

[theMark]

But if you distinguish between yourself and your copy on purely physical grounds, and the teleporter machine creates a being in which your thoughts exactly follow from your own (there is just time between one thought and the next, a bit like being unconscious), how are making the distinction between "I" and "it"? Either you have some personal reason, or you are using some criteria that I am not aware of. The problem is you are talking about "me" as if that consists of more then your physical body. Further, remember that if you look finely enough, there is no continuity anywhere. Plank time and all that.

Well, "me" is the atoms of my body (accounting for the "fuzzy-at-the-edges" thing) and their positions and electrochemical interactions between them, which makes for a conglomerate of substance and spatial information. I might consider a transporter that takes all these parts, streams them and rebuilds them in the destination. Anything else does - by its very definition of only transmitting some parts and discarding others - produce copies of me in another place, it doesn't transfer me but "parts-of-me", or builds a new "remote-me". It's no transporter then. It's a destructive replicator, and unless you can deal with very similar-looking people running around by the dozen, you'll have to build it to eliminate the original. If I were raised in a society where such means of transport was common, then I guess it would be no big deal.

It seems we've reached a dead point - I'm not comfortable with the idea because I guess I (subconsciously?) can't shake the implications of a real-life embodiment of such a device in mind. In a purely philosophical context, where anything can be postulated whether it has a place in observable reality or not, I can imagine that a transporter exists which I might use, maybe something like an easily useable "door shortcut" between distant locations. (Yes, Stargate, har-har. Director screwed up on the internal logic of that plot device, big time). I just don't think I'd be able to describe a concept for it, or that it's going to be easy to build this kind of magic box in real life any time soon (or at all)...

It's going to be "agree to disagree" then, I guess...

 

[AWPrime]

Setting aside the philosophy discussion about whether or not a scanned you is "you"...(In other words, assume the copy is as much "You" as you are. Given time if you both were ummm... operating... you would diverge into more and more separate people...)

The results would probably be devastating.
We are wired, our entire evolution as beings is based on mortality.
The first hundred years or so may rock, but after that, the sheer weight if time would most likely begin to press very heavily upon you.
Given enough time, the burdens of the things you have witnessed would become like living a death sentence.
As we live our mortal lives, we tend to shut away the negatives we experience. As people become older, they generally develop more cynicism and bitterness. But we can handle that because our time is limited. We know that it's limited.
Imagine if you knew that it wasn't. Imagine after a thousand years of witnessing not just the joys in life, but the terrors, the pains, the wars- whatever- KNOWING that you were going to keep witnessing it... Forever.

Kinda stuff that will mess up your head...


The only practical way that I can imagine for a person to be immortal- would be to take away his humanity.

A post-human mind state?

 

[Taffer]

Well, "me" is the atoms of my body (accounting for the "fuzzy-at-the-edges" thing) and their positions and electrochemical interactions between them, which makes for a conglomerate of substance and spatial information. I might consider a transporter that takes all these parts, streams them and rebuilds them in the destination. Anything else does - by its very definition of only transmitting some parts and discarding others - produce copies of me in another place, it doesn't transfer me but "parts-of-me", or builds a new "remote-me". It's no transporter then. It's a destructive replicator, and unless you can deal with very similar-looking people running around by the dozen, you'll have to build it to eliminate the original. If I were raised in a society where such means of transport was common, then I guess it would be no big deal.

It seems we've reached a dead point - I'm not comfortable with the idea because I guess I (subconsciously?) can't shake the implications of a real-life embodiment of such a device in mind. In a purely philosophical context, where anything can be postulated whether it has a place in observable reality or not, I can imagine that a transporter exists which I might use, maybe something like an easily useable "door shortcut" between distant locations. (Yes, Stargate, har-har. Director screwed up on the internal logic of that plot device, big time). I just don't think I'd be able to describe a concept for it, or that it's going to be easy to build this kind of magic box in real life any time soon (or at all)...

It's going to be "agree to disagree" then, I guess...

Yep, seems fair enough to me. I suppose it's time I expressed my personal views on the matter.

My problem is that I cannot objectively and logically justify to myself the feeling that the version of me made by a "destructive replicator" is not, in some sense, "actually me". So I feel a similar way to you, I just can't argue why logically.

 

[Dymanic]

We are all intuitive Cartesian dualists.