Resolution of Transporter Problem

[rocketdodger]

And, hence, the central assumption in the OP is non-materialist in nature.

Thank you... case closed.

Wait, I don't get it... You said numbers are ideas. Clearly numbers exist. Thus ideas exist.

So... why the double standard? Why are some ideas non-materialist while others are?

 

[Earthborn]

The copy may wake up screaming "IT WORKED!" and swear up and down it was the real me, continuing to exist. But for me it would have been oblivion.

Doesn't this make any sense?

It only makes sense if you insist on looking at the issue from the point of view of someone who does not exist. But someone who does not exist does not have a point of view, so therefore its point of view is irrelevant. Seen from the point of view of anyone who does exist, including the newly constructed you, it has just been a transfer of all information that is you.

 

[Gate2501]

It only makes sense if you insist on looking at the issue from the point of view of someone who does not exist. But someone who does not exist does not have a point of view, so therefore its point of view is irrelevant. Seen from the point of view of anyone who does exist, including the newly constructed you, it has just been a transfer of all information that is you.

Ugh... That is a really good point. I am arguing from a perspective that no longer exists, and that should make it irrelevant.

I am so on the fence about this.

 

[Mercutio]

Because those types of people have some of the most startling environmental changes of all human experience. Others might be prisoners, submarine crewmen, etc.

And their behavior is different in those conditions than out of those conditions. It is every bit as logical to infer that the "information" is in the environment as stored within the person.

I don't see what else could be appropriate, given that if you put a person in a sealed room they don't change their history or identity. The only valid conclusion is that their history and identity is somehow stored somewhere in their physical person.

No.

No, I ain't.

I explicitly said environmental influence was very important. You tried to argue with me that the actual environment, rather than just its influence, was what is important. Then you went on to make claims that a person's history and identity isn't necessarily stored in their physical body. I am just giving you what I feel are strong counterexamples.

All of the examples you have thus far given illustrate my point. That you consider them counterexamples is a measure of the power of your unexamined assumptions.

Perhaps we are talking about different things. I am talking about one's internalized history -- the things one thinks of when they remember stuff. I am not talking about the actual molecules left behind on the Eiffel Tower from that visit to Paris 20 years ago.

Now it seems to me that by definition internalized history must be internal to an individual. Do you disagree?

Yes, I do.

I don't think so, given that I can sit here and retrieve thousands of stored memories without much environmental influence at all. Yes the environment was important at the time the memory was formed, but not now.

* If you would take a look at the work of Liz Loftus, or Robert MacNamara, or some of the other false memory/recovered memory researchers, you would know that your statement here is simply untrue.

Ok, I will bite. What other metaphor is appropriate?

I was trying to go without metaphor at all, noting simply a changed organism and a changed environment, both important as sources of information.

You claim the "storage/retrieval" model adds details that aren't necessarily part of the actual phenomenon.

Can you provide a single example?

* above--your own example--is a perfect example. You claim to be able to "retrieve thousands of stored memories"; this is not at all the case. Each time you remember, you are re-experiencing, not retrieving, and the fact that you are re-experiencing in the absence of the original stimuli (like running in place rather than running) makes your account, and your act of remembering, systematically different from the original experience. Each subsequent time you engage in the act of remembering, you are only partly remembering the initial incident, and are increasingly remembering the remembering. There are inherent, systematic biases in this private behavior; it is absolutely not the same as accessing a computer file from its (literal) memory.

The memory/recall metaphor reifies "memories" as entities, not behaviors, and led researchers on a search for "where memories are stored"; decades ago, we thought it might be the hippocampus. Nope. Memories are not stored anywhere; there is a global change, not an addition to a file, that goes on in the organism. The re-experiencing is global as well. The faulty metaphor misguided research for decades, and still taints popular (and some scientific) understanding of the process.

 

[.13.]

We speak of stored memories, but the research shows more re-processing and re-experiencing than retrieval of some stored information.

Are there any websites that tell more about this research? Preferably directed at a layman.

I have written 3 or 4 replies over the last 2 days, only to see them eaten by connection errors, so I will try to very briefly restate one or two things I wrote in more length but were lost. First... I love all the "how do you know you haven't died already?" or "brain surgery" or "sleep" examples; in those examples, we are naturally inferring a continuity, as we do more commonly in more common situations, by the continuity in physical perspective. Our experience appears to be continuous; it appears that we do inhabit the same body, with the same aches and pains, when we wake than when we went to sleep. Those who are dismissing the time-space continuity are playing silly philosophy games and electing to not count what may well be the most important determinant of "self".

What do you mean by time-space continuity in this context? Does the following text clarify my point at all?

I'm not dismissing it. I'm just thinking that from the point of view of the patient/transportee there is no difference in time-space continuity. Both of them are unconscious during surgery/transportation. If the patient is put to sleep in the operation room and wakes up in his own room he too has moved in space while unconscious. Now the difference between brain suregy and teleporting is that teleport gives a perfect copy and surgery alters the patient slightly. Does it make a difference that at some point the transportee is encoded in an optical signal (for example)? I think the alteration is a bigger deal here. That is not to say I wouldn't have surgery. But I would also (probably) use the transporter.

I use notepad to type my messages if they are longer. Then I just copy/paste them to my browser.

 

[Z]

It only makes sense if you insist on looking at the issue from the point of view of someone who does not exist. But someone who does not exist does not have a point of view, so therefore its point of view is irrelevant. Seen from the point of view of anyone who does exist, including the newly constructed you, it has just been a transfer of all information that is you.

Ah... so the opinions of the minority are irrelevant, as long as we
can kill off the minority.

Got it.

"Don't worry about the fact we're about to kill you. We'll give all
the rest of the world a convincing illusion that you're still alive.
Have a nice day."

...Oddly, when I typed this the first time, I seem to have replied to my email copy instead... Some duplication going on here.... better kill off all my originals...

 

[rocketdodger]

* above--your own example--is a perfect example. You claim to be able to "retrieve thousands of stored memories"; this is not at all the case. Each time you remember, you are re-experiencing, not retrieving, and the fact that you are re-experiencing in the absence of the original stimuli (like running in place rather than running) makes your account, and your act of remembering, systematically different from the original experience. Each subsequent time you engage in the act of remembering, you are only partly remembering the initial incident, and are increasingly remembering the remembering. There are inherent, systematic biases in this private behavior; it is absolutely not the same as accessing a computer file from its (literal) memory.

The memory/recall metaphor reifies "memories" as entities, not behaviors, and led researchers on a search for "where memories are stored"; decades ago, we thought it might be the hippocampus. Nope. Memories are not stored anywhere; there is a global change, not an addition to a file, that goes on in the organism. The re-experiencing is global as well. The faulty metaphor misguided research for decades, and still taints popular (and some scientific) understanding of the process.

Well jesus Mercutio why didn't you just say this the first time?

You are looking to argue with me where there is no argument. I am an A.I. programmer, if nothing else I know from research on neural networks that there is no "memory" that can be retrieved like data can be retrieved in other programming paradigms.

That was never what I was talking about, and in any case I don't think it invalidates the metaphor -- it just means the metaphor needs to be more abstract than many might think. If you think that makes the metaphor useless, or even counter productive, then whatever, I didn't bring up the metaphor to begin with.

 

[rocketdodger]

And their behavior is different in those conditions than out of those conditions. It is every bit as logical to infer that the "information" is in the environment as stored within the person.

No, it is not logical to infer that the "information" of an astronaut's "re-experience" of his kid's 10th birthday is located somewhere inside the hull of the spacecraft.

I assume that isn't what you mean, since that is clearly an absurd proposition and you are an intelligent individual, but that is what it seems like you mean.

 

[Earthborn]

Ah... so the opinions of the minority are irrelevant,

In this case it is a minority of zero, and a majority of everyone... including you. That is to say, you who stepped out of the destination pod.

 

[Lithrael]

I really feel this is a case of people having trouble thinking in terms that simply don't currently exist. I'm certain that in a world where duplication/replication of people was commonplace, values regarding individual continuity would be different. I'm reminded of the way some cultures believe that mirrors and photography reflect and affect the soul.

Everybody please post more! I love the hell out of this discussion.

 

[Paul C. Anagnostopoulos]

Why on earth would anyone assume that all the relevant information is a) within the body of the person and not in the environment as well, and b) stored in a meaningful fashion independent of that environment? People here (not all) are assuming that characteristic X, Y, and Z are stored within a person, but those characteristics are reactions to things going on in that person's ongoing life. We speak of stored memories, but the research shows more re-processing and re-experiencing than retrieval of some stored information. There is no more reason to suspect that the information about stimulus perception, processing, and response is stored in the brain, any more than we should be able to cut open your legs to see where you have walked.

Oh, you're going to have to expand on this. I have no idea what you're trying to say here. Sure, there is no "me" stored in my brain. I'm constantly reinventing myself, reprocessing memories, re-sensing the world, behaving internally in new ways, etc., etc. Heck, maybe I have no memory of the image of a nose at all, but always have to glance in the mirror (environment) when I want to recall it. Why does any of that matter to teleportation, any more than it matters to falling asleep and being driven to another location in a car?

~~ Paul

 

[Paul C. Anagnostopoulos]

The memory/recall metaphor reifies "memories" as entities, not behaviors, and led researchers on a search for "where memories are stored"; decades ago, we thought it might be the hippocampus. Nope. Memories are not stored anywhere; there is a global change, not an addition to a file, that goes on in the organism. The re-experiencing is global as well. The faulty metaphor misguided research for decades, and still taints popular (and some scientific) understanding of the process.

This is a bit like saying that there is no memory in a hologram, because it is everywhere. The memories are still stored in entities, it's just that they are stored in a format that requires a complex process to retrieve/relive them. But we take your point.

What I don't think we understand is what this has to do with teleportation.

~~ Paul

 

[Z]

In this case it is a minority of zero, and a majority of everyone... including you. That is to say, you who stepped out of the destination pod.

After the process, it's a minority of zero - because you've killed the minority of one. And that isn't 'you' stepping out of the pod, just a twin, a he or she.

Boy, that'd make for a hell of a mechanical failure! "Sorry, EB, but your gender appears to have been reversed at some point in the transfer process. Have you ever given much thought to a change of lifestyle?"

It might be easier to let go of the first person singular perspective if, at some point in life, we really didn't stick to one such perspective; if, somehow, I was Waco today, and Marvin tomorrow, and Peter next week, and Sylvia later on... but for 36 years, I've been this continuous and dynamic being trapped in the same perspective for my entire awareness, and I find it highly unlikely that having someone create a twin is good enough reason to end this perspective. I also wouldn't care too much to have someone offer me brain implants, even if they make me a 'better person' somehow, because it would be a non-gradual shift in who I am.

 

[Lithrael]

That sounds reasonable to me, Z. In trying to think about it the best I can come up with to get that idea over is to imagine an intelligent lifeform evolved from a multi-stage insect, like a fly or a butterfly, and what kind of ideas they might have about identity and continuity. That grub, that caterpillar, it's gone forever. Literally transformed.

 

[cyborg]

It seems to me to be completely logical and common sense that this would be a new, sepearte individual consciousness.

Yes. As I've said before I'm not redefining counting - just trying to disassemble the notion of what a continuous self is anyway.

If you take one of those slices of existence and spawn two rather than one causal patterns based on it then the question is simply why one pattern is not as much "you" as the other.

Great for everyone else, but a heinous crime against the original life. I would find this kind of lifestyle even worse than abortion! People experiencing death, every day, over and over, and new copies taking up the next cause.

If this is death then just because the number of copies is one and the mechanism of copying is unexotic doesn't mean that we shouldn't mourn all those cyborgs who have died so that I may make this post now.

 

[Z]

One pattern exists in your body, and one does not.

 

[Malerin]

Ok, so transporter malfunctions at the point of origin are "out", even though the process clearly involves copying and destruction.

Let's also posit a fairly simple axiom: there can only be one "me".

So the claim seems to be: Me----teleportation----Me. Which is to say, I can be copied, destroyed, and rebuilt again and still retain my personal identity. I'm still me, in other words.

What happens if the teleporter malfunctions at the point of destination, and creates three duplicates of me, instead of one?

Me----teleportation----?
\___teleportation----?
\___teleportation----?

If I can go through teleportation and keep my identity intact, we should be able to figure out which one is me, but it's not clear at all which one is me, and they can't all be me.

The easy way to solve this is to conclude none of them are me. They are merely copies of me. I was killed in the teleportation process, and the three duplicates of me are copy1, copy2, and copy3, which are all unique persons. Therefore, teleportation is the copying and killing of an individual.

 

[Earthborn]

After the process, it's a minority of zero - because you've killed the minority of one.

Before the process it is also a minority of zero, because the person stepped into the sender voluntarily one would assume.

And that isn't 'you' stepping out of the pod, just a twin, a he or she.

According to the hypothetical the person stepping out of the receiver is identical in every way to the person stepping into the sender. You are just imagining that there must be some difference even though there is none.

 

[Earthborn]

I was killed in the teleportation process, and the three duplicates of me are copy1, copy2, and copy3, which are all unique persons.

The fact that there are 3 of them, all identical when they step out of the machine, disproves that they are unique. Unique means that there is only one, and now there are three.

 

[Richard Masters]

Nor do I.

I was chastised earlier on the thread for ignoring the OP, so I went back to it, to argue from "assume that self is stored information" as a given. I think the argument can be made that even under the OP assumptions, Darat2 is a different person from Darat1, and that one can still be opposed to stepping into the machine for the same reasons one may be opposed to killing any other person.

Emphasis mine.

If Darat1 and Darat2 ever exist at the same time, I agree with you.

If Darat1 ceases to exist at the same moment Darat2 (an exact copy as of the last moment of Darat1's existence) is put together, then I disagree with you.

The technology that does this would have to scan the original extremely fast, each atom in parallel; it would have to create each atom in parallel at the smallest unit of time available between destruction and creation.

If we succeed in taking an accurate snapshot, we still have to worry about transmission errors - one flipped bit of information will result in a corrupted copy. If the flipped bit affects the copy irreversibly (however minuscule,) we may have affected the copy in ways that conflict with the original's expectations/aims.

In order to avoid corrupted transmissions, there are a few things that can be done, such as pre-scanning the original before the final snapshot is taken, to ensure the integrity of the final snapshot. If a statistical anomaly is found between a series of snapshots (via Bayesian statistics), then the computer in charge of the transmission may correct the flipped bits.

But if the computer had to rely on statistics to determine the integrity of the copy, we risk making a corrupted copy out of perfect data (through improper "corrections") at least some of the time.

A good solution may be to accept corrupted copies as close enough. (And consequentially it may be the case that some flipped bits have zero effect on the behavior, outward appearance, and self regard of the copy. Other flipped bits could result in DNA aberrations).*

Nevertheless, I won't step into a transporter for at least another 100 years, when the concept has been proven and we understand consciousness better.

* This level of technology, however, could erase cancer and many genetic illnesses by comparing DNA strands and generating a model of what should be there, instead of what is.

For 400 dollars, part of your genome can be sequenced today (albeit only a few thousand snps). For about a 1,000,000 dollars you might be able to get a full genome in the course of about a month.

If we could take an atomic level snapshot of a single cell in one second, today, it would probably cost 2,592,000,000,000 dollars; In 30 years it might cost 2,592 dollars, in 40 years $2.59; in 50 years, this level of technology may become practical. This assumes no technological singularities prior to 2049.