Resolution of Transporter Problem

[Malerin]

NO no no no no no - each shard could show a reflection of you - so you've just reproduced numerous yous.

...given RD's logic.

Which can be avoided by turning out the lights the instant after you smash the mirror. Put that in one of your duplicate's pipes and smoke it.

 

[Malerin]

Very likely, yes.

Then we're back to the ordinal/cardinal problem. You want to refer to a set of people as a single person.

That's only true because you are never copied in such a way

If I am copied in such a way, I would certainly never expect my duplicate to share his paycheck or lottery winnings with me. In short, I would treat him as the seperate unique person he is. Why would I do otherwise?

A society that allows people to copy themselves will probably need to change its conventions of language. No biggie, since languages constantly change with new societal developments.

I doubt it, because the problem goes far beyond language. Personal identity applying to more than one person results in the contradiction that if one duplicate is hungry and another duplicate is full, the person could be described as hungryfull.

It is possible to imagine a future society in which criminal behaviour is considered a mental illness that requires not punishment but medical treatment. Such a society would require the same treatment to all duplicates, because being perfect duplicates the neurological flaw that caused one of them to commit the crime exists in all three.

Except in cases where the crime (or fine) comes about through simple carelessness or neglect, which anyone is capable of. Suppose one of the duplicates files his taxes and leaves off a zero on his income. Do they all pay penalties? Is forgetting to write a zero indicative of a "neurological flaw"?

And your scenario does nothing to explain why the duplicates should share a lottery payout, paycheck, bonus, etc. Or how a diagnosis of cancer in one duplicate, but not another means the person has/doesn't have cancer. If one of the duplicates gets married, I'm sure the wife would have something to say if another duplicate thinks he too is married, and decides to act on that belief.

We're really beyond argument. It should be clear there's no way to have personal identity refer to more than one person without getting tangled up in contradictions and absurdities.

 

[Z]

Which can be avoided by turning out the lights the instant after you smash the mirror. Put that in one of your duplicate's pipes and smoke it.

Hey! I smoke pipes, and I really am against mirror shards in my bowl.

 

[Gate2501]

I am really confused about what mirrors have to do with this?

 

[Z]

Don't forget the pipes; after all, it's all about smoke and mirrors.

 

[rocketdodger]

It's not an 'epic battle against a strawman' - it's simple fact

No, it isn't a "simple fact." It is a simple "fact" that a lump of clay in my left hand can't be the same lump of clay in my right hand. It is also a simple "fact" that a human body in China can't be the same body in Ireland. But we are not talking about those, are we? We are talking about the phenomenon of human consciousness -- a phenomenon about which, for good reason, there is a marked deficiency of simple "facts."

If it were a simple "fact" you or Malerin should be able to provide a coherent formal argument in support of it. You haven't. All you have done so far is stick your proverbial fingers in your proverbial ears and shake your proverbial head while sticking out your proverbial tongue.

This is a particularly poor analogy. An image of me is not me, any more than the reflection of me in the mirror is me... a photograph of me is not me, a camera recording is not me, a hologram is not me - and a clone is not me. Each is an illusion or representation based on recorded data of me, but is not me.

What if the distinction between "you" and "a recording of you" can no longer be made?

There are many types of software that exist as multiple instances in multiple locations at once. Whenever any of the instances change, that change is propagated throughout the rest of the instances instantly -- this is done so that all of them are completely in sync. The software doesn't function if all of its instances are not completely in sync because even though it is represented as multiple instances it is a single entity.

Why would such software exist? Because whatever it is doing is extremely important -- if a few of the instances are destroyed the entity still exists as the remaining ones. It is called redundancy.

Furthermore, mathematics tells us that all computation can be done in this way. It doesn't matter what the algorithm is or what the substrate is -- we can instance the data and distribute the process over multiple redundant locations while preserving the notion of a single entity.

So what you have to explain is why you think human consciousness is so inherently different from all other known forms of computation that it doesn't follow the rules of mathematics. Because if it does -- and that is the central assumption in the OP -- the teletransporter will work. So, then... lets hear your explanation.

 

[Rairun]

I haven't read the whole thread, only a couple of pages, but let me put my two cents in:

Anyone willing to get into the transporter, or to go to sleep, or to be anesthetized, shouldn't have any problems with being killed if the machine malfunctions and produces two copies. Killing some guy a couple of minutes after he comes out of a transporter doesn't mean you're actually killing him--it just means you're erasing his memories of the past two minutes.

How many of you have no problems with saving and doing a very stupid thing in your favorite computer game, knowing that you'll be able to go back in time and undo it? It's exactly the same situation here, except you don't save your environment, only you.

 

[Z]

Furthermore, mathematics tells us that all computation can be done in this way. It doesn't matter what the algorithm is or what the substrate is -- we can instance the data and distribute the process over multiple redundant locations while preserving the notion of a single entity.

And this is where you're wrong. It doesn't preserve the notion of a 'single entity' - it provides the vague illusion of one. An illusion is not equal to sameness.

So what you have to explain is why you think human consciousness is so inherently different from all other known forms of computation that it doesn't follow the rules of mathematics. Because if it does -- and that is the central assumption in the OP -- the teletransporter will work. So, then... lets hear your explanation.

Show me how this applies to self-aware, self-referential, internally redundant software which is trapped in, and a direct result of, a singular physical construct. Show me how these rules of mathematics take into account the utterly unique, continuous yet dynamic, first person point of view. That's the only failing to the theory - if the theory cannot explain how a person's first person point of view awareness is supposed to appear in multiple bodies at once, it fails. You haven't yet denied that, if the transporter fails to operate properly, that the person will be standing right there at point A still trapped in his original form, with only his own ongoing awarenss, same as always, and NOT with any awareness of the newly formed mirror image at point B.

Nor have you really addressed the issue that a photo, hologram, or TV image isn't the same as the person they are reflections of.

I think you've reached the impassible point here, and rather than trying to explain your side of it, you've picked up the ball and tossed it my way, trying to redirect the issue.

The ONLY way this teletrans issue can be said to 'work' is to operate it as an illusion. For some reason, otherwise intelligent and skeptical people seem to be satisfied with the illusion of their continuance, even though they will not continue to be. Every counterexample demonstrates this clearly, that you don't magically wake up in a new body on Mars; and even those siding with the teletrans, in many cases, agree that the person on Mars is merely a copy, a clone, a replicant with false implanted memories that match your own.

Yet, for some reason, they are so enmeshed in the idea of self-identity as merely a set of mathematical properties (which is, itself, absurd), that they would willingly sacrifice their own experience of life to take part in this silly illusion.

One of you (and forgive me, I forgot who) even went so far as to admit that, if the teletrans failed and they were being approached to be killed, that they would fight back because they did not want to die. That is a blatant admission on their part that they realize the teletrans is inherently absurd.

So explain to me how it's different, just because you're vaporized instantly.

 

[Rairun]

Just to further illustrate my stance:

Merc's objection is not that you can't create duplicates of someone just that every-time you do by how we usually define a person you are creating a new person. Sure they will all say that they are Darat, they may in fact be completely indistinguishable from the first Darat, but what there are is a group of distinct and separate Darats, they will be no more connected to one another than you and me.. (Albeit it is very likely that given a similar input into their environment they will all respond in a very similar manner.)

However to kill anyone of those is killing a person no matter that there will still be Darats left in the universe.

Darat is correct that we would be killing a person by how we usually define a person. We only disagree because the way we currently define a person is fundamentally flawed. There is not any more continuity between person A and person A five minutes ago than between person A and person B. They are two different people, even though we normally say they are the same. We are literally dying every single second that passes. Keeping that in mind, it's no big deal to put any number of copies to sleep, as long as we have a backup that is similar enough to them.

 

[Z]

I haven't read the whole thread, only a couple of pages, but let me put my two cents in:

Anyone willing to get into the transporter, or to go to sleep, or to be anesthetized, shouldn't have any problems with being killed if the machine malfunctions and produces two copies. Killing some guy a couple of minutes after he comes out of a transporter doesn't mean you're actually killing him--it just means you're erasing his memories of the past two minutes.

How many of you have no problems with saving and doing a very stupid thing in your favorite computer game, knowing that you'll be able to go back in time and undo it? It's exactly the same situation here, except you don't save your environment, only you.

Your video game characters have a first person awareness? I'm amazed.

Or maybe, those who are pro-teletrans lack a first person awareness, and are merely watching their own lives unfold in some third-person perspective. Yes, from that perspective, there's no difference - IF the illusion works correctly.

But then again, from that perspective, the illusion works if the product at the other end is merely a computer-generated hologram, too.

 

[Z]

Just to further illustrate my stance:



Darat is correct that we would be killing a person by how we usually define a person. We only disagree because the way we currently define a person is fundamentally flawed. There is not any more continuity between person A and person A five minutes ago than between person A and person B. They are two different people, even though we normally say they are the same. We are literally dying every single second that passes. Keeping that in mind, it's no big deal to put any number of copies to sleep, as long as we have a backup that is similar enough to them.

That's ridiculous.

Person A now and person A five minutes ago share most of the same physical material - including almost all the same brain matter. Person A now and person A five minutes ago -except in rare medical situations - share the same memories and experiences, and are influenced to make similar decisions (barring, of course, new influences over the last five minutes).

Person B might be a midget with an incompatible blood type, purple skin, wrong gender, who lived their whole life in a nudist colony in Siberia.

So... how's that continuity compare?

And at no point does person A ever experience the unique first-person perspective of person B, and vice-versa.

So, again, your argument fails out of the gate.

 

[Rairun]

That's ridiculous.

Person A now and person A five minutes ago share most of the same physical material - including almost all the same brain matter. Person A now and person A five minutes ago -except in rare medical situations - share the same memories and experiences, and are influenced to make similar decisions (barring, of course, new influences over the last five minutes).

First of all, I don't see how it matters that they are composed of the same atoms (mostly). I'm sure it has been pointed out that no one would complain if their atoms were replaced one by one.

And yes, person A and person A five minutes ago share pretty much the same memories and experiences, and are influenced to make similar decisions. I agree with that. So do person A and clone A, yet the anti-transporter crowd still claim they are different people because they occupy different spaces in the universe. Guess what, so do person A and person A five minutes ago.

Person B might be a midget with an incompatible blood type, purple skin, wrong gender, who lived their whole life in a nudist colony in Siberia.

So... how's that continuity compare?

You fail to see my point. I'm saying that if you consider person A and clone A to be different people, just like person A and person B are, then you have to consider person A and person A five minutes ago to be different too.

 

[Gate2501]

That's ridiculous.

Person A now and person A five minutes ago share most of the same physical material - including almost all the same brain matter. Person A now and person A five minutes ago -except in rare medical situations - share the same memories and experiences, and are influenced to make similar decisions (barring, of course, new influences over the last five minutes).

Person B might be a midget with an incompatible blood type, purple skin, wrong gender, who lived their whole life in a nudist colony in Siberia.

So... how's that continuity compare?

And at no point does person A ever experience the unique first-person perspective of person B, and vice-versa.

So, again, your argument fails out of the gate.

Speaking of gate...

If you look at my position in this thread, I have done a 180, because I came to a realization.

The "unique" first person perspective of person A is not unique after all.

Read my last post, about how any assesment that you can possibly make about the continuity of your first person perspective, is no better than the assesment of the clone that comes out of the machine. They are both "after the fact" perspectives, taken from the present.

We have the exact same amount of evidence that we didn't die billions(probably much more) of times today, as the teleported human has that he didn't die in the teleportation process.

Every time the state of the information being processed changes in the brain, you die just as much(as far as you can possibly know) as you would die in this teleporter.

I hate to admit that I was wrong, but yeah...

Beam me up.

 

[Z]

First of all, I don't see how it matters that they are composed of the same atoms (mostly). I'm sure it has been pointed out that no one would complain if their atoms were replaced one by one.

And yes, person A and person A five minutes ago share pretty much the same memories and experiences, and are influenced to make similar decisions. I agree with that. So do person A and clone A, yet the anti-transporter crowd still claim they are different people because they occupy a different space in the universe. Guess what, so do person A and person A five minutes ago.

Because person A and person A -5 minutes are both still physically continuous and have identical first person POVs as related to their history; clone A has neither physical continuity nor identical first person POVs.

You fail to see my point. I'm saying that if you consider person A and clone A to be different people, just like person A and person B are, then you have to consider person A and person A five minutes ago to be different too.

Only if person A and person A-5min co-exist at the same time.

You fail to take into account fourth-dimensionality in this. I share a continual physical and experiential connection through time with me-5min; I do not share this whatsoever with meClone. I can never and will never share the same first person POV with meClone. MeClone carries memories of my first person POV, but those memories are artificially placed there. It may be there is no significant distinction between memories naturally derived from experiences, and memories artificially implanted; but even a lifetime of such grafted memories applied to the clone isn't going to allow me to experience what's going on in the clone's first person POV.

Under materialism, there IS NO homonculus - there is NOTHING that is transferred between A and Aclone that allows A to experience the first person POV of AClone. Only A has A's first person POV. Nothing changes that.

In order to have the teletrans actually function, you'd have to demonstrate some means for A to experience the first person POV of Aclone... which is ridiculous, impossible, etc. The only time it even sounds like it's working is to murder off A quickly, so that he can never express his dismay at not knowing, personally, what his clone on Mars is up to.

Hence, it's nothing but an empty illusion.

 

[Rairun]

Your video game characters have a first person awareness? I'm amazed.

Or maybe, those who are pro-teletrans lack a first person awareness, and are merely watching their own lives unfold in some third-person perspective. Yes, from that perspective, there's no difference - IF the illusion works correctly.

But then again, from that perspective, the illusion works if the product at the other end is merely a computer-generated hologram, too.

I think you need to think more about what "first person awareness" actually means. You seem to believe it's a continuous movement, but it's not. If you fall and hit your head, for example, there is no awareness there while you're unconscious. When you come back, the "first person awareness" that existed before isn't the same as the new one. It's almost like you believe in spirits, in some sort of essence independent of our bodies. I challenge you to provide evidence of that.

 

[Rairun]

Okay, I was going to quote your whole post and reply bit by bit, but I have figured out how to make you see this.

Under materialism, there IS NO homonculus - there is NOTHING that is transferred between A and Aclone that allows A to experience the first person POV of AClone. Only A has A's first person POV. Nothing changes that.

Here you are saying: there IS NO homonculus - there is NOTHING that is transferred between A and Aclone that allows humunculusA to experience the first person POV of AClone. Only humunculusA has A's first person POV. Nothing changes that.

Can you not see this? The continuous sense of awareness you posit is a homunculus.

 

[Z]

Speaking of gate...

If you look at my position in this thread, I have done a 180, because I came to a realization.

The "unique" first person perspective of person A is not unique after all.

Read my last post, about how any assesment that you can possibly make about the continuity of your first person perspective, is no better than the assesment of the clone that comes out of the machine. They are both "after the fact" perspectives, taken from the present.

We have the exact same amount of evidence that we didn't die billions(probably much more) of times today, as the teleported human has that he didn't die in the teleportation process.

Wrong - there is one bit of evidence we have that is not an 'after the fact' perspective - that's in the expectation of further experience.

Every moment, we can expect, based on prior experience, and barring actual death, to continue to exprience the next moment in the same first person POV that we've always experienced.

At the moment we step up to the teleporter, that expectation ends. Because when a clone is made and we AREN'T destroyed, there is a 100% chance of immediate divergence in experience, and we can only expect to continue to experience our own body, not our clone's. It is that realization - a realization that any sensible and logical person should be able to make - that is absolutely unchangable under materialism.

Every time the state of the information being processed changes in the brain, you die just as much(as far as you can possibly know) as you would die in this teleporter.

Wrong again. State of information change does not equal death, nor replacement. Human experience is continuous and dynamic - which no one is really arguing against, though the strawman of 'continual death' sounds a bit like it - and it is also reasonably certain to continue in a predictable fashion. I don't expect, for example, that in the next minute, blue will appear red, or that I'll suddenly like okra, or that I'll get over my childhood crush on Deborah Gibson... because, experientially and barring significant trauma or injury, such sudden and exceptional changes don't occur.

It is also reasonable to assume that my perception of self isn't going to suddenly shift so that, one moment, I'm Z, and the next, I'm TragicMonkey, and the next, I'm Darat. I've always been Z, which is an identity attached to a long, continuous and dynamic personality connected through time and physically (within the brain) nearly identical from earliest childhood. Not just identically patterned, but quite likely identical down to a majority of the atomic structure of the brain cells themselves.

It is, however, unreasonable to expect a shift of our personal POV from the body we exist in now, to the body of even a physically similar body in another spatial location - because if the device doesn't destroy us, we expect to continue experience only in this body.

It is that shift in POV, and the expectation of that shift, that is the crux of the problem. EVERYONE who is pro-teletrans wants to ignore that shift, or only look at it from a third-person or clone's perspective - in other words, from every perspective except the only one that should matter: their own.

It is that blatant denial of the first-person perspective they possess now - and the bizarre attempts to deny that perspective by claiming 'multiple, instantaneous deaths' or other such nonsense, that marks a lack of rational, critical thinking on this subject.

You know, it may well be that, included with the physical information about quarks and neutrinos and the wavelength of the photons emanating from your underpants, there is also a unique spacetime signature that identifies a person and connects the present us to our past incarnations and accounts for why we can only ever experience one point of view and no other. Pure speculation, of course - and, perhaps, even that signature might be duplicatable. Or it might not.

All I'm saying is, explain how the clone on Mars is me if I survive the teletrans, and I'll happily step into the disintegrator - once I'm personally aware of the Martian Me's first person POV.

I hate to admit that I was wrong, but yeah...

Beam me up.

I'll send flowers to your widow.

 

[Rairun]

As much as I've grown to dislike Eastern philosophy over the years due to its moral components, I feel like beating your heads with it. Seriously, dudes, the sense of self is an illusion. Everyone is supposed to know this by now.

 

[Z]

I think you need to think more about what "first person awareness" actually means. You seem to believe it's a continuous movement, but it's not. If you fall and hit your head, for example, there is no awareness there while you're unconscious. When you come back, the "first person awareness" that existed before isn't the same as the new one. It's almost like you believe in spirits, in some sort of essence independent of our bodies. I challenge you to provide evidence of that.

It's a continuous and dynamic awareness of self. It doesn't significantly change from point to point.

It's not an essence independent of our bodies; it is an experience which is WHOLLY DEPENDENT upon our brain cells, which are with us THROUGHOUT LIFE.

Change the brain cells significantly, and that awareness of self can change or even vanish. If I suffer major brain damage - or even some kind of chemical 'wipe' - then I cease to exist, and a new awareness begins in the old body. Without the physical and historical continuity linking one moment of awareness to another, there is no self at all.

And at the moment of the death of that physical and historical continuity, the individual is dead.

As far as 'unconsciousness' goes, as I've said before, self is more than merely conscious awareness; it is also all the stored data which continues to function while sensory awareness is shut down. I no more buy that we cease to be when we're unconscious than I do that we cease to be when we're dreaming. But we will undoubtably and absolutely cease to be when we're vaporized, regardless if there's one or a billion clones on Mars.

Let me ask you a simple, plain question - please answer as simply as possible.

If you step into the device, and a moment later, step out into the same room; if you are then told that the machine failed in one respect, and that while, yes, you have appeared on Mars, you are ALSO right here on Earth in the sending room - which life is the person who walked into the machine experiencing?

Then you get shot in the head - which life is the person who walked into the machine experiencing?

For me, the answers are plain. You are experiencing life on Earth - and death on Earth - and then, no life at all.

And that doesn't change if we jump from walking into the machine to the moment of vaporization - except you experience a little less life than before. And a bit less confusion.

 

[Z]

Okay, I was going to quote your whole post and reply bit by bit, but I have figured out how to make you see this.



Here you are saying: there IS NO homonculus - there is NOTHING that is transferred between A and Aclone that allows humunculusA to experience the first person POV of AClone. Only humunculusA has A's first person POV. Nothing changes that.

Can you not see this? The continuous sense of awareness you posit is a homunculus.

Let me try to correct this misunderstanding for you.

there IS NO homonculus - there is NOTHING that is transferred between A and Aclone that allows brainA to experience the first person POV of AClone. Only brainA has A's first person POV. Nothing changes that.

There - does that make you understand this, yet?