Would you use a Star Trek type transporter?

[Nick227]

I agree with this, and don't think I'd have a problem stepping into a tested, functioning transporter.

Still, when the scenario is changed only slightly, it gives me pause.

Suppose you're transported five feet from where you are right now, and the "original" is not vaporized. You now exist as two virtually identical individuals. You can even have a brief conversation with yourself to verify that your memories are exactly the same.

Would you be happy now to step into the vaporization chamber, knowing that your emergent brain activity is cycling along just fine in the other body?

Well, to be honest, I wouldn't step into it anyway. I'm hard-wired to resist death.

But, having participated in a lot of these debates over the years, what I see repeatedly is that people always go into these scenarios with the chamber malfunctioning, or the idea of meeting your twin.

And actually these things have nothing to do with the original thought experiment. They're just emotive concerns, biological pre-programming.

The thought experiment is usually used to demonstrate that many people who profess to be materialists won't actually choose to believe it when their own body and sense of self is at stake. Me neither.

Most well-functioning human beings will choose an inconsistent belief over hard reality when their sense of self is at stake. Because, at the end of the day, no one really cares that much about philosophy or science.

Nick

 

[Thunderchief]

But is the mind just the current configuration of your brain?

If I replicate that configuration elsewhere with different atoms, how is that different?

Nature replaces the atoms in your body and over the course of your life there is significant turnover.

Was there some point where the cycling of material left you not you?

It's not different, it would be identical, excepting it's temporal location of course. That does not mean that the brain you copied suddenly stops existing though, so niether does the mind it creates. So you would have two identical minds but not the same mind, so one can die and the other could live on, however the one that dies, does not magically transfer to the other brain, it is dead. As would the original in the transporter.

As I have stated, I would agree that if it is true that all my atoms have been replaced, then the Simon who existed 10 years ago (made up number I don't know how long it takes.) is not the same Simon who is typing this.

 

[AvalonXQ]

Hmm, in a materialistic point of view the Brain is the mind, so when you vaporise the brain the mind goes too.

In the materialistic point of view, the mind is the process that the brain manifests. I can copy a file from one hard drive to another, in fact I can copy it back and forth or even have it stored dynamically, and it's still the same file.

I don't think there's any meaningful distinction at all between moving a file or copying the file while deleting it from the original location - the two are the same thing. Neither is there any materialistic distinction between moving your mind from one brain to another or copying your mind into a new brain - it's the same thing.

 

[Thunderchief]

In the materialistic point of view, the mind is the process that the brain manifests. I can copy a file from one hard drive to another, in fact I can copy it back and forth or even have it stored dynamically, and it's still the same file.

I don't think there's any meaningful distinction at all between moving a file or copying the file while deleting it from the original location - the two are the same thing. Neither is there any materialistic distinction between moving your mind from one brain to another or copying your mind into a new brain - it's the same thing.

It is an identical file, not the same file, if it were the same file when you delete it all other copies would disappear. You can not move a file on a computer by the way, you can only copy it and then delete the original, what we call a "moving a file" does no such thing, it just rewrites the file location information. It's not a useful analogy for you in this case, in fact i would say it helps my case more. No data is ever moved in a computer, it is only ever copied and then deleted. Just like the poor sap in the transporter. ;-)

The "me" on earth does not get to go to mars, and the "me" on mars never gets to come to earth. Not via transporter anyway.

 

[dafydd]

The chances of me appearing in an episode of Star Trek are very small.

 

[AvalonXQ]

No data is ever moved in a computer, it is only ever copied and then deleted. Just like the poor sap in the transporter. ;-)

And yet we talk about moving files, because we recognize that when we create an identical file elsewhere, nothing is lost.

Just as a materialist has to recognize that his experience is identical whether you call him "the original" or "the copy," and that the distinction between waking up in your own body or waking up in a different body is entirely based on your mistaken intuition regarding indentity continuity, and not based on fact.

 

[AlBell]

Not unless a painful and certain death was the alternative.

 

[Jack by the hedge]

I disagree that these descriptions are meaningful. A process isn't an object and can't be vaporized. What is the difference between a process being moved and being duplicated?

Again, I think you're making the mistake of conflating the brain with the mind.

Process being moved:

I walk out of the transporter and into the next room.


Process being duplicated:

I stand in the transporter, and it briefly hums.

The technician tells me "OK, we confirm you've arrived in the next room so I'm now going to evaporate you. All right?"

But I look around and realise that I'm not in the next room. Some other dude is in the next room. I'm still here, listening to a guy who's just said he's about to kill me and am I cool with that. I sense that I am not cool with that.

 

[MattusMaximus]

If it worked as advertised in ST, then I'd do it in a second

 

[Cainkane1]

I don't think I would. I would be too afraid that a mess up in the transmission would leave me without skin on the other side or something. Or, for that matter, that I might apparate someplace where I shouldn't be apparating. You know like half of me is in a rock or something.

And what would happen if a person was standing where I beam into?

No I'd be afraid a fly would be in the teleporter and I'd end up half human and half fly.

 

[dasmiller]

No I'd be afraid a fly would be in the teleporter and I'd end up half human and half fly.

Now . . . you do understand that even if we were careful to screen out any flies, there would still be a few thousand dust mites, a hundred trillion (!) E. coli bacteria, and a host of other non-human-DNA critters going through the teleporter with you . . . .

 

[BenBurch]

...

As I have stated, I would agree that if it is true that all my atoms have been replaced, then the Simon who existed 10 years ago (made up number I don't know how long it takes.) is not the same Simon who is typing this.

Mostly painless, wasn't it?

 

[BenBurch]

If it worked as advertised in ST, then I'd do it in a second

IF Lt. Cmdr. Montgomery Scott is running them, of course.

 

[Checkmite]

No; the individual human who enters the transporter is killed, and a duplicate is created in the new location. Word games about the duplicate being able to call itself "me" aside: objectively, one subject's brain processes ended at one point, and the other subject's brain processes began at a later point, with no continuity bridge in between. It's not the same subject. Identical, perhaps, but not the same.

If I have two cassette tape copies of the same album, and I stop listening to one tape at 14:33 and start the other tape at 14:33, you could say I was listening to the same album, but demonstrably not the same tape. I can take the first tape out and show it to you, even as the second one was playing. You could theoretically do this with the transporter too, as the "what if it didn't destroy you when duplicating you" thought experiment proves. If the original subject goes to McDonald's afterwards while the duplicated subject visits the Library of Mars, the subject at McDonald's will not be able to see the Library of Mars, and the subject on Mars will not be able to see the menu board at the McDonald's. They are demonstrably two different subjects.

The word games over what "you" and "I" and "self" would mean vis-a-vis the dissolving subject in one location and the resolving subject in the other location are as practically useless as the mathematical "fact" that no one can ever touch another person because they would first have to traverse half the remaining distance ad infinitum, a fact which can be easily contested by walking up and swiftly kicking someone in the genitals. If a train consist is disassembled in one location and a second train consist is created many miles away on the same line, made up of the same types of cars and number of engines arranged in the same order which starts moving in the same direction as the original was, nobody could accuse it of being the "same train".

 

[Travis]

For me you can't realistically claim to be a materialist and then be in a drama about getting in the Teletransporter. It's just talking the talk without the walking the walk.

Nick

I really have no issue with the ethics or sense of self. Maybe who I am is destroyed and the new copy just goes on thinking it is part of the same continuity. I wouldn't know. Neither would anyone else that makes use of the technology. So long as it actually works correctly.

However another part of me thinks this is an awful waste. If it could create a new me without needing to destroy the original I would prefer that. That way there are now two of me that can get twice the stuff done.

Yes, me too. So where's the drama about getting into a Teletransporter?

You cannot die in a correctly functioning Teletransporter. One body ceases to be and another is created. But "you" is only an emergent property of brain activity. If the body is perfectly reproduced then the "you", the "I", is identical.

Nick

All it takes is one disgruntled technician to upload a virus into the machine that makes all the people come out the other side with a penis on their face and the thing would never be trusted again.

I agree with this, and don't think I'd have a problem stepping into a tested, functioning transporter.

Still, when the scenario is changed only slightly, it gives me pause.

Suppose you're transported five feet from where you are right now, and the "original" is not vaporized. You now exist as two virtually identical individuals. You can even have a brief conversation with yourself to verify that your memories are exactly the same.

Would you be happy now to step into the vaporization chamber, knowing that your emergent brain activity is cycling along just fine in the other body?

As noted above it would seem like such a waste to destroy the original. So there are now two of you. So what? So long as both you existing doesn't cause a rift in the universe or something I say carry on.

 

[Aepervius]

But we're not talking about something substantial here.

wrong we are definitively speaking of something substancial and material : the brain. You can play around with saying the I is an illusion or whatever. I am saying the I *IS* the brain. You are merely associating the apparence & functionning of the brain , the emerging property and say they are illusion, but you are not following trhru with acknowleding what is the important and only part for a materialist/physicalist : the substrat , the brain.

Kill the brain, you kill the I. Destroy the cube it is gone. You can make a new copy of the cube or brain but it will not be the original isntanced I. It will be a similar one with the same cubic/thought property but not the same.

Again, let me ask you , what if the process was not in reality a simple transfer, but first you get excruciatingly murdered over a long time, then the copy emerge without memory of it (the memory copy stops at the point where the torture murder starts).

There is no basic difference with the transporter the effect in the end is the same : you were at point A, and a copy identical in property appear at point B. Would you take the transporter ? If you say no, I have to ask you why not. The End state is fully identical with the transporter , the process is exactely the samer up to the point you push the button. The only difference is that the dematerialisation is killing you in painful way, which the copy will not be aware of.

 

[Thunderchief]

And yet we talk about moving files, because we recognize that when we create an identical file elsewhere, nothing is lost.

Just as a materialist has to recognize that his experience is identical whether you call him "the original" or "the copy," and that the distinction between waking up in your own body or waking up in a different body is entirely based on your mistaken intuition regarding indentity continuity, and not based on fact.

We may talk about it, however that does not change the fact that nothing is "moved" it is only ever "copied" like I've said before, we just don't care in this case, it makes no difference to us that the file we now have is a copy, because it is identical we don't mourn the loss of the original, condemned to a slow "death" of being partially overwritten until nothing remains. Sounds painful! ;-)

We are not talking about waking up in a different body, I have already said that the "me" on Mars is a real "me" but it is not the same me as the "me" on earth. He could come back via spaceship and tell me all about his adventures on Mars but the "me" on Earth will never experience being on Mars this way, so I don't know how you can meaningfully say that they are the same. (Identical yes, but not the same.)

 

[Thunderchief]

Mostly painless, wasn't it?

Yep, I wonder if I can claim my life insurance? ;-)

 

[Recovering Agnostic]

Process being moved:

I walk out of the transporter and into the next room.


Process being duplicated:

I stand in the transporter, and it briefly hums.

The technician tells me "OK, we confirm you've arrived in the next room so I'm now going to evaporate you. All right?"

But I look around and realise that I'm not in the next room. Some other dude is in the next room. I'm still here, listening to a guy who's just said he's about to kill me and am I cool with that. I sense that I am not cool with that.

I wouldn't be cool with that, and I see no reason why materialism should oblige you to be cool with that. If the "copy" can be created without any harm to me, it would be wasteful and ridiculous (practical issues aside) to insist on killing the "original" because that's just how it works. This, like Aepervius's insistence on inflicting agonising deaths on everyone, is adding extraneous elements to the thought experiment to try to tip the balance, by confusing the principle with the practicalities.

So let's say the Earth was about to be destroyed by an alien fleet. You can hop on a spaceship bound for the nearest human colony, or you can step into a transporter, which will painlessly and perfectly disassemble your body, and use that information to instantly recreate an identical body at your destination. The transporter will always work, but the spaceship has a high probability (call it 50%) of being destroyed by the aliens.

So do you choose the transporter, or the spaceship? What if the chance of the spaceship being destroyed was 75%? 99%? What if the transporter was the only option? Would you stay put for the last 5 minutes of "real" life before being blown up, just because the person who stepped out of the transporter wouldn't be made of the same atoms?

 

[Thunderchief]

This, like Aepervius's insistence on inflicting agonising deaths on everyone, is adding extraneous elements to the thought experiment to try to tip the balance, by confusing the principle with the practicalities.

I don't think its extraneous at all, it is getting to the bottom of how the transporter would work, revealing that it does not "move" you, it copies and then deletes you. If you could come up with a transporter that "moves" you I would happily step in.

So let's say the Earth was about to be destroyed by an alien fleet. You can hop on a spaceship bound for the nearest human colony, or you can step into a transporter, which will painlessly and perfectly disassemble your body, and use that information to instantly recreate an identical body at your destination. The transporter will always work, but the spaceship has a high probability (call it 50%) of being destroyed by the aliens.

So do you choose the transporter, or the spaceship? What if the chance of the spaceship being destroyed was 75%? 99%? What if the transporter was the only option? Would you stay put for the last 5 minutes of "real" life before being blown up, just because the person who stepped out of the transporter wouldn't be made of the same atoms?

In the first instance I would get on the Spaceship, 50% chance of life verses, 0% chance in the transporter. if you increase the risk, then at some point it would not be worth the risk, but I'm not sure where I would draw the line, above 50% but below 99% I would think.

If the transporter was the only option I would get on, its better that my genetics continue despite my death. If the time was long though, say a year of life, then I would not get on.