To Be [Archive] - Giant in the Playground Forums

Devils_Advocate

2009-12-03, 10:29 PM

I've seen arguments about this sort of scenario in which each side accuses the other of magical thinking. One will say that it makes no sense to consider the copy the same as the original unless one believes that there's some sort of soul being transported, and the other will say that it makes no sense to consider the copy different from the original unless there's some sort of soul that isn't being transferred.

And this is funny, because what they're arguing about is whether the copy inherits the original's consciousness. Using the word "consciousness" to mean basically the same thing as "soul". But of course, the way that your opponent uses this concept has obvious supernatural connotations in a way that your usage doesn't. Because you say so.

Moff, let us hypothetically suppose that we have available some sort of ludicrously implausible technology that allows us to create perfect copies of people with only trivial amounts time, energy, and effort.

Now, as a practical matter, a person is valuable because people are useful for all sorts of stuff. And if you kill a person, that removes her ability to do stuff, thereby making her much less useful. However, when copying people is easy, keeping multiple copies of a person around becomes less useful, since you can make new copies whenever you need them. You just need one of a person to make copies from in the first place, and maybe a few more as a safety measure in case one is destroyed. It's a lot like data storage. Actually, it's a form of data storage, since you're using a human to store the data needed to make more of him. And if there's another, more convenient way to store that information, you don't need to use actual humans for it.

So, lets assume that you can conveniently make static backups of yourself, so that in the unfortunate event of your demise, you can be restarted with only the loss of those changes to yourself that have happened since you made the backup. Neat!

How much more comfortable are you with the idea of being killed, knowing that this only erases, say, your last few days of personal experience? How much more comfortable with that are you than just losing your last few seconds?

If you have a recent copy of you walking around instead of a backup -- you, less a few days of experience, but also plus the same amount of different experience -- does that make you any less comfortable with dying than a backup would? Why or why not?

Do you want to have a copy of yourself active, or is it enough to have a backup of yourself for people to use if they need one of you for something? I.e., would you prefer one copy of yourself to zero, for your own personal reasons? If so, what might those reasons be? Would you rather have two copies of yourself than just one? Why or why not?

Then I'd have to say there's no trouble, the original is just dead cells. However, the moment the original has, well, a moment to realize what's going on you have a problem, because in effect two distinct people existed for that moment, and one of them died.
But if having different mental states makes them different people, you didn't exist a few seconds ago anyway. "You" didn't have the same exact mental state that you do now, and so that past "you" wasn't actually you, and you'll die in but a moment. You shall cease to be, and get replaced by the next, slightly different guy.

And that's not even something to be troubled by, if you don't value multiple instantiations of your current mental state. You are present somewhere in the space-time continuum, and anything more than that would just be redundant, so it's all good.

thorgrim29

2009-12-03, 11:04 PM

To answer your question, I think having backups would be neat, if a bit unsettling the first few times. But I don't it would change my attitude, because even tough another me will wake up with no memory of it, I will still feel the pain of whatever kills me. So more an insurance then a get out of jail (death) free card. And then you have this problem:

Guy: Ok, just got backuped, time to kill x person and commit suicide. Then the me that wakes up will not be guilty.

Kallisti

2009-12-03, 11:24 PM

I'd rather not be killed. I am not suicidal.

Therefore, if I were copied in the booths, I'd rather not be killed. Not even then. I don't want to die.

But neither does my copy.

If you kill someone who doesn't want to die, that's murder, isn't it? That's pretty much the definition of murder. My copy and I both have the right to live, by virtue of being sentient beings who'd rather live.

I'd rather not be copied at all. I'm unique. That makes me special, gives me some worth. If there were two of me that'd be okay, I guess. That's still pretty unique, and I'd love to be able to play chess against myself, always have someone to play Magic with, and be able to argue both sides of an argument without insults or flaming. But three or four...or ten? One for every task? One for every state? A personal Kallisti in every household? No, thank you.

I'd be just as uncomfortable dying with a backup me around. After all, is it really me, or just an exact copy? I'm me. He's him. I know because I'm looking out from behind my eyes and at him. If I go, and a backup is activated, there's still a Kallisti. But no me. Not anymore. Just someone very, very, very like me. I wouldn't want to die even if I had an identical twin, and I wouldn't want to die if I'd been cloned, either.

I think the more interesting ethical question here is whether the copy that comes out of the 'transporter' has any responsibity for the original's life. Is he guilty of my crimes? Does he need to confess my sins? Pay my bills? Feed my dog? Raise my children? Can he spend my money, live in my house, mooch of my parents? I'd say no. He's a different person. He's just a lot like me. Now, if I'm going to die anyway, I may as well will my stuff to him, because I know he'll enjoy it just like I did, but he has no responsibility for my actions and I have no obligation to let him use all my stuff.

But I gave him life. I went into that booth. Do I have responsibility to him there? Do I have to suport him until he can support himself? After all, he has nothing but the clothes on his back.

And that's not even really considering the copy's point of view. He remembers everything that's happened to me, exactly, as if it happened to him. So what gives me the right, as the original, to tell him that he loses all of the nice stuff he remembers having, the friends, the family, the home, because "he never really had it." That hardly seems fair.

And what if I didn't create him with a machine? What if he's me, from a quantam universe almost like our own? He's me, except I rolled a six and he rolled a seven. Now does he get to spend my money and live in my house?

This is why I hope never to be copied, cloned, etc. Too much of a can of worms.

Keris

2009-12-03, 11:44 PM

Somewhat related SMBC comic:
http://zs1.smbc-comics.com/comics/20091023.gif

thubby

2009-12-03, 11:50 PM

consent solves most of the moral issue of it. If I step into the booth knowing full well what it does, then it's my choice.

there are also a lot of implications that are only a problem with inconsistent logic.
with the murder thing. either the copy is you, and it's guilty. or it's not you, in which case it has no claim to your assets, and could have piled up some pretty big debts while clone corp. kept it safe.
the narrator in the video even flip flops. she claims she's not guilty, but continues to use "I" in both bodies, meaning she still thinks of herself as the same consciousness that entered the cabinet, which contradicts her entire fight with the scientist.

Kroy

2009-12-04, 12:06 AM

I believe there is no soul. However, since if there is no soul than all we are is the personality are brain gives us. Since the brain is (on its most basic level) binary, than logically I can replicate my binary. If I were to replicate my brain (or the binary that creates personality and thought processes) than it would be replicating the same "soul."

For example, for the argument that you don't have to take responsibility for their actions to be true, you must be guilt free the moment after you do something. I shoot a guy. Why would the new (2 hours later) me have to take responsibility? That was past me who did that. Some of my cells have changed since then. Same thing here. What we as a society are doing is: Punishing the personality, and as a warning to others. If people think they are guilt free just because they have different atoms, than punishment would be inefficient.

[/rant]

Moff Chumley

2009-12-04, 12:09 AM

Agreed, Thubby. More eloquent than I could've put it. :smallsmile:

Devils_Advocate

2009-12-04, 03:42 AM

Some questions to consider: Is identity a property, or is "being someone" non-transitive (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transitive_relation) and/or non-symetric (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Symmetric_relation)? Is an identity a type or does it refer to a token (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Type-token_distinction)? It is either a kind or an instance of a configuration (http://xkcd.com/659/)?

Can a single object have properties incompatible with properties that it had or will have? Are objects three-dimensional or four-dimensional?

Can a single object exist simultaneously in separate regions of space? Can a single process occur simultaneously in separate regions of space? Is a mind a process?

I'd be just as uncomfortable dying with a backup me around. After all, is it really me, or just an exact copy?
What's the difference? (That "you" are made up of different particles than "he" is? The thing is, those particles aren't actually different (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Identical_particles). Is it that "he" has a different location from "you"? Are you claiming to have a single, fixed location?)

I'm me. He's him. I know because I'm looking out from behind my eyes and at him.
Do you have different sets of experiences at different times? If so, what precludes you having different experiences at the same time?

If I go, and a backup is activated, there's still a Kallisti. But no me.
If you're not Kallisti, who are you? Or, rather, if you're not just Kallisti, what else are you that a copy wouldn't be?

I think the more interesting ethical question here is whether the copy that comes out of the 'transporter' has any responsibity for the original's life.
Only in the sense that it's an interesting question whether obligation exists at all. Other than that, saying that teleporting divests you of responsibility is like saying that falling asleep divests you of responsibility. Except the latter is ever so slightly more plausible, since there actually seems to be a discontinuity between your consciousness before falling asleep and after waking up.

averagejoe

2009-12-04, 04:33 AM

Well, I find it morally reprehensible that you've built a teleporter and upset the laws of thermodynamics in the first place, and then demand that you build a perpetual motion machine in penance. However...

People keep using words like, "real one," and "copy," but that only works if (as in the video) the transporters are not identical. (The copy will have memories of being inside of a square refrigerator whereas the original will not, making the choice of which to destroy completely non-arbitrary. Of course, they'll lie about that, but that's a different issue.) If you built two identical chambers and put them on opposite sides of a circular conveyor belt, or an even better contrivance than I've thought up (because one could conceivably set up a measure of acceleration and time spent in the chamber, then compare the relative position of the pods before and after, in order to tell which was which.) The point is that one probably could set up an experiment in which the "real" one and the "copy" were completely indistinguishable, even if one could read all of the knowledge in their respective brains with perfect accuracy. (And why not? We have teleportation, after all.) Upon exiting the teleporter then the personalities would begin to diverge, but "real" and "fake" would still be meaningless; you'd have to give some sort of arbitrary differentiation like, "The one who came out closer to the door."

thubby

2009-12-04, 07:58 AM

well, the copies in the videos aren't copies at all, as she argued the clones were actually somehow inferior (the chess game).
but as that borks the entire premise of the discussion...

Devils_Advocate

2009-12-04, 09:35 AM

I think that one could say that a single physical object's location is a continuous function of time. I think that this is the sense in which one of the "twins" is considered to remain the "original". (It's still a vague notion, though, since "location" is a vague notion -- a typical physical object occupies a contiguous region of space larger than a single point! And in light of that, how do we deal with something being split up into (or assembled from) pieces?)

But we're really concerned with minds here, not bodies, and minds are not obviously physical objects. I would tentatively call a mind a property. John K Clark expressed this as "I am not a noun, I am an adjective. I am anything that behaves in a John-K-Clarkish way."

But let's not be too hasty. Let's think about two different future versions of you in alternate timelines -- each the same physical object as you are, per the above-mentioned standard. I think that a lot of folks would intuit these versions not to be the same person, and yet each to be the same person as you. Well, that describes a non-symmetric relation, in conflict with at least some intuitions about what "the same" means. Under this view, (potentially) having been someone in the past is not the same thing as (potentially) ... um, being going to be? ... someone in the future. Which makes some sense, if you think about the details. E.g. you get memories from your past self but not from your future self.

So, in that case, talking about "identity" is misleading, since the concept of identity is treated as basically a sort of property (or so it seems to me), and sharing a property is a symmetric relation.

... Man, now this discussion has got me trying to grasp how the Second Law of Thermodynamics can be compatible with time-reversible physics. I hope you're happy, GoC. :smallmad:

well, the copies in the videos aren't copies at all, as she argued the clones were actually somehow inferior (the chess game).
Yes, she argued that, and not at all obviously sincerely. Even if she believed it, that doesn't mean that it's so.

Also, defining "copy" to mean an entirely indistinguishable duplicate is, generally speaking, too narrow a definition of "copy".

but as that borks the entire premise of the discussion...
That's not clear at all. Obviously you're changing as time passes, so if you're the same person from one moment to the next, then obviously your identity routinely passes from one version of you to a different one. So I don't see why a perfect copy would be required.

Adlan

2009-12-04, 10:02 AM

I am Me, based on my continuity. Replace a Part of me, and I am still me, replace another part, I am still me.

Keep going and I'm still me.

However, Copy me, and Destroy the original, with no continuity, I am no longer me, but a copy, that has a copy of all my memories.

Were I to find my self in this situation, as a Copy, I'd feel a bit weird, and probably try to diverge from my original. As an Original, well, now I have a twin brother.

To kill either original or copy is murder.

Ichneumon

2009-12-04, 10:42 AM

I don't think you are guilt free if you are an exact copy. Your consciousness shares 1 history, 1 past in which it was 1 entity doing something wrong.

Interesting movie.

GoC

2009-12-04, 10:46 AM

... Man, now this discussion has got me trying to grasp how the Second Law of Thermodynamics can be compatible with time-reversible physics. I hope you're happy, GoC. :smallmad:
*puts a tick in a check box in his notes*
Nothing to see here...

However, Copy me, and Destroy the original, with no continuity, I am no longer me, but a copy, that has a copy of all my memories.
What if you find out the universe works as described in Discworld with Time destroying and rebuilding the universe once every Plank second?

Were I to find my self in this situation, as a Copy, I'd feel a bit weird, and probably try to diverge from my original. As an Original, well, now I have a twin brother.
What if you can't tell if you're the "copy" or the "original"?

Devils_Advocate

2009-12-04, 10:47 AM

I am Me, based on my continuity. Replace a Part of me, and I am still me, replace another part, I am still me.

Keep going and I'm still me.
If every part of you is replaced one at time, is the new assemblage of parts still you? What if someone reconstructs the original parts? Is that not you? (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ship_of_Theseus) What if someone deconstructed and reconstructed you without replacing your parts with new ones as they went? Would your original configuration of all of your original parts then still fail to be you?

And when you get split into pieces, what makes one piece you and the other piece something that's taken away from you, rather than the other way around? Are there any scenarios in which both pieces would be you?

However, Copy me, and Destroy the original, with no continuity, I am no longer me, but a copy, that has a copy of all my memories.
But there is mental continuity, just not physical continuity. There's a continuous train of thought, though the location associated with it is not a continuous function of time.

The thing is... if my copy of Gödel, Escher, Bach were torn in two, that might turn it into two books in some technical sense, but it would still be one book in every sense that really mattered.

I guess that that's pretty much how I feel about this issue. Yeah, a copy of you might not actually be "you" in some technical sense, but seriously, why would you care? What does the copy fail to do that you want done?

Ichneumon

2009-12-04, 10:50 AM

I'd say there is morally no difference between being the copy or the original. They are both 2 different entities that share the same past, so each is both equally quilty of their past deeds. Also, murdering anyone of them is wrong, I'd say, even if this means that it would create lots of social problems. Because of the social problems I'd advise strongly against such kind of teleportation. I think it would only work if you would create the copy AFTER you've destroyed the first and it is done with consent.

GoC

2009-12-04, 10:57 AM

... morally ... wrong ...
Why would you discourage this sort of thing? What would be the consequences if you didn't? How far would you go to discourage it?

I think it would only work if you would create the copy AFTER you've destroyed the first and it is done with consent.
Why the "after"?

Lord Seth

2009-12-04, 11:54 AM

This (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9eTUz61LNjo) and, if you don't mind a more serious and lengthy watch, this (http://www.hulu.com/watch/69830/outer-limits-think-like-a-dinosaur).

Mystic Muse

2009-12-04, 11:58 AM

I think whether the copy is the same as the original all comes down to whether or not the soul exists.

If it does then you can't copy the original because you can't copy the soul.
If it doesn't then you just have to copy the consciousness of the person and it will be a true copy.

chiasaur11

2009-12-04, 12:01 PM

If I get cloned, well, neither me would want to die.

Admittedly, clone me would also not want to constantly do my menial busywork to free up more time for me to play Smash Brothers, but that's exclusively his problem.

The Rose Dragon

2009-12-04, 12:01 PM

If it doesn't then you just have to copy the consciousness of the person and it will be a true copy.

We still don't know what consciousness is. We still don't know crapload of stuff about how the brain works. How do you copy something you don't know how to quantify, or whether it even exists?

Lord Seth

2009-12-04, 12:03 PM

Ichneumon

2009-12-04, 12:07 PM

Why the "after"?

Because if you make sure you kill the original before you make a copy, you prevent social dilemma's like what to do if the orignal doesn't want to kill himself/herself anymore or what if things go wrong etc.

Why would you discourage this sort of thing?

My comment was directed at the part in the video in which they force one of the 2 scientists back into the macine to kill him. He doesn't want to be killed and I don't think you are justified to kill someone only because that person promised it would be okay to kill him earlier.

I suspect you interpreted my comment as being a comment on another part of the video. I see I've been too ambiquous in commenting 1 part of a 10 minutes video.

What would be the consequences if you didn't?

He would be killed?

How far would you go to discourage it?

I'd try to save the scientist who's been forced back into the machine. I'd willingly break laws and use some types of violence to protect and defend an innocent individual from being murdered.

Zanaril

2009-12-04, 12:19 PM

There is only the now. The you from five minutes ago, or even five seconds ago no longer exsists. There is only the memory of you being there, in your memories, in other people's memories, and evidence in the world around you. The idea here, of distroying someone and re-creating them somewhere else, is no different. :smallwink:

The copy of the scientist is no different than the you from five minutes ago. Just, you know, you can see them and influence them.

Actually, I have a theory that if you could accelerate something fast enough that it moved a significant distance in the shortest amout of time there is, it would 'jump', and move without being stopped by anything in the way. Like stop motion but in real life. And also that this happens all the time anyway, but the distances are so small that they can't be measured. [/musing]

GoC

2009-12-04, 12:37 PM

This (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9eTUz61LNjo) and, if you don't mind a more serious and lengthy watch, this (http://www.hulu.com/watch/69830/outer-limits-think-like-a-dinosaur).
What is the secont for those of us who don't live in the US?

The Rose Dragon: There's a word in your post I don't understand. "Conciousness." What does it mean? Is it similar to a blegg? What are it's implications and consequences? What would happen if I removed it?

Devil's_Advocate: Count the number of disguised queries on this page.

Lord Seth

2009-12-04, 01:15 PM

What is the secont for those of us who don't live in the US?The episode "Think Like A Dinosaur" of The Outer Limits.

averagejoe

2009-12-04, 01:19 PM

Well if it's literally a matter of destroying one and creating another, it's not really teleportation. If the teleportation is achieved by disassembling one and then reassembling another, it's debatable. What I mean is, taking apart all the molecules, moving the molecules, and then reassembling the molecules exactly, it depends on whether you consider the "soul" of "mind" to be in the molecules, or if doing that still rips apart that.

This is why in my stories, when I do teleportation, it's just a matter of movement. No destruction or disassembling, it just takes someone's body and moves it. No different than walking. Avoids the whole issue.

But it comes to the same thing. Say you used this teleportation system then, on the way out the door, you slipped on a banana peel, cracked your head on something, and died. The teleporter technicians think that such a thing happening outside their workplace will make them look bad, so they take your body and use the data that they used to reassemble you to teleport your body to that same station, effectively reviving you. They then realize the potential that this has, collect enough raw materials to construct a human body several times over, and seed the galaxy with themselves by teleporting vats of water, carbon, nitrogen, etc. that get reassembled as themselves on the other side.

Devil's_Advocate has already been making this point more eloquently, but essentially identifying "you" simply as those particles that make up you is silly; they're constantly being replaced, and fundamental particles are identical anyways. There's no difference between what you propose and disintegrating someone, sending a radio signal of the data, and reassembling someone from elements at the receiving point.

Lord Seth

2009-12-04, 01:34 PM

GoC

2009-12-04, 01:41 PM

I didn't "propose" it so much as "take how some science fiction series use it" (I assume you're referring to the disassembling, not the part where it takes the whole body and moves it), but there is a difference. If you were to take a piece of paper that you printed off, cut it up, then reassemble it (assume for the purposes of this that you can somehow reassemble it perfectly without the use of tape and glue), that's undoubtedly different than taking a piece of paper, xeroxing it (assume the xerox makes a perfect replica), then throwing away the original.

Heh. Be careful. You're stating the main point of dispute, calling it "obvious" and then moving on.

Lord Seth

2009-12-04, 01:47 PM

GoC

2009-12-04, 01:50 PM

One takes something, takes it apart, and puts it together. The other makes a copy, then destroys the original. Those are different. You can claim they're not different enough, but you can't really claim they're not different.

You said the Xerox makes a perfect replica. Hence they are the same*.

* Taking "same" to mean "possesses all physically relevant properties of the other thing being compared to".

Lord Seth

2009-12-04, 01:59 PM

You said the Xerox makes a perfect replica. Hence they are the same*.

* Taking "same" to mean "possesses all physically relevant properties of the original".I meant what happened was different.

Let's take another analogy. Suppose you have a LEGO Set; let's see the Venator-class Republic Attack Cruiser (#8039). It's set up and put together. Now suppose you disassemble it, then reassemble it.

Compare that to having the set up and put together Venator-class Republic Attack Cruiser (that's what they called it on the site). Then, you buy another set of it and put that together, then take apart and throw away the first one you built.

Ignoring the microscopic differences between "identical" LEGO pieces, you have to admit those are different processes and it's not unreasonable to see the former as still being the same thing and the latter as being a new one.

averagejoe

2009-12-04, 02:13 PM

GoC

2009-12-04, 02:18 PM

I meant what happened was different.
...
you have to admit those are different processes
...
That's different from what you said before. Before you said the objects were different, now you're just saying that the processes are different. The latter is self-evident, the former is not.

Lord Seth

2009-12-04, 02:21 PM

Different, yes, but equivalent, and not different in any way that's important to either philosophy or storytelling. In general, anything that can be done by one way of doing things can be done by the other.Ah, but not quite. One takes something apart, then puts it back together using the exact same components. The other takes something apart, then reconstructs a copy with different (though identical, or at least ones that are identical enough to pass) components. Even if we're talking on the atomic level, two hydrogen atoms are going to be different atoms. Hydrogen atoms, if they're of the same isotope, might be identical (or they might not, I don't know enough about science to be sure), but they're still different atoms.

My point is you can easily claim that creating a copy out of different but identical materials and destroying the original makes a different thing, but it's harder to claim that about taking something apart, then putting it back together in the exact same way with the exact same components.

GoC

2009-12-04, 02:29 PM

Ah, but not quite. One takes something apart, then puts it back together using the exact same components. The other takes something apart, then reconstructs a copy with different (though identical, or at least ones that are identical enough to pass) components. Even if we're talking on the atomic level, two hydrogen atoms are going to be different atoms. Hydrogen atoms, if they're of the same isotope, might be identical (or they might not, I don't know enough about science to be sure), but they're still different atoms.
Identical and different are contradictory words using modern physics. Here (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Identical_particles) and here (http://lesswrong.com/lw/pl/no_individual_particles/).

Devils_Advocate

2009-12-04, 03:04 PM

GoC beat me with teh linkzorz. Suffice to say that, on a fundamental level, electrons are not carrying around little ID cards. They are completely interchangeable, such that the notion of switching one electron with another at best equates simply to no actual change at all, and at worse is just complete nonsense.

Your precise quantum state, on the other hand, is induplicable. This is why it has to be extracted in order to send it somewhere else. If you think of identity as fundamentally unique, then this is the actual physical reality that that intuition corresponds to. If you want to preserve your shiny mystical specialness, this is the thing you need to keep.

Are there any scenarios in which both pieces would be you?
What the heck, here's an attempt at such a scenario.

Suppose that you come upon a surface on which little intelligent two-dimensional life forms live. You decide that you want to remove one for study, but you'd like to avoid disrupting their little world, in accordance with the Prime Directive and whatnot. So what you do is, you take your handy ray gun and blast one of the inhabitants with radiation that causes it to double in thickness. Then you take your extra-sharp atomic potato peeler and carefully but quickly slice it in two, taking away the top slice and leaving an identical bottom slice none the wiser.

Got that? OK, so what's to say that we don't live on a 3D "surface" in a greater 4D space? What's keeping a highly advanced four-dimensional alien from doubling your thickness in the spacial dimension perpendicular to ours and slicing off half of you, down to your last electron? This results in two of you, each one made of your original material and in your original configuration (at first).

I'd say there is morally no difference between being the copy or the original. They are both 2 different entities that share the same past, so each is both equally quilty of their past deeds. Also, murdering anyone of them is wrong, I'd say, even if this means that it would create lots of social problems.
But if there's no difference between the copy's existence and the original's existence, morally speaking, then why isn't the former an acceptable substitute for the latter, also morally speaking? What makes the original's continued existence morally preferable to the creation of a copy?

*puts a tick in a check box in his notes*
Nothing to see here...
Grrr.... (http://www.ipod.org.uk/reality/reality_arrow_of_time.asp)

The probabilistic basis of the second law of thermodynamics simply says that a system will have many more possible disordered states than ordered states, so a system which changes state randomly will most likely move to a more disordered state. This seems very clear and obvious - such a simple statement is never going to be the cause of something so mysterious as fundamental time-asymmetry. Indeed, this change to a more disordered state is just as applicable in the reverse time direction as in the forward time direction: it's just a change of state, independent of time.
Urgh. Um. Becoming more disordered is becoming more ordered in reverse, and vice versa. Mutually exclusive changes cannot both have probabilities over 50%. Obviously. So... changes to a system's state are necessarily only random in one time direction? Is that what this implies? If so, why the frick don't they explicitly say that? Do they think I'm frickin' Sherlock Holmes over here?

Or... does the author possibly not realize that disorder increasing in one direction of time is disorder decreasing in the opposite direction of time? Am I possibly wrong about that? I thought that this seemed straightforward, but I'm starting to feel confused.

But what about the second law of thermodynamics which states that "entropy increases with time"? This seems to imply a fundamental time-asymmetry to entropy. But we have to realise that the second law only applies to special-case systems: objects with low entropy, the sort of objects we generally encounter in everyday life (rusting cars, etc.). In fact, if we consider general-case objects (i.e., objects in thermal equilibrium), objects which have never been arranged into any sort of order, then their entropy is at a maximum already so their entropy can only decrease with time - completely at odds with the second law!
Is it just me or does that TOTALLY NOT EXPLAIN WHY I DON'T SEE CARS UNRUSTING?

As Roger Penrose goes on to reveal, the time-asymmetry of change of entropy within the universe is explained by the extraordinarily low entropy of the universe at its origin
... That's not an explanation, that's a rephrasing. Time-asymmetry of change of entropy within the universe is the universe having low entropy at its beginning (what with the low-entropy end being picked out as the "beginning" due to the thermodynamic arrow of time). That doesn't account for the universe becoming increasingly more ordered against all probability until it reaches a predestined Big Crunch, which, if I'm not mistaken, is how things look in reverse time. (And if I am mistaken, I'd like to understand how I'm mistaken.)

An appeal to the Anthropic Principle would be an example of an attempt at an actual explanation for this. A rather unsatisfying one -- in fact I think it might outright fail here -- but at least it would be something.

BLARGH.

I think whether the copy is the same as the original all comes down to whether or not the soul exists.

If it does then you can't copy the original because you can't copy the soul.
OK, I'll bite. Why not?

If it doesn't then you just have to copy the consciousness of the person and it will be a true copy.
What do you mean by "consciousness" in this context? Or, for that matter, by "soul"?

This is why in my stories, when I do teleportation, it's just a matter of movement. No destruction or disassembling, it just takes someone's body and moves it. No different than walking. Avoids the whole issue.
How is instantaneously transferring an object from one location to another different from instantaneously destroying the object and at the same time instantaneously creating an identical object at a new location?

Seriously, how are those not exactly the same thing, described in different ways?

... Unless you're talking about it literally being no different from walking, i.e. using wormholes. In fact, upon reflection, maybe that's exactly what you were talking about. You do say that it's just a form of movement. On the other hand, you call it teleportation. I wouldn't call instantaneous transfer movement, and I wouldn't call actually making the trip from point A to point B teleportation, even if a cosmic shortcut is involved. Maybe you could clarify?

The Rose Dragon: There's a word in your post I don't understand. "Conciousness." What does it mean?
Well, Wikipedia defines consciousness as "subjective experience or awareness or wakefulness or the executive control system of the mind." Does that help?

Hopefully we can all agree that the last sense of the term is the vague and dubious one.

What are it's implications and consequences? What would happen if I removed it?
Noooooo! (http://lesswrong.com/lw/pn/zombies_the_movie/)

Alternately, you could suppose that consciousness causes people to talk about consciousness (http://lesswrong.com/lw/p7/zombies_zombies/), since it certainly seems like we talk about it as a result of observing it. So that would be one consequence of consciousness. And being aware of our environment helps us to avoid bumping into things and, come to think of it, to react to our environment in any sort of voluntary fashion at all, so there's another thing. I'm sure we could come up with even more if we tried.

Devil's_Advocate: Count the number of disguised queries on this page.
Oh, man. Maybe later.

Lord Seth

2009-12-04, 03:40 PM

But it comes to the same thing. Say you used this teleportation system then, on the way out the door, you slipped on a banana peel, cracked your head on something, and died. The teleporter technicians think that such a thing happening outside their workplace will make them look bad, so they take your body and use the data that they used to reassemble you to teleport your body to that same station, effectively reviving you.Aha, but that isn't possible, at least under the system I'm describing. The instant you do pretty much anything, your body is different than it was at the time of the transportation, and thus cannot be restructured to the way it was due to something being different. But in your case, it's worse; you cracked your head and died. That results in massive changes both on the miniscule and on the visible level. The components of you will be altered, and due to them being different, can't be restored to the exact arrangement that was had before the accident. (yeah, late response, but I wanted to tackle it)

Identical and different are contradictory words using modern physics. I meant "different" as in "separate." If there is more than one of something, even if those two "somethings" are identical, you cannot claim that they are not separate. Moving a molecule from one place to another doesn't make a separate molecule. Making another molecule that is the same as that molecule is a separate molecule.

Here (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Identical_particles) and here (http://lesswrong.com/lw/pl/no_individual_particles/).Wikipedia's a dubious source normally but quoting an article that at the top says it needs sources rather invalidates it. The second seems to be written for an audience better versed in the subject than I am, so I can't really respond to it. Of course, both don't seem to apply to my point about separate particles, so there was probably a misunderstanding between us by what I meant by different.

How is instantaneously transferring an object from one location to another different from instantaneously destroying the object and at the same time instantaneously creating an identical object at a new location?

Seriously, how are those not exactly the same thing, described in different ways?

... Unless you're talking about it literally being no different from walking, i.e. using wormholes. In fact, upon reflection, maybe that's exactly what you were talking about. You do say that it's just a form of movement. On the other hand, you call it teleportation. I wouldn't call instantaneous transfer movement, and I wouldn't call actually making the trip from point A to point B teleportation, even if a cosmic shortcut is involved. Maybe you could clarify?Well my writing tends more towards the comedy side so I tend not to worry too much about the scientific workings of something. But the way it works is this: You're in one place, then you're in another place. There's no copying, no disassembling, just taking you from one place to another. This is usually achieved by the character just using a remote control that can zap him around places. He presses a button, and suddenly he's at another place. I don't really view it any more different than how you're in one place and then another if you're riding a plane or a car. Unless you're claiming that when you're moving due to a car, that every single time there's a change in your location it's the destruction and simultaneously reformation of parts of you.

Did I explain that well, at all?

Telonius

2009-12-04, 04:01 PM

I'm not sure that the phrase "exact copy" of a biological being has any practical meaning. Even if you could make an exact (down to the photon) copy of someone, literally the instant after creation those two beings are not identical. They are breathing different air molecules, getting a different angle of sunlight, experiencing different things. The longer they exist apart (much like identical twins), the less alike they would become. Based on that, I would say that the two beings would each qualify as individuals, with unique experiences; therefore both human beings with all the rights and responsibilities that go along with that.

As to whether or not the two would both share guilt about a particular crime - both would feel guilty about it. Only one would have actually committed the act; the other would erroneously believe they'd committed a crime. (They had not; their body did not yet exist at the time of the crime). What we ought to do with the mistaken copy would depend on what we feel a justice system's purpose ought to be (punish the guilty, protect society, rehabilitate the criminal, prevent future crime, some other thing, or a mixture of the above). If it's just supposed to punish the guilty, version 2.0 would not be held responsible and be released free into normal society. If it's supposed to rehabilitate the criminal, maybe they would both have to attend anger management classes.

Devils_Advocate

2009-12-04, 06:39 PM

I meant "different" as in "separate." If there is more than one of something, even if those two "somethings" are identical, you cannot claim that they are not separate. Moving a molecule from one place to another doesn't make a separate molecule. Making another molecule that is the same as that molecule is a separate molecule.
OK, let me try an analogy here. Are you familiar with how some equations of Newton's give good approximations of Einstein's equations under a lot of circumstances, and are also simpler to work with? Well, anyway, that's the case. Specifically, Newton's equations give answers very close to correct when dealing with things moving at far less than the speed of light. This is why it took so long for someone to work out that crazy stuff like time dilation actually happens; the effects are usually small. But when dealing with things moving at near the speed of light, you need to use Einstein's equations to make accurate predictions.

And, here's the thing: Einstein's equations are strictly more accurate than Newton's. Even in mundane cases, Einstein's give more accurate results, though the difference in accuracy gets really small. So Einstein's equations are now understood to, if not perfectly describe reality, at least give a better approximation of it than Newton's. And Newton's equations are known not to perfectly describe reality at all; they're just not the way that things actually work. The laws of physics they describe are ultimately not the true ones. Mmkay?

Well, correspondingly, there's this principle in classical physics that gives a good approximation of how things work on a large scale, but only an approximation. And this approximation breaks down on a really small scale, when dealing with really tiny masses and distances and intervals of time and whatnot. Like Newton's laws breaking down as you approach the speed of light, dig? To make accurate predictions about how things work on a really small scale, you have to use the laws of quantum mechanics. And, like Einstein's equations, the laws of quantum mechanics are more accurate than the alternative even outside the scope that demands their use. Quantum mechanics may itself ultimately be but an even closer approximation of how things really work, but classical physics definitely doesn't say how things actually work, and we know that now. Got all that?

OK. So, the basic idea from classical physics that ultimately fails to describe how reality actually works is this: There exist distinct particles with specific positions and velocities.

Now, the concepts mentioned there are such basic abstractions that quantum mechanics will actually still be discussed in those terms. One may talk about e.g. the probability of finding a particle in a given region. But this is just a way of saying that, under this particular set of circumstances under discussion, one can make observations in such and such a way in accordance with the naive intuition that there is this entity that exists at a single point in space with a single velocity. It doesn't mean that those intuitions are actually correct and don't fall apart if you try to use them to actually give a complete description of what's happening.

I do not actually know all that much about physics so someone please correct any specific details that I got wrong. But I'm pretty sure that that pretty much was an accurate description of current scientific understanding.

You're in one place, then you're in another place. There's no copying
Woah, there, hombre! Begging the question! What makes the person at the second place "you", rather than a copy?

I don't really view it any more different than how you're in one place and then another if you're riding a plane or a car. Unless you're claiming that when you're moving due to a car, that every single time there's a change in your location it's the destruction and simultaneously reformation of parts of you.
:smallconfused: Travel by plane or car is ordinary motion from place to place. You get from one location to another by traveling through the intervening space. Change in location is continuous. Instantaneous change in location is quite obviously qualitatively different. As I remarked earlier, one could say that a single physical object's location is a continuous function of time. As in, you can't take a series of locations that are not a continuous function of time and decree by fiat that they all correspond to a single object in defiance of common sense.

You can dispute that notion, but it is an obvious potential standard of sameness, one by which one can distinguish a copy from an original.

I mean, suppose that a mad scientist zapped you with a duplicate gun, and a copy of you appeared ten feet to your left. But then he tells you that you're the copy, and displaced the original in space!

How seriously would you take that claim? I mean, you're just standing there normally, nothing special happening to you, just a new guy just like you getting zapped in over to your side. And that makes you a different person, now? Little hard to swallow.

The guy put in the new location might be more willing to buy that he's really the original you, but I think that given time to look at the situation objectively, even he might come to see that the mad scientist's description of events looks a little backwards.

If it is backwards, then the guy who stays in your place is you, and the guy in the new location is a copy. That certainly seems like the more intuitive assessment of the situation. Now, have the gun work just the same way, except that you don't stay in your place, leaving only the guy in the new location...

Also, by your own standard where you can't have two of something at once, time travel destroys identity. How is that any less arbitrary than teleportation doing the same? :smallconfused: Heck, travel through time could at least by continuous. (If not, it's just a form of teleportation that works over a different dimension than space. Oddly, it seems that a lot of stories have time teleportation but not space teleportation, though the latter seems considerably less fantastic and I'd expect that if you can zap through time, zapping through space should be easy.)

Even if you could make an exact (down to the photon) copy of someone, literally the instant after creation those two beings are not identical.
Similarly, you are not identical to how you were an instant ago. Does that make you a different person now?

No remotely normal society would hold an individual blameless for crimes just because he committed them before his most recent teleport. All of the general reasons that we don't just let people get away with things would apply. I mean, can you imagine the public's reaction if the police announced that they have to let a murderer go because, hey, he teleported after murdering someone? Screwy legal standards like that might exist soon after the invention of teleportation when judges were still trying to work everything out, but you can bet that they'd soon be corrected!

averagejoe

2009-12-04, 08:29 PM

Noooooo! (http://lesswrong.com/lw/pn/zombies_the_movie/)

GENERAL FRED: Excellent. And the Taoists?

SCIENTIST: They refuse to do anything!

GENERAL FRED: Then we may yet be saved.

Hahahaha!

Aha, but that isn't possible, at least under the system I'm describing. The instant you do pretty much anything, your body is different than it was at the time of the transportation, and thus cannot be restructured to the way it was due to something being different. But in your case, it's worse; you cracked your head and died. That results in massive changes both on the miniscule and on the visible level. The components of you will be altered, and due to them being different, can't be restored to the exact arrangement that was had before the accident. (yeah, late response, but I wanted to tackle it)

Well, I meant that they could use your body as raw material. There's no reason you couldn't duplicate the computer (or whatever) data that directed the machine to assemble you on the other side.

I do not actually know all that much about physics so someone please correct any specific details that I got wrong. But I'm pretty sure that that pretty much was an accurate description of current scientific understanding.

You're mostly correct, so far as my (admittedly limited, and in some cases possibly incorrect) understanding goes; I caught a few things to nit-pick, though. Warning: may not actually be pertinent to the current discussion.

The notion of, "Einstein being right," and, "Newton being wrong," is one that's often misunderstood. Newton's equations don't merely give good approximations of Einstein's under specific circumstances; the solutions are identical in the sense that we cannot measure precisely enough to discover which theory is more accurate, except in special circumstances when Einstein's theory holds. In physics there's no difference between two things being immeasurably different and identical. Or even, "Not different in a way that it's important to measure for this experiment," and identical. Einstein's theory is certainly broader, since it still works at the Newtonian level, but it's a bit of a mistake to say it's more accurate, at least in the way most people mean "more accurate." You say, "The laws of physics they describe are ultimately not the true ones. Mmkay?" but it really isn't useful to talk about "True laws of physics." Newton's laws are "true" in that they accurately describe an aspect of how the world works. Ultimately no physics is "true," in the sense that we know with 100% accuracy that it's 100% accurate. We can't measure to 100% accuracy, which is why that discussions about error are often more important than the data collected when working with experiments. There could very well be a realm in which Newtonian mechanics are more accurate than Eisenstein; this goes against intuition, and I find it unlikely, but there isn't anything to rule it out. If this was the case, however, which one would be the "true laws of physics?"

It's a minor point, but enough people misunderstand this that I thought I'd bring it up. I also wanted to bring it up because I enjoy saying things like, "That's how science is different than art. With art you always know if you've produced a correct solution, and in science you never do."

TSGames

2009-12-04, 09:35 PM

We like discussing philosophy, right? (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pdxucpPq6Lc)

Honestly, if the original gets into the booth and knows that he is about to be killed and that a copy will continue to live as he has, then I don't see any ethical issue outside of the usual suicide debate(and some interesting religous implications, but we're not allowed to go there).

Make no mistake, using the booth is suicide.

Lord Seth

2009-12-04, 10:02 PM

Woah, there, hombre! Begging the question! What makes the person at the second place "you", rather than a copy?Because, by the way it's established to work, it takes a person and puts them somewhere else. A bit like...hrm...what's a good example...

How about this (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0366.html)? (at the bottom)

:smallconfused: Travel by plane or car is ordinary motion from place to place. You get from one location to another by traveling through the intervening space. Change in location is continuous. Instantaneous change in location is quite obviously qualitatively different.How so?

As I remarked earlier, one could say that a single physical object's location is a continuous function of time. As in, you can't take a series of locations that are not a continuous function of time and decree by fiat that they all correspond to a single object in defiance of common sense.

You can dispute that notion, but it is an obvious potential standard of sameness, one by which one can distinguish a copy from an original.

I mean, suppose that a mad scientist zapped you with a duplicate gun, and a copy of you appeared ten feet to your left. But then he tells you that you're the copy, and displaced the original in space!

How seriously would you take that claim? I mean, you're just standing there normally, nothing special happening to you, just a new guy just like you getting zapped in over to your side. And that makes you a different person, now? Little hard to swallow.

The guy put in the new location might be more willing to buy that he's really the original you, but I think that given time to look at the situation objectively, even he might come to see that the mad scientist's description of events looks a little backwards.

If it is backwards, then the guy who stays in your place is you, and the guy in the new location is a copy. That certainly seems like the more intuitive assessment of the situation. Now, have the gun work just the same way, except that you don't stay in your place, leaving only the guy in the new location...Except your entire premise rests on the idea of it being a "duplicator gun" when this isn't anything like it. The "gun" that transports someone does not work the same way, at all.

Also, by your own standard where you can't have two of something at once, time travel destroys identity. How is that any less arbitrary than teleportation doing the same? :smallconfused: Heck, travel through time could at least by continuous. (If not, it's just a form of teleportation that works over a different dimension than space. Oddly, it seems that a lot of stories have time teleportation but not space teleportation, though the latter seems considerably less fantastic and I'd expect that if you can zap through time, zapping through space should be easy.)I don't even really see what your point is here, can you clarify?

Ichneumon

2009-12-05, 03:40 AM

Honestly, if the original gets into the booth and knows that he is about to be killed and that a copy will continue to live as he has, then I don't see any ethical issue outside of the usual suicide debate(and some interesting religous implications, but we're not allowed to go there).

Make no mistake, using the booth is suicide.

I agree, however when you force one of the copies back into the booth, it is not suicide, but murder.

GoC

2009-12-05, 05:15 AM

Grrr.... (http://www.ipod.org.uk/reality/reality_arrow_of_time.asp)

Urgh. Um. Becoming more disordered is becoming more ordered in reverse, and vice versa. Mutually exclusive changes cannot both have probabilities over 50%. Obviously. So... changes to a system's state are necessarily only random in one time direction? Is that what this implies? If so, why the frick don't they explicitly say that? Do they think I'm frickin' Sherlock Holmes over here?

Or... does the author possibly not realize that disorder increasing in one direction of time is disorder decreasing in the opposite direction of time? Am I possibly wrong about that? I thought that this seemed straightforward, but I'm starting to feel confused.

Is it just me or does that TOTALLY NOT EXPLAIN WHY I DON'T SEE CARS UNRUSTING?

... That's not an explanation, that's a rephrasing. Time-asymmetry of change of entropy within the universe is the universe having low entropy at its beginning (what with the low-entropy end being picked out as the "beginning" due to the thermodynamic arrow of time). That doesn't account for the universe becoming increasingly more ordered against all probability until it reaches a predestined Big Crunch, which, if I'm not mistaken, is how things look in reverse time. (And if I am mistaken, I'd like to understand how I'm mistaken.)

An appeal to the Anthropic Principle would be an example of an attempt at an actual explanation for this. A rather unsatisfying one -- in fact I think it might outright fail here -- but at least it would be something.

BLARGH.
Will read later.

Well, Wikipedia defines consciousness as "subjective experience or awareness or wakefulness or the executive control system of the mind." Does that help?

Hopefully we can all agree that the last sense of the term is the vague and dubious one.
I understand "awareness" and "wakefulness" (both are basically saying you react to stimuli, so I doubt that's what The Rose Dragon means) but the other two leave me stuck. The first is really vague and the last seems to imply that there is a part of the mind that controls the rest (which is false).

I'm sure we could come up with even more if we tried.
Please do. So far the only consequence listed has been "talks about conciousness" (the others apply to the wakefulness definition). And don't I think that's what The Rose Dragon meant.

Oh, man. Maybe later.
:smallamused:

What we ought to do with the mistaken copy would depend on what we feel a justice system's purpose ought to be (punish the guilty, protect society, rehabilitate the criminal, prevent future crime, some other thing, or a mixture of the above).
Restrain, rehabilitate, deter (with a side dish of making the victims feel better). Hence you must punish both copies.

Wikipedia's a dubious source normally but quoting an article that at the top says it needs sources rather invalidates it. The second seems to be written for an audience better versed in the subject than I am, so I can't really respond to it. Of course, both don't seem to apply to my point about separate particles, so there was probably a misunderstanding between us by what I meant by different.
Then you'll just have to take the word of Devil's Advocate, me, the guy who wrote the wiki article and the guy who wrote the second link. Unless of course you can be bothered to make a google search.:smallamused:

Unless you're claiming that when you're moving due to a car, that every single time there's a change in your location it's the destruction and simultaneously reformation of parts of you.
Per Discworld this is entirely possible.:smallbiggrin:

The Rose Dragon

2009-12-05, 06:22 AM

I understand "awareness" and "wakefulness" (both are basically saying you react to stimuli, so I doubt that's what The Rose Dragon means) but the other two leave me stuck. The first is really vague and the last seems to imply that there is a part of the mind that controls the rest (which is false).

"Continuity of identity" is as close I can get to another definition.

What I'm trying to say is this: according to that video, the scientist in fridge 1 and the scientist in fridge 2 do not share the same consciousness, like a hypothetical hive-mind. Their experiences are not shared amongst them, since it is not possible to do so based only on biological processes. Since the scientist in fridge 1 is only analyzed and not intruded in any way, it is safe to assume that he retains a continuity of identity and awareness, while the other is a new person completely identical to the scientist in fridge 1, except for a so far unquantified factor that preserves identity and consciousness.

EDIT: In less complicated words, we don't know what defines a person not only philosophically, but also biologically. You can't copy something you don't know how to quantify.

Toastkart

2009-12-05, 07:07 AM

I understand "awareness" and "wakefulness" (both are basically saying you react to stimuli, so I doubt that's what The Rose Dragon means) but the other two leave me stuck. The first is really vague and the last seems to imply that there is a part of the mind that controls the rest (which is false).

subjective experience is the experience that you as a unique individual have. No one else is going to have exactly the same experience that you have. It may be close, but it will never be exactly the same because they're not you.

Also, I think awareness in this context would mean something closer to being aware of being conscious (self-consciousness).

As for executive function of the mind, there is actually no way to prove or disprove whether it exists. Neuroscience is pretty aware that brain physiology doesn't add up to consciousness. Also keep in mind that in mainstream psychology mind and brain are often used synonymously. Humanistic, transpersonal, and existential psychology tend to take the view that mind and brain are distinct enough that you can't equate them, but the nature of their interaction is for the most part unknown.

As for executive function (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Executive_function) itself, it's been used as an explanation for our volition, agency, directed attention, and similar thought processes. All that we really know is that the prefrontal cortex is involved.

For further reading, I would recommend The Mind and The Brain by Jeffrey Schwartz and The Phenomenological Mind by S. Gallagher and D. Zahavi.

GoC

2009-12-05, 01:20 PM

subjective experience is the experience that you as a unique individual have. No one else is going to have exactly the same experience that you have. It may be close, but it will never be exactly the same because they're not you.
In the "teleporter" case someone else has the exact same past experiences.

As for executive function of the mind, there is actually no way to prove or disprove whether it exists.
If it has no effect (if it has an effect then that effect can be tested for) and we cannot find out whether it exists then discussing whether or not it is present in any given situation is impossible.

Kallisti

2009-12-05, 05:35 PM

1. What's the difference? (That "you" are made up of different particles than "he" is? The thing is, those particles aren't actually different (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Identical_particles). Is it that "he" has a different location from "you"? Are you claiming to have a single, fixed location?)

2. Do you have different sets of experiences at different times? If so, what precludes you having different experiences at the same time?

If you're not Kallisti, who are you? Or, rather, if you're not just Kallisti, what else are you that a copy wouldn't be?

4. Only in the sense that it's an interesting question whether obligation exists at all. Other than that, saying that teleporting divests you of responsibility is like saying that falling asleep divests you of responsibility. Except the latter is ever so slightly more plausible, since there actually seems to be a discontinuity between your consciousness before falling asleep and after waking up.

1. That I occupy my body. If I look at him and try to raise his arm, it doesn't work, because I'm the consciousness in my body and he's the one in his. I value my existance as a consciousness. That's why death scares me so much. Hell I could deal with, but oblivion? *Shudder*. Frightening thought. I'd rather not find out for as long as possible. Even if there will be a Kallisti in the world, identical to me in personality, memory, physicality, skill, everything, he'll still be a consciousness that is not the same me as me. I should clarify. When I say he's not me, I don't mean he's not Kallisti. Of course he's Kallisti. He's just a different Kallisti. I don't care if there's a Kallisti in the world, it's not like I'll change history or anything. I care if there's this Kallisti in the world, entirely because I enjoy living. It's not grand, it's not altruistic, but it's the truth.

2. Nothing except my inability to be in two places at once with the same consciousness. If I could exist as a hive mind controlling bodies the same way you control limbs or digits, then I could be in different places at once. But it'd still be one consciousness and one frame of reference. If I had been copied using the 'teleporter,' there would be Kallistis in two places, but not me in two places.

3. Of course I'm Kallisti. Well, not really, Kallisti is an online name, but you get the point. And of course I'm just Kallisti, what more could I be? A pumpkin? But I make a distinction between what I am--Kallisti--and who I am--me, as in this single iteration of my consciousness, occupying this single body. The copy is Kallisti, but not me. He is every bit as much Kallisti as I am, I'm not saying he isn't. He's just not me. If there are two identical twins, they're different people. If I have a laptop and my friend has the same model of laptop, then they're both Gateway AMD Athlon laptops, but not the same Gateway AMD Athlon laptop. If I have a wire-haired terrier and so do the Joneses who live next door, they're both wire-haired terriers, but not the same wire-haired terrier. If Kallisti gets copied, they're both Kallistis, but not the same Kallisti.

4. You're right, it is an interesting question. We're in agreement here. What is responsibility, really? Obligation? Does the copy have any responsibility for the original's actions? If Wen the Eternally Surprised is right and the universe is destroyed and recreated every time the universe transitions from the past into the present, does anyone have to take responsibility for 'their' actions?

GoC

2009-12-05, 05:49 PM

4. You're right, it is an interesting question. We're in agreement here. What is responsibility, really? Obligation? Does the copy have any responsibility for the original's actions? If Wen the Eternally Surprised is right and the universe is destroyed and recreated every time the universe transitions from the past into the present, does anyone have to take responsibility for 'their' actions?
:smallbiggrin:
Devil's_Advocate: I do not envy you.:smallbiggrin:

Kallisti: Before stepping into transporter booth A what to you anticipate is the probability of your next experience being stepping out of tranporter booth B?
I think it's 50%. For this reason I'd only get in to such a transporter while unconscious.:smallbiggrin:

Kallisti

2009-12-05, 06:27 PM

GoC: I wouldn't get into it at all. Because I say 0 %. I will go in and be disintegrated. A brand-new Kallisti will come out the other side. Not me. Kallisti, but not me. I think Rose Dragon has the right definiton of what I mean when I talk about me, myself, my consciousness--"continuity of identity." Experiences are not shared amongst the two Kallistis. They don't have the same continuity of identity, and are therefore different people. Very, very, very similar people, but different. My consciousness will not be transferred. I will not die and be reincarnated as the new Kallisti (unless reincarnation is how the afterlife works and I get exceedingly lucky, but that's not really relevant). I know my consciousness will not be transferred because if we turn off the "destroy Kallisti at point A" setting, the Kallisti at point A--me--does not occupy the body of Point B Kallisti.

I'm still curious, though, to find out what the Playground as a whole thinks makes a person responsible for an act. So I'll pose some hypothetical questions, and give my thoughts on them, and then see what people say.

Scenario A: I muder a man, and then get copied, as with the teleporter from the video in the OP. Which copy is responsible? They both remember having committed the crime, they both have the personality that was capable of the murder, but only one physically carried out the deed.

I say both are equally responsible, because both have personalities proven capable of murder, and therefore both need to be rehabilitated or restrained/incarcerated.

Scenario B: I murder a man and flee into the Haunted Forest. The witch who lives there uses her magic to grab the me from one second ago and hop him into the present. Which is responsible? Both are the person who committed the deed, but different iterations of him.

I say both, for the same reasons as above.

Scenario C: I have multiple personality disorder and one personality, while dominant, murders a man. Are all the personalities responsible? They were all in the body that did the killing. Can we give the body the death sentance, knowing it'll destroy other personalities that weren't dominant during the murder? Do personalities that develop after my birth, or even any personalities but one, have rights as individual people?

I say only the personality dominant at the time of the murder is responsible, since it decided to commit the murder. The others are no more guilty than an eyewitness would be. I also say that they all have individual rights as individual consciousnesses, and that killing the body to kill one of the personalities would be murdering the rest. You'll have to restrain or contain the body until something can be done about the murderous personality, though. The others will just have to live with it, knowing their doing their duty to help people not get murdered.

Those are my two cents, anyway.

Worira

2009-12-05, 06:30 PM

Kallisti

2009-12-05, 06:58 PM

I disagree. I say it's 100%, barring a malfunction of the machine. The fact that 2 people are formed is irrelevant to the fact that you will emerge from booth B, and not from booth A. The existence of an afterlife is the only way for the chance to be 50%, and even that's irrelevant if the device can destroy and create a new soul.

And Kallisti:

1. How do you sleep? How do you consign yourself to oblivion each night, knowing that you won't dream through the whole night? How do you even know that the you that awakes is the same you that falls asleep? If you were replaced by an identical copy each night, what difference would it make?

2. No, there would be a Kallisti in one place, and a pile of dust in another. You would emerge with the same conciousness.

3. All your examples are fundamentally flawed. Identical twins aren't identical, laptops of the same model aren't identical, and different members of a certain breed of dog aren't identical. You, on the other hand, are. It's not an identical twin stepping from the teleporter. It's you, in every meaningful way.

4. If I murder someone then take a nap, am I or am I not responsible for the death? Why or why not?

1. I sleep quite well, thank you, in the reasonable certainty that I'll wake up. If I were replaced with an identical copy every night, I bet it'd make a hell of a lot of difference to the one being replaced. The copy doen't even realize it's a copy and goes on living. I have no way of proving that's not exactly what happens. And it makes no difference to any of my friends or family. But the Kallisti that gets disintegrated or captured by the cloning-happy mad scientists or sent to the junk heap or whatever happens to the last Kallisti? Bet it matters to him.

2. No, there would be a pile of dust where I was, and someone with an intellect identical to mine. Not the same. Just possessed of all the same properties. Like two copies of a disk, since you didn't like any of my other examples.

3. It's like what Devil's Advocate was saying about Newton's and Einstein's equations at sub-light speeds. The differences between the two Kallistis are small, but there. Like the differences between two laptops of the same make and model or two dogs of the same breed. Similar, but not identical. My point wasn't that dogs reproduce by cloning themselves. It was that things can be similar, even very similar, even be the same in all quantifiable ways, and not be the same. Since this is a gaming site, I'll give you all a D&D example. I take a character sheet and make a fourth-level fighter, choose skills, feats, you know the drill. I do the same with a new sheet, and make all the same skill choices and everything. I even name them both Fighter Mc Beatstick, because I was tired and not very creative. They're the same character, right? Wrong. You know how I know? If I play them in different games and one finds the Sword of Awesome +over Nine THOUSAND the other doesn't. They're identical in every quantifiable way at the beginning. But they're not the same. That help clarify what I mean?

4. You are responsible. You remember committing the crime, and have the psychological capacity to do it again. You are therefore a dangerous criminal. As I've said, memory of the crime and psychological capacity to commit the crime are, in my opinion, good criterion for responsibility. Not perfect, of course, but good. There are exceptions, of course. Someone who has a mental illness that causes them to remember crimes they didn't commit, for example, belongs in a hospital, not a jail.

Devils_Advocate

2009-12-05, 07:59 PM

OK, a bunch of people do not seem to grasp an important point that I've made, so I'm gonna try to make it more clearly.

The whole reason that teleportation might be considered problematic is that it could be considered not to preserve something -- identity, consciousness, call it what you will -- that is normally preserved. If it's just a different way of losing something that's lost in any case... well, then there's no loss introduced, and thus no problem. (Unless you would prefer the loss to happen in a particular way...)

As such, any standard by which you only exist for a moment really does not make teleportation a problem, since you aren't gonna stick around anyway. If no one in the past was you and no one in the future will be you, then there is no you-ness that persists across time to hold on to. We only need to worry about whether a copy isn't you by some standard by which you will continue to exist. We don't need to worry about standards by which you won't continue to exist.

For example, if not experiencing what you are currently experiencing means that someone lacks your consciousness, then your consciousness wasn't present in the past, when no one was having those experiences. If not raising their arm up makes someone not you, then you cease to exist in your present location when you drop your arm. And so on.

To try to illustrate my point: Suppose that I have a magic room that can, upon my command, reset its internal state to what it was five minutes ago, eliminating its current contents and restoring its previous contents. Let's say that I enter this room, wait ten minutes, walk out, and tell it to reset. The room now contains someone exactly like I was five minutes ago. Someone just like I was, but now existing five minutes later in time.

Are you gonna say that I was someone just like that, but that that person is now not me? This is someone identical to who I was, but now exists at the same time as I do. This person is only different from my past self by sharing where I am on the time axis. Does giving someone more in common with me make us not the same?

If so, then I would strongly suggest that "same" is a misleading word for what you are attempting to describe. I would suggest "continuous with", maybe, if you're talking about having part of a continuous sequence of mental states and/or locations and/or something else.

The first is really vague
I took "subjective experience" to mean the same thing as "perception (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perception)". Is that any clearer?

and the last seems to imply that there is a part of the mind that controls the rest (which is false).
I'm not sure that it would be inaccurate to say that every part of the mind controls every other part.

More specifically, do you think that "control" has a different meaning than "influence" (rather than just different connotations)? I imagine that the various parts of the mind do all influence each other. If there is a difference, what distinguishes something as a form of control? Is this clearly an objective distinction, rather than a subjective one?

I think that "executive" rules out more abstractions that that phrase could potentially refer to than "control", but the real kicker would seem to be "the". The implication of that, to me, is that every accurate hierarchical model of the mind describes the same part of it managing everything else -- that the concept of management fairly unambiguously applies to that single part considerably more than it does to other parts.

That strikes me as a fairly remarkable claim, but I wouldn't rule it out at this point. Maybe you know more about the mind's workings than I do?

Please do. So far the only consequence listed has been "talks about conciousness" (the others apply to the wakefulness definition).
There are many ways in which human beings exhibit perception or awareness of their environments. In this context, by "awareness" I mean posession of mental models, and by "perception" I refer to the formation of such models.

For example, one may put a query to a human being and receive an informative response. This suggests that the human is engaging in abstract thought.

I don't really know what evidence supports the theory of an executive whatchamahoozit, so that is not something that I could readily rattle off examples of. But it would be easy to list a bunch of ways in which people would be different if they lacked perception, awareness, or wakefulness. I could give more, if you're really still unclear on the concepts. But otherwise I'd rather not spend a lot of time stating the obvious.

Because, by the way it's established to work, it takes a person and puts them somewhere else.
How has that been established? You've said it, but asserting something to be true is not the same as establishing it to be true. Hopefully you can agree with that.

Maybe you mean that you're the author of the scenario, and so your description of events is canonical? Because the notion that this validates your perspective is rather dubious. (I have the same problem with the idea that the alignment system makes morality objective in Dungeons & Dragons.)

A lot of people have this notion that things don't actually happen from some perspective, they just happen (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophical_realism). Now, fictional events, by at least one possible definition of "fictional", don't actually happen, but for a philosophical realist it can still be quite natural to imagine fictional events actually happening independent of the description of those events. The narrative merely corresponds to the imaginary events -- and it may correspond poorly. Thus the concept of an unreliable narrator.

An important point is that even if the reader adopts the writer's perspective, non-narrator characters certainly have different perspectives of their own. In some cases, disregard for this principle can lead to works of fiction in which all characters share some questionable opinion of the author's, without explanation. Even worse, every single character with some opinion opposing the author's may be shown to exhibit behavior that the vast majority of people would consider to be blatantly stupid or evil, so as to underscore that opposing the author's opinion is a stupid/evil thing done by stupid/evil people. Even though this opposing opinion is held by basically normal people in real life.

When this happens, it is not good writing.

So, describing a teleportation device as transferring things from one location to another doesn't give characters within the story a reason to think that it does so instead of destroying things and creating identical things elsewhere. They may have many good reasons to see things that way, but your description of events is not one of those reasons.

A bit like...hrm...what's a good example...

How about this (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0366.html)? (at the bottom)
Nice try, bucko! But teleportation in D&D works by shunting you through the Astral Plane, so it's actually an instance of motion through another dimension, not instantaneous change in location. Oh, sure, it seems instantaneous, but it's actually just super duper quick, like actions taken during a time stop. So there! :smalltongue:

How so?
In that one is continuous, and the other isn't. In one, you move from one location to another by traveling through the intervening space, and in the other, you don't.

In everyday normal life, an object seems to be such that, always, an arbitrarily similarly configured collection of matter had a center of mass arbitrarily nearby the object's a sufficiently small amount of time earlier, and an arbitrarily similarly configured collection of matter will have a center of mass arbitrarily nearby the object's a sufficiently small amount of time later. One way to describe things not working that way is "matter springing into or out of existence" (and this applies to instantaneous transformation as well as to instantaneous travel).

Except your entire premise rests on the idea of it being a "duplicator gun" when this isn't anything like it. The "gun" that transports someone does not work the same way, at all.
In both cases, a person disappears from one location and an identical person appears at another location. In that sense, destroying someone and making a copy elsewhere works just like teleportation. That's sort of a key point in this discussion.

You're claiming that the two scenarios are different in that, in one, the identical person isn't the person who disappeared, but in the other, the identical person is the person who disappeared. I'm saying that this seems like a distinction without a difference, and indeed it's hard to see how it could possibly be otherwise. "Identical", to me, suggests sharing every property except for location, and in both cases location explicitly isn't shared, so... what's the difference?

I don't even really see what your point is here, can you clarify?
Time travel in fiction usually seems to be a matter of pushing a button and suddenly, zap, you're in the past. Basically teleportation in the fourth dimension. But one could conceive of going back in time by, say, making a journey at many times the speed of light -- no teleportation involved. Continuous travel backwards through time. In either case, you could theoretically go back and talk to your past self. But wait!

I meant "different" as in "separate." If there is more than one of something, even if those two "somethings" are identical, you cannot claim that they are not separate.
There would appear to be two individuals here. Just to make sure, you do a head count, carefully avoiding the common "forgetting to count yourself" pitfall, and two is the number you come up with. And your past self sure seems like a different, separate entity. You can look over somewhere else and see him standing in another location in space. Plus he looks younger than you, and also considerably more surprised about this meeting.

But that means that you're not the same person! It would seem that you failed to arrange a meeting with yourself at all. Awww, man. Dejectedly, you inform your "past self" (Ha!) that it turns out you were mistaken, and you must not be him from the future after all. Stunned, he watches you sadly get into your spaceship and fly away.

Moving a molecule from one place to another doesn't make a separate molecule. Making another molecule that is the same as that molecule is a separate molecule.
! Hmmm. You would seem to have committed yourself to the position that it is impossible to travel through time by traveling through space.

Kallisti

2009-12-05, 08:22 PM

GoC

2009-12-05, 09:03 PM

I took "subjective experience" to mean the same thing as "perception (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perception)". Is that any clearer?
Nice.

That strikes me as a fairly remarkable claim, but I wouldn't rule it out at this point. Maybe you know more about the mind's workings than I do?
Nothing tangible (some associations in my mind is all I have on the matter). But I can reject the definition if it relies on an un-evidenced assumption.

There are many ways in which human beings exhibit perception or awareness of their environments. In this context, by "awareness" I mean posession of mental models, and by "perception" I refer to the formation of such models.
I like these definitions.:smallbiggrin:

Thing is I wasn't asking you what you thought The Rose Dragon thought "conciousness" meant, because I was pretty sure that your definitions would differ*.:smallwink:

* As evidenced here:

Since the scientist in fridge 1 is only analyzed and not intruded in any way, it is safe to assume that he retains a continuity of identity and awareness, while the other is a new person completely identical to the scientist in fridge 1, except for a so far unquantified factor that preserves identity and consciousness.

I'm off to bed. I'll continue this tomorrow.

Devils_Advocate

2009-12-05, 10:47 PM

You can't copy something you don't know how to quantify.
Do you need to know how to measure the area of a page covered in ink in order to make a photocopier? As a related question, if you study two sheets of text and they appear to be identical, are you unjustified in assuming that they have very close to the same area covered in ink, because you can only give a very rough guess at what that figure is?

I think you're absolutely right. And that Rose Dragon beat you to it.
Well, there is the possibility that the copy isn't actually a perfect copy that's identical to the original.

But, in the theoretical case where they are identical, there's mental continuity between the two bodies. The original has a continuous set of mental states up to the point of duplication. At the point of duplication, they have the same mental state. From the point of duplication onwards, the copy has a continuous set of mental states.

Take the union of the sets of mental states associated with both bodies, and you get a new continuous set of mental states.

So there's totally continuity of consciousness goin' on there. There's just not continuity of location.

Worira

2009-12-06, 02:15 AM

1. I sleep quite well, thank you, in the reasonable certainty that I'll wake up. If I were replaced with an identical copy every night, I bet it'd make a hell of a lot of difference to the one being replaced. The copy doen't even realize it's a copy and goes on living. I have no way of proving that's not exactly what happens. And it makes no difference to any of my friends or family. But the Kallisti that gets disintegrated or captured by the cloning-happy mad scientists or sent to the junk heap or whatever happens to the last Kallisti? Bet it matters to him.

2. No, there would be a pile of dust where I was, and someone with an intellect identical to mine. Not the same. Just possessed of all the same properties. Like two copies of a disk, since you didn't like any of my other examples.

3. It's like what Devil's Advocate was saying about Newton's and Einstein's equations at sub-light speeds. The differences between the two Kallistis are small, but there. Like the differences between two laptops of the same make and model or two dogs of the same breed. Similar, but not identical. My point wasn't that dogs reproduce by cloning themselves. It was that things can be similar, even very similar, even be the same in all quantifiable ways, and not be the same. Since this is a gaming site, I'll give you all a D&D example. I take a character sheet and make a fourth-level fighter, choose skills, feats, you know the drill. I do the same with a new sheet, and make all the same skill choices and everything. I even name them both Fighter Mc Beatstick, because I was tired and not very creative. They're the same character, right? Wrong. You know how I know? If I play them in different games and one finds the Sword of Awesome +over Nine THOUSAND the other doesn't. They're identical in every quantifiable way at the beginning. But they're not the same. That help clarify what I mean?

4. You are responsible. You remember committing the crime, and have the psychological capacity to do it again. You are therefore a dangerous criminal. As I've said, memory of the crime and psychological capacity to commit the crime are, in my opinion, good criterion for responsibility. Not perfect, of course, but good. There are exceptions, of course. Someone who has a mental illness that causes them to remember crimes they didn't commit, for example, belongs in a hospital, not a jail.

1. No. It does not matter to him, as he is dead before he wakes. He has no knowledge of the events. His perceptions have ended. There is only oblivion, which is, by definition, free of experience.

2. Yes, a copied disk is an excellent example. Or, more precisely, the data within it. But what you seem to be saying is that there is a difference between the data on each disc. I don't see how that is in any way the case. How is something possessed of the same properties not the same?

3. Yes, they are the same character, in different places. Once events happen, they're different character, but that's not an issue if, say, one of the characters starts play touching a sphere of annihilation.

4. Fair enough.

Kallisti

2009-12-06, 02:25 AM

1. No. It does not matter to him, as he is dead before he wakes. He has no knowledge of the events. His perceptions have ended. There is only oblivion, which is, by definition, free of experience.

2. Yes, a copied disk is an excellent example. Or, more precisely, the data within it. But what you seem to be saying is that there is a difference between the data on each disc. I don't see how that is in any way the case. How is something possessed of the same properties not the same?

3. Yes, they are the same character, in different places. Once events happen, they're different character, but that's not an issue if, say, one of the characters starts play touching a sphere of annihilation.

4. Fair enough.

1. Yes it does. He may no longer be capable of appreciating the difference, but it's there. If someone wanted to kill you--shoot you, stab you in a dark alley, or disintegrate you in a booth--I doubt you'd agree to it just because "It'd stop bothering you really quickly."

2. There's no difference between the appearance, physical properties, or content of the two disks at first. They're two different copies of the same disk. They're still different disks, though. A disk isn't really capable of having a sense of self, as far as we know. I am.

3. No, they're different characters with the same stats. What if I name one Fistbeard Beardfist and the other Beardfist Fistbeard? They're identical in everything but name. Does that make them different characters? Let me give you another example, a probably better example.

There is a line. It goes forward. Easy enough, yes?

Then I stop drawing that line and start drawing a new one, same color, same thickness, same kind of ink, same everything. It picks up where the other left off, but three inches to the left. I start drawing that line, instead. That line represents my consciousness in the 'teleporter' situation. A new one picks up where the old one left off. But the old one did leave off. In the case of the lines, big deal. A line is no longer drawn. With people? Big deal, this time sans sarcasm. Because one line ended. One person died.

Whoever linked to that episode of Outer Limits, thank you. Have an internet, because that's a perfect example of my position, and the position of a lot of others in this thread. That's why killing the original is a problem. Because you're killing.

Devils_Advocate

2009-12-06, 06:25 PM

If someone wanted to kill you--shoot you, stab you in a dark alley, or disintegrate you in a booth--I doubt you'd agree to it just because "It'd stop bothering you really quickly."
That certainly seems like insufficient incentive to comply with that request. For starters, it would bother me significantly for a while, so that's a downside. Where's the upside? Helping someone? Something tells me that this might not be someone I'd want to help.

But if I don't foresee something meaningfully changing which subjective experiences will occur in the universe, then I can take it or leave it.

Big deal, this time sans sarcasm. Because one line ended. One person died.
Actually, no. It isn't a big deal because a person died. You're choosing to make a big deal out of it in a way that you express as "One person died". The only reason that discontinuity is an issue is that people are bothered by it.

You don't dislike discontinuity with someone because it makes him not you. You value continuity and call it "being you" -- a phrase which others might choose to mean other things.

I mean all of that in the sense that a man is not a bachelor because he is unmarried, nor vice versa. There is no cause and effect there -- just different descriptions of the same situation. So "because" is, at best, a misleading word to use.

Got that? Fulfilling the standard by which identity is maintained doesn't cause retention of identity, it is retention of identity. Similarly, fulfilling the standard for loss of identity doesn't cause loss of identity, it is loss of identity.

This holds true for whatever standard one chooses to employ. Different people can have different standards, each of which is internally consistent, but which are inconsistent with each other. And they can then use these different standards to describe the same situation in different ways, all of which are equally accurate.

By convention, protons have "positive" electrical charge and electrons have "negative" charge. But one could equally well describe things precisely the other way around. All the math would work out just fine. You'd just have to make sure to multiply by negative one in the right places if you wanted to take a statement from one system of description and use it in the other.

Using untranslated descriptions from the other system would obviously be problematic. But that's not the fault of either system, it's the fault of the person who should have been translating. The systems don't actually contain conflicting statements, because the meaning of a statement depends on the context in which it is used.

There's no practical reason to dislike being replaced by a sufficiently good copy, which by definition fulfills all of the practical functions that you do. It's just an arbitrary preference, like enjoying the taste of sugar. Continuity doesn't get you something else, it's just an end in itself.

Do you agree with all that? If not, what thing other than continuity itself does continuity get you?

Obviously not the benefit of preserving identity, if preservation of identity is continuity. For continuity to be a means of preserving identity, preservation of identity would have to be something else other than continuity.

Kallisti

2009-12-06, 06:35 PM

You say it's an arbitrary preference? Fine. I'll cede that.

I still don't want to die.

The copy may fulfill all of my practical functions, but those aren't what matters to me. If I defined myself by my practical function and usefulness, do you think I'd be sitting here on a gaming website instead of off building houses for orphaned llamas or something? I value my continuty because I have no guarantee that discontinuity isn't death, and I don't want to die. It cannot be proven, and therefore it's a risk I wouldn't take. If they invent teleporters some day, I'll be the old grognard who "doesn't trust the damn newfangled beamers or whatever the kids call them." Because it's pretty damn hard for me to believe disposing of the original involves no killing of the original. I.e., me. Who, for the umpteenth time, very much does not want to die.

Devils_Advocate

2009-12-06, 08:12 PM

I value my continuty because I have no guarantee that discontinuity isn't death
You still seem to think that considering continuity necessary for shared identity is a conceptualization of a different possible world than considering continuity unnecessary for shared identity, instead of these simply being different conceptualizations of the same world.

But the scope of identity isn't something that you can discover. There are no conceivable variables out in the universe that, if you knew them, would dictate how to decide this issue.

It's not a matter of whether your You-ness makes it through a teleportation, it's about what to deem You-ness in the first place. Once one decides that, the preservation of You-ness may be a matter of factual dispute, but until then, there is no question about how reality works, just about how to describe it.

Kallisti

2009-12-06, 08:15 PM

I've said before and I'll no doubt have to say again, the closest definition of me-ness so far is Rose Dragon's--"continuity of identity." Then I gave my (clear, I thought) example about the lines to demonstrate why the 'teleporter' precludes that continuity.

Devils_Advocate

2009-12-06, 09:44 PM

I've said before and I'll no doubt have to say again, the closest definition of me-ness so far is Rose Dragon's--"continuity of identity."
?!

Do you mean "continuity of identity" in the sense that your identity is a continuous function (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Continuous_function) of time -- or that the set of identities you have over time, ordered chronologically, is a densely ordered set (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dense_order)?

Because I was using the term "identity" in the sense that you always have the same identity by definition. You always have your one identity and everyone with that identity is you; they mean the same thing.

I had thought that you were saying that you maintain the same identity by maintaining the continuity of your location and/or mental state and/or other properties.

I'm sorta confused now... Could you clarify what you mean by "identity", and by "continuity"?

Then I gave my (clear, I thought) example about the lines to demonstrate why the 'teleporter' precludes that continuity.
It's not entirely clear... What does the y-axis measure? Metaphorically speaking.

Kallisti

2009-12-06, 09:49 PM

Here. Let me show you what I meant. Kind of.

l
l
l
l
l l
l
l
l
l

The line farthest on the left represents the original. The one on the right picks up where it left off. They're the same in all practical respects--same length of each segment, same spacing and color--and they're not the same line. The first line does, in fact, end. Stops continuing. Is no longer continuous. Let's say, for the sake of argument, that a person who stops continuing to be alive is dead, and that this is something to avoid.

GoC

2009-12-07, 09:22 AM

Kallisti :

What if you find out the universe works as described in Discworld with Time destroying and rebuilding the universe once every Plank second?

Devils_Advocate

2009-12-07, 04:23 PM

GoC, the unit I believe you're thinking of is actually called "a Planck time (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planck_time)", rather than "a Plank second".

One response to your query might be that if your entire state does not suddenly change, but rather is replaced one part at a time (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ship_of_Theseus), then there is still a gradual transition from one state to another.

One might intuit that if time is divided into Planck times, then each dimension of space is divided into Planck lengths, and thus the only particles to change position with every iteration of the universe would be the ones that just so happen to be traveling parallel to one of the space axes at the speed of light. That's surely a distinct minority of particles!

But, of course, as has been noted, the universe doesn't actually contain point-sized particles. You'd need to relate the quantized spacetime model to non-falsified theories of physics in order to figure out potential implications for the actual universe we live in.

Hmm. Upon investigation, I see that Wikipedia's article on quantum time (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_time) says "However, It is strongly argued (via mathematical physics and observables) that the fundamental length scale for the quantum dynamics of spacetime need not be equal to the Planck length."

It also says "while ordinary time flows in one direction, quantum time within the framework of relativistic quantum mechanics does not have such restriction on direction and gives rise, among many other things, to the Wigner time reversal operator." And also "One important implication of the existence of a quantum of time is that the evolution equations of quantum mechanics, when written in terms of quantum time, pick up additional terms with respect to the corresponding equations when written in terms of ordinary time. These additional terms screw up unitarity and lead to decoherence effects ." And the article on quantum decoherence (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_decoherence) says "Decoherence occurs when a system interacts with its environment in a thermodynamically irreversible way."

Which just gets back to trying to understand how thermodynamic irreversibility can be compatible with time reversibility.

The line farthest on the left represents the original.
What does the horizontal distance between the line segments represent? Does it represent the distance between the original and the copy? Does it represent some other difference between them? Does it represent more than one difference?

Can I safely assume that the vertical axis represents time? (I would have used the horizontal axis for time, per standard convention. My query "What does the y-axis measure?" was made under the assumption that the x-axis measures time. Hopefully that clarifies my intended meaning.)

The one on the right picks up where it left off.
Um, no it doesn't. It picks up at the same distance above the bottom of your post at which the line segment on the left left off, but at a different distance from the left side of your post. That's why they're not parts of a single line segment.

On the other hand, the top half of a vertical line segment picks up where the bottom half leaves off. And the bottom half is not the top half. They simply share the same horizontal coordinate and a common endpoint, this common endpoint being the midpoint of the line segment that they are halves of.

Sharing a common endpoint would seem to be an important relationship between line segments in this context.

Let's say, for the sake of argument, that a person who stops continuing to be alive is dead, and that this is something to avoid.
Given the context of this discussion, I am guessing that you are using "person" to have the same meaning as "mind", "be alive" to have the same meaning as "have subjective experiences", and "dead" to have the same meaning as "nonexistent".

This could pose problems, however, as those words could be taken to have other meanings. You might even take them to mean different things, yourself, in other contexts. I suspect that you'd agree that a plant could accurately be described as "alive", but not in the sense of that word that you are using here.

Would you say that some hypothetical scenarios in which you would consider yourself to be preserved could be described more accurately by "Your person continues to be alive" than by "Your mind continues to have subjective experiences"?

If not, then I would suggest that "a mind that stops having subjective experiences no longer exists" conveys your intended meaning better than ""a person who stops continuing to be alive is dead".

Bonus Question: Is it possible to be temporarily dead? Would being temporarily dead be preferable to being permanently dead?

Addendum: it occurs to me that Kallisti's illustration actually corresponds nicely to quantum time, as each of his "lines" is actually a vertical series of dashes, which we are intended to imagine as being continuous. There are actually interruptions, but they're easy to disregard because they're sufficiently small.

On the other hand, the distance between the "lines" is not small. There's a big difference in magnitude. But the difference is one of magnitude.

So maybe this is one of those cases where the treatment of something as absolute breaks down under close analysis, suggesting that it's actually relative. For example, a shoe could be thought of as simply an object with a very high Shoeness Quotient, which gets gradually reduced if one takes away one speck of material at a time (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sorites_paradox), rather than instantly falling from 100% to 0%.

This allows one, when asked "Is a sandal a shoe?", to confidently reply "Sort of!"

Kallisti

2009-12-07, 06:43 PM

1. What does the horizontal distance between the line segments represent? Does it represent the distance between the original and the copy? Does it represent some other difference between them? Does it represent more than one difference?

2. Can I safely assume that the vertical axis represents time? (I would have used the horizontal axis for time, per standard convention. My query "What does the y-axis measure?" was made under the assumption that the x-axis measures time. Hopefully that clarifies my intended meaning.)

3. Um, no it doesn't. It picks up at the same distance above the bottom of your post at which the line segment on the left left off, but at a different distance from the left side of your post. That's why they're not parts of a single line segment.

4. On the other hand, the top half of a vertical line segment picks up where the bottom half leaves off. And the bottom half is not the top half. They simply share the same horizontal coordinate and a common endpoint, this common endpoint being the midpoint of the line segment that they are halves of.

Sharing a common endpoint would seem to be an important relationship between line segments in this context.

5. Given the context of this discussion, I am guessing that you are using "person" to have the same meaning as "mind", "be alive" to have the same meaning as "have subjective experiences", and "dead" to have the same meaning as "nonexistent".

This could pose problems, however, as those words could be taken to have other meanings. You might even take them to mean different things, yourself, in other contexts. I suspect that you'd agree that a plant could accurately be described as "alive", but not in the sense of that word that you are using here.

6. Would you say that some hypothetical scenarios in which you would consider yourself to be preserved could be described more accurately by "Your person continues to be alive" than by "Your mind continues to have subjective experiences"?

If not, then I would suggest that "a mind that stops having subjective experiences no longer exists" conveys your intended meaning better than ""a person who stops continuing to be alive is dead".

7. Bonus Question: Is it possible to be temporarily dead? Would being temporarily dead be preferable to being permanently dead?

8. Addendum: it occurs to me that Kallisti's illustration actually corresponds nicely to quantum time, as each of his "lines" is actually a vertical series of dashes, which we are intended to imagine as being continuous. There are actually interruptions, but they're easy to disregard because they're sufficiently small.

On the other hand, the distance between the "lines" is not small. There's a big difference in magnitude. But the difference is one of magnitude.

So maybe this is one of those cases where the treatment of something as absolute breaks down under close analysis, suggesting that it's actually relative. For example, a shoe could be thought of as simply an object with a very high Shoeness Quotient, which gets gradually reduced if one takes away one speck of material at a time (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sorites_paradox), rather than instantly falling from 100% to 0%.

This allows one, when asked "Is a sandal a shoe?", to confidently reply "Sort of!"

Thank you so much for spacing and punctuating your posts. It lets me respond to a long post without wishing I could reach through the screen and thrash you.

Sorry, Wall of Text is one of my pet peeves and it's nice to be without it for once.

1. Its entire purpose is to seperate the lines. You could view it as representing the physical distance between me and the copy, the mental separation, anything. It represents that we are distinct, and allows you to see the one line end.

2. I'm drawing a picture to illustrate a point, not making a graph. You could turn it on its side if you need time to be horizontal. The x-axis, as-is, does not exist because there are no axes, no numbers, and no points.

3. My point exactly, but you're right. That could have been clearer. That's why English is such a poor language for this kind of discussion. It's ambiguous unless you're really, really careful. Fine. What I meant was "We are assuming the vertical length of a line to represent the continuation of the mind within the body of one of the Kallistis in our hypothetical situation. The second line, representing the copy, picks up at the same vertical distance where the first line--representing the original Kallisti (or, at least, the Kallisti that enters booth A)--leaves off, representing the fact that there is only one Kallisti extant at any given time in our hypothetical scenario (or, more specifically, the hypothetical scenario we have been discussing most recently, which uses Kallisti specifically instead of a generic subject)." I just didn't want to say all that, because it sounds awkward and clunky. And would still be awkward and clunky even without the unnecessary clarifications I added to lampshade the length.

4. Yes, exactly. The bottom half is not the top half. Thank you. That was the entire point.

5. :smallsigh:English again. You are absolutely right. That is exactly what I meant. I just assumed that the distinction between "continuation of my consciousness" and "continual existance of my mind" was small enough that "consciousness" was sufficiently clear.

6. You're right. That's a more precise way to convey my intended meaning. But English is an ambiguous language, so there was room for interpretation. This is what I hate about English. I use an ambiguous word, which I clarify using other ambiguous words, ad nauseum.

I wish they'd make Lojban the official Common and teach General Semantics in schools. So that we could discuss tenuous and ephemeral things like philosophy and morality without stopping to clarify.

7. Being temporarily dead? Not until the Pope hits 17th level and learns True Res, or they otherwise A. prove or disprove the existance of the soul or some form of the consciousness that exists after death and B. find a way to restore it to the body. I'm not sure I'd trust a reanimator for the same reason I'd distrust the teleporter. For all I know, instead of restoring the mind to the body the device just uses the brain to create an entirely new, but identical, personality. In which case the person's original mind is still nonexistant. It'd be nice to have, as I'd rather there were any of a lot of people than none at all, but it wouldn't bring them back per se. Plus there are a lot of people who I don't want back. Many of them are the kind of people rich enough to get this new device used on them. Can you imagine if every snobbish aristocrat came back from the dead again and again, like vampires? Or if it became widespread and every moron who ever lived was resurrected because the ACLU threatened to sue for discrimination if they weren't? But that's a whole different issue. And yes, temporarily dead would be preferable to permanently dead, unless it turns out that there's an afterlife and it's a nice place.

8. Entirely because I can neither type a straight line that long nor use MS Paint or any other drawing tool to save my life, and would hve been to lazy to use one in any case, but yes. Taken in that context, it is.

GoC

2009-12-07, 07:14 PM

Not until the Pope hits 17th level and learns True Res, or they otherwise A. prove or disprove the existance of the soul or some form of the consciousness that exists after death

How would one prove the non-existence of a soul?
Also, I'd still like an answer to my question.

Kallisti

2009-12-07, 07:25 PM

How would one prove the non-existence of a soul?
Also, I'd still like an answer to my question.

Not with any technology we've invented yet or will invent soon.

And I missed your question, sorry. Let's see...first off, it's not the Discworld system of time, it's Wen the Eternally Surprised's philosophy. Pratchett never definitively confirms or denies the idea. Also, Thief of Time is a brilliant book.

In more on-topic news, that'd seriously suck if that were the case, because it'd mean that the entire population of the world dies every Planck time and we all have no real past, only delusions. Although, as I've said, the duplicate--or in this case, the new person--has rights and responsibilities for their supposed past, as they are the original in all respects but continuity. Especially since in this situation the original is completely gone. One point I'd like to clarify is that the 'copy' is no less real than the 'original' and they have equal claim to the identity they believe they have--both are Kallisti or both are Devil's Advocate or GoC or whoever we copy. It's just that they are separate individuals with separate minds, separeate rights, and if they exist separate souls.

Also, are GoC, Devil's Advocate and I the only ones still here? This isn't a closed debate, you know. You're all allowed to have opinons, too.

Devils_Advocate

2009-12-07, 11:41 PM

You could view it as representing the physical distance between me and the copy, the mental separation, anything. It represents that we are distinct, and allows you to see the one line end.
But the whole issue here is which distinctions to consider relevant.

Yes, exactly. The bottom half is not the top half. Thank you. That was the entire point.
No, no, your point was that the left line is not the right one. My point was that e.g. the top half of the right line is not the bottom half of the right line. These are very different points!

You're right. That's a more precise way to convey my intended meaning. But English is an ambiguous language, so there was room for interpretation. This is what I hate about English. I use an ambiguous word, which I clarify using other ambiguous words, ad nauseum.

I wish they'd make Lojban the official Common and teach General Semantics in schools. So that we could discuss tenuous and ephemeral things like philosophy and morality without stopping to clarify.
I would be very surprised to learn that Lojban is entirely free of vagueness (http://cscs.umich.edu/~crshalizi/Russell/vagueness/), or even close to minimally vague. It may be syntactically unambiguous, but that's a far cry from being semantically unambiguous.

Nevertheless, it's probably sufficiently less vague that I really ought to learn it, as a tool for clarifying my own thinking if nothing else. But it's one of those things that I think I should do but never get around to, y'know? So, do you speak it?

Anyway, I thought that it would be a good idea to clarify that we're talking about minds before moving on to questions like "Could a single mind conceivably be simultaneously embodied in two separate locations?" and "Just what is a mind, exactly?" (Those questions are related to each other, obviously.)

For all I know, instead of restoring the mind to the body the device just uses the brain to create an entirely new, but identical, personality.
Whether an identical mind is the original mind is entirely a matter of whether the discontinuity in mental activity makes the minds separate. This is, again, not something that you can discover. It's something that you specify one way or the other.

You respond as if this possibility were pure fiction. Are you quite sure that modern medical science isn't already capable of bringing back someone whose EEG (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electroencephalography) flatlines? I think that it is, but I haven't found confirmation. I haven't spent a lot of time looking, yet, though.

Also, are you quite sure that you continue to have subjective experiences for the entire time you're asleep? Worira touched on this, but it seems like maybe he wasn't quite explicit enough about it for you to grasp what he was getting at: that regular periods of unconsciousness have implications for continuity of consciousness.

that'd seriously suck if that were the case, because it'd mean that the entire population of the world dies every Planck time and we all have no real past, only delusions.
Is that really how you think you'd respond if you found that out? Just so we're clear here, if you discovered that reality didn't precisely correspond to this concept that you have, but was just really really close, you'd decide that the concept didn't apply at all? You wouldn't say "Oh, here's the real phenomenon that's imperfectly modeled by my pre-existing abstraction of how things work, now let me adjust my abstraction so that it matches the physical reality"?

Because by that standard, I'm guessing that like none of my ideas about the world are right. They're probably all at least slightly flawed. I personally try to keep my standards just a little bit flexible, lest they prove to be completely unsuited to the universe I live in.

I mean, I know I said earlier that nothing you could discover about the universe could dictate your opinion on this issue, and here you are proving my point, but I would hope that you would at least be willing to reconsider your stance in the light of new evidence.

One point I'd like to clarify is that the 'copy' is no less real than the 'original' and they have equal claim to the identity they believe they have--both are Kallisti or both are Devil's Advocate or GoC or whoever we copy.
Huh. I guess you really are using the term "identity" differently than I was. Well, I suppose that you could use it to refer to self-image or place in society. Maybe I can come up with something less ambiguous...

Ah! OK, then, how about we say that being a given self is the same thing as having a given essence (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Essence), and vice versa? Would that be acceptable terminology for this discussion?

Also, are GoC, Devil's Advocate and I the only ones still here? This isn't a closed debate, you know. You're all allowed to have opinons, too.
I'd still like for Lord Seth to address my "distinction without a difference" argument, if only to concede the point.

(That's right, LS, I'm insinuating that you aren't responding because you don't have a counterargument! So, what you gonna do about it? Huh? Huh?)

Kallisti

2009-12-08, 03:07 AM

1. But the whole issue here is which distinctions to consider relevant.

2. No, no, your point was that the left line is not the right one. My point was that e.g. the top half of the right line is not the bottom half of the right line. These are very different points!

3. I would be very surprised to learn that Lojban is entirely free of vagueness (http://cscs.umich.edu/~crshalizi/Russell/vagueness/), or even close to minimally vague. It may be syntactically unambiguous, but that's a far cry from being semantically unambiguous.

Nevertheless, it's probably sufficiently less vague that I really ought to learn it, as a tool for clarifying my own thinking if nothing else. But it's one of those things that I think I should do but never get around to, y'know? So, do you speak it?

4. Anyway, I thought that it would be a good idea to clarify that we're talking about minds before moving on to questions like "Could a single mind conceivably be simultaneously embodied in two separate locations?" and "Just what is a mind, exactly?" (Those questions are related to each other, obviously.)

Whether an identical mind is the original mind is entirely a matter of whether the discontinuity in mental activity makes the minds separate. This is, again, not something that you can discover. It's something that you specify one way or the other.

5. You respond as if this possibility were pure fiction. Are you quite sure that modern medical science isn't already capable of bringing back someone whose EEG (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electroencephalography) flatlines? I think that it is, but I haven't found confirmation. I haven't spent a lot of time looking, yet, though.

Also, are you quite sure that you continue to have subjective experiences for the entire time you're asleep? Worira touched on this, but it seems like maybe he wasn't quite explicit enough about it for you to grasp what he was getting at: that regular periods of unconsciousness have implications for continuity of consciousness.

6. Is that really how you think you'd respond if you found that out? Just so we're clear here, if you discovered that reality didn't precisely correspond to this concept that you have, but was just really really close, you'd decide that the concept didn't apply at all? You wouldn't say "Oh, here's the real phenomenon that's imperfectly modeled by my pre-existing abstraction of how things work, now let me adjust my abstraction so that it matches the physical reality"?

Because by that standard, I'm guessing that like none of my ideas about the world are right. They're probably all at least slightly flawed. I personally try to keep my standards just a little bit flexible, lest they prove to be completely unsuited to the universe I live in.

I mean, I know I said earlier that nothing you could discover about the universe could dictate your opinion on this issue, and here you are proving my point, but I would hope that you would at least be willing to reconsider your stance in the light of new evidence.

7. Huh. I guess you really are using the term "identity" differently than I was. Well, I suppose that you could use it to refer to self-image or place in society. Maybe I can come up with something less ambiguous...

Ah! OK, then, how about we say that being a given self is the same thing as having a given essence (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Essence), and vice versa? Would that be acceptable terminology for this discussion?

Sorry to keep numbering all your posts, but I don't have a lot of time and I'd rather respond to you than carefully quote you to assemble a beautiful post.

1. Indeed. As I've said, the distinction I consider relevant is that my mind, my consciousness or self or soul or whatever we term it, occupies my body, and yet the copy has a fully functional, but independant, body...and therfore, since it has intelligence, mind. I take this as evidence that we are seperate beings, two of a kind but still seperate, and that therefore if one of us dies or is destroyed, his consciousness is nonexistant/in Heaven/in Hell/in Thud/in a cow/whatever awaits in the afterlife. Dead, at least. We live seperately and can therefore die seperately. If I understand, you are contending that as long as one is destroyed the moment the other is created this is untrue and you get true teleportation instead. I cannot agree, and contend that the time of overlap is irrelevant to whether one consciousness dies--dead is dead.

2. My bad. English yet again. I thought you meant the top and bottom halves. No, two given segments of either line are not the same, but they're continuous. Which the two lines are not. Any problems with the line picture are due to my lack of computer skills, the example holds. The real question is whether the example would correctly illustrate reality.

3. I've never known more than a few words of Lojban, and I haven't time to learn, much as I wish I did. Still, it would be a nice tool. I doubt that the perfect language could ever be achieved, because you'd have to define the concepts for new speakers in some other language, but we can sure as hell try.

Although I find general semantics (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_semantics) to be a very good tool and I wish I had time to look at it more in depth.

4. As I've said, I take the fact that I occupy my body but not my copy's to be evidence that we have separate minds, just like my mind is seperate from that of those I meet. Until Vulcans land and teach us the mind-meld, separate bodies is good proof of seperate minds among humans. My contention is that by having seperate minds we have separate selves and seperate lives.

5. I responded to it because being "temporarily dead" as I took you to mean it--just mostly dead, Princess Bride style--is pure fiction. We have no miraculous resurrection machine or True Res spells. You're right, though, they can bring someone who is clinically dead back if they find them soon enough. And, honestly, I don't know whether they'd come back as the original consciousness or an identical copy. It makes no difference to anyone but the original consciousness. It all comes down to whether there is some consciousness or self that can exist independant of the body's life functions--a dormant mind encoded in the brain, or a soul, or something--that can return. As I said, it makes no difference, and has no perceptible difference, to anyone but the original consciousness.

Also, Worrira, if he's correct and that was your argument, sorry, but you're factually wrong here. All creatures that enter REM sleep--all humans--dream the entire time they are asleep. People who claim not to dream simply never remember their dreams. This is a given fact of sleep. I think it was in Hamlet that they discussed the metaphor of death as sleep and contended that the dead dream--something about man breaking the threads of some gossamer web in waking, no matter how deep the sleep. I don't recall the exact words, which is a shame because it was a beautiful passage. The point is that my mind is extent and if not aware precisely at least experiencing the entire time I sleep, and therefore I can sleep quite well despite the terror oblivion holds for me.

Also, I'm parasomniac, so I always have very vivid dreams. You might not have guessed this, Worrira, but to me waking is merely a temperary break from sleeping. Left to my own devices I'd sleep about 17 hours a day. Because dreams are wonderful things, and always there, regardless of whether I remember them. It's simultaneously a wonderful and tragic thought--on the one hand, all those dreams are lost forever. Who knows what stories played before my sleeping eyes only to be lost? On the other hand, the thought that dreams are there for me even when I forget them is very comforting. It gives me some hope that maybe Hamlet was right. "To sleep, perchance to dream." That's be a very nice afterlife. I hope so much that's the case.

6. I'm not sure I know what you mean. If the universe was destroyed and then recreated every Planck time, by definition I am destroyed--killed--and replaced once every Planck time. Of course I believe that, it's a given. Now, if there were somehow incontrovertible proof that this were indeed the case--or I were to accept it as incontravertible for the sake of argument--I would entertain the thought that the mind or self or soul or whatever you call it exists seperately from the body and is therefore not destroyed along with the body. Although Wen the Eternally Surprised agreed with me that the originals were being destroyed and replaced. That's why he was always surprises--he'd existed less than a Planck time, of course he'd never seen it before.

Here's one thing I want to clear up, though, before we discuss this further. I don't dismiss you opinion as rediculous, I don't believe it's logically or intellectually fallacious, I don't think you're a fool to take that position. This debate discusses things too impossible to prove to be that black-and-white. I think the position I've taken is more correct, but that doesn't mean I don't see where you're coming from on this. So I find it slightly insulting that you believe I take such a rigid view on the matter just because I support one of the positions over the other. With a username like Devil's Advocate, you should certainly realize it's possible to see both sides of a debate and still support one or the other:smallwink:.

7. No, not exactly, although thank you. That gives me a word for one concept I was trying to communicate, although the connotation is the exact opposite of what I'll use it for. Essence is a set of attributes that defines an object's identity, yes? What makes that object that object? It's what makes a chair a chair, a computer a computer, a story a story, and a dream a dream. It's only a set of attributes, though. Not being, but identity. It's not the chair itself, but a complete description of it. Similarly, a copy of me can be me in essence--share all my attributes--and still be a separate being. What I've been trying to say is that I make a distinction between essence and self. Although both concepts are pretty hard to define accurately. I've been calling self consciousness, mind, all sorts of things. I'd call it the soul, except that that's got a very strong religous connotation for something not religous in nature and isn't much better than self. Although you seem interested enough in clarity to seperate the word from the religous connotation. Still, self is...close enough.

GoC

2009-12-08, 03:47 AM

Not with any technology we've invented yet or will invent soon.
But in theory how would it be done?

TSGames

2009-12-08, 05:55 PM

I would be very surprised to learn that Lojban is entirely free of vagueness (http://cscs.umich.edu/~crshalizi/Russell/vagueness/), or even close to minimally vague. It may be syntactically unambiguous, but that's a far cry from being semantically unambiguous.

Not to interject too much, but Lojban is, actually, very close to minimally vague. What is different about Lojban from most other languages, is that to be vague, you must be intentionally vague. In short, each word in the language has it's arguments absolutely defined, and to omit an argument, or to intentionally make an argument vague requires very nearly the exact same syntax as a thoroughly defined argument.

The goal of Lojban is to make all ideas equally expressible within the language(in order to test the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis). This goal can never be reached by a human language, but Lojban comes infinitely closer than anything before.

I whole-heartedly agree with your conclusion that it cannot be fully syntactically unambiguous. However, this is not due to the fault of the language, but rather due to flaws in human reasoning. Some definitions will always be vague because they try to define concepts, or aspects of concepts, that humanity has/will/(can?) never define. Throw around a few hot-words, and you have plenty of examples, "god" "conservative" "liberal" "freedom" "love" "art", each of these words is quite easily expressible in any language, but the concepts they represent are ill-defined, which necessitates that any definition of them be ambiguous, regardless of language.

Anyway, sorry for the tangent, but Lojban really is a great language, even if its original purpose for creation was based on a logical fallacy.
**Pulls lever to put thread back on right track**

Kallisti

2009-12-08, 08:02 PM

*Why Lojban is great but not perfect*

Well said, sir.

But in theory how would it be done?

If I knew how to do it I'd have invented the damn thing already.

Theoretically, though, it'd either call the soul back to the body or restart the life processes. Restarting the life processes would cause one of the following: 1. The original consciousness is reawakened from oblivion/Heave/Hell/Thud/death; 2. A new but essentially identical personality is created. 3. Oh dear God zombies we're all going to die run for your lifdfafgfgghdhhhhhhhhhhhh. Or braindead bodies that exist nominally alive in a persistant vegitative state. No mind, new or original, at any rate.

In cases 1 or 2 we don't know the difference and celebrate the amazing resurrection machine. In case 3 either we give up or find a way to use chemical traces in the brain to recreate the personality, in which case we have a new but essentially identical consciousness.

Those are my guesses anyway.

Devils_Advocate

2009-12-08, 09:18 PM

I think that the relevant point there is that a lot concepts are vague, and that a lot of the vagueness of language just models conceptual vagueness. I think that this is actually desirable; a lot of the time, we want to discuss vague concepts.

As I've said, the distinction I consider relevant is that my mind, my consciousness or self or soul or whatever we term it, occupies my body, and yet the copy has a fully functional, but independant, body...and therfore, since it has intelligence, mind.
Well, the potential problem there is the "and therefore", since the question here would seem to be whether different/independent/separate/distinct/whatever bodies imply different/independent/separate/distinct/whatever minds.

As I've said, I take the fact that I occupy my body but not my copy's to be evidence that we have separate minds, just like my mind is seperate from that of those I meet.
Clarify, please: Are you using "I occupy my body but not my copy's" to mean something different than what you mean by "we have separate minds"? If so, what do you mean by each?

It looks like you might be counting an assumption as evidence of itself. I am hopeful that you will explain to me how I have misunderstood you (see below).

I responded to it because being "temporarily dead" as I took you to mean it--just mostly dead, Princess Bride style--is pure fiction.
I'm unclear on what you mean by "just mostly dead, Princess Bride style" -- specifically on how this excludes temporary cessation of vital signs in real life.

Anyway, in the context of this conversation, what I meant to ask you was whether it's possible to be temporarily dead in whatever sense that you had meant "dead".

It all comes down to whether there is some consciousness or self that can exist independant of the body's life functions--a dormant mind encoded in the brain, or a soul, or something--that can return.
Well, if having subjective experiences is necessary for a mind's existence, then obviously the mind doesn't exist while it isn't having subjective experiences. But if a mind does not necessarily correspond to a continuous object continuously having subjective experiences, but instead simply to a continuous object having subjective experiences, then by this less strict standard a mind could exist for two non-contiguous intervals of time.

And by even less strict standards, the existence of a mind could be spread all over the place in seemingly bizarre ways. And those seemingly bizarre ways might even be the norm, even for minds that perceive themselves to be operating mundanely -- like, say, us.

... I really should get around to reading Permutation City at some point.

As I said, it makes no difference, and has no perceptible difference, to anyone but the original consciousness.
But the issue isn't what the the original consciousness experiences, for a fixed meaning of "the original consciousness". The issue is what to use "the original consciousness" to mean. We're not discussing a given entity that might or might continue to exist; at least I don't see how you could think that without confusing the map with the territory (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Map%E2%80%93territory_relation).

If the universe was destroyed and then recreated every Planck time, by definition I am destroyed--killed--and replaced once every Planck time. Of course I believe that, it's a given.
But those statements only have meaning within a given descriptive framework -- a given set of meanings for "destroyed", "created", and "replaced". Remember, if you're not translating, that's your fault.

"A replaces B; B is destroyed and then A is created" can always be alternately described as "B becomes A". This simply necessitates some change in perspective on what constitutes continued existence.

It doesn't seem like an author's choice of how to describe events should determine how you feel about them. Particularly if you're trying to imagine how you'd react to learning something about the real world. In such a case, should you not be trying to look past the particulars of how a hypothetical scenario is described and at the hypothetical scenario itself, as it were?

This debate discusses things too impossible to prove to be that black-and-white. I think the position I've taken is more correct, but that doesn't mean I don't see where you're coming from on this. So I find it slightly insulting that you believe I take such a rigid view on the matter just because I support one of the positions over the other.
No insult intended. The message I meant to convey was not "You're clearly very inflexible about this", but "Are you really so inflexible about this?" I presented one possible reading of what you posted in part so that you could point out how that reading was incorrect, if it indeed indicated a misunderstanding of your viewpoint. You may find that I do that sort of thing from time to time.

You may also find that I sometimes put forth various sorts of interpretations, theories, perspectives, analyses, and/or whatever for the consideration of others; not necessarily in the hopes of convincing them of these things; but in the hopes of prompting consideration of unfamiliar ideas, clarification of one's thoughts to others or oneself, reevaluation of assumptions, production of synthesis from thesis and antithesis, and so on; so as to stimulate the production of new interpretations, theories, perspectives, analyses, and/or whatever; which will hopefully advance our mutual understanding of just whatever the heck it is that we're trying to understand.

I like to think that I don't generally approach discussions with the goal of swaying participants towards a particular point of view, but rather with the broader goal of swaying everyone towards better understanding. Thus I might appear in some cases to "take both sides" of a debate because I treat the analysis of a supporting argument as an interesting sub-discussion that I don't immediately intend to serve a larger conclusion.

Ideally, individual sub-discussions get resolved in an enlightening way, and then these results are woven together into some sort of overall conclusion which is hopefully surprising (since I can't improve my own understanding without adjusting it).

Essence is a set of attributes that defines an object's identity, yes?
Yes, but "identity" in the sense that I was using that word in.

What makes that object that object?
Yes.

It's what makes a chair a chair, a computer a computer, a story a story, and a dream a dream.
No, it's what makes a chair that chair, a computer that computer, a story that story, and a dream that dream. And depending on what one takes a thing's essence to be, the applicability of a given noun (e.g. "five-year-old") might vanish, with the essence remaining.

It's not the chair itself, but a complete description of it.
No, no, no. Essence corresponds only to a thing's essential qualities, and not to its accidental properties.

Let me go over a few terms.

For every thing, that thing is its self (noun), and its self is it. (And itself = its self, myself = my self, yourself = your self, themselves = their selves, and so on.) Every thing has its own numerical identity (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Numerical_identity#Qualitative_versus_numerical_id entity) (noun) and its own essence (mass noun), and no other thing has the same numerical identity nor the same essence. Every thing is numerically identical (adjective) with itself and only with itself.

A personal identity (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_identity_%28philosophy%29) is the numerical identity of a mind.

Whew!

But in theory how would it be done?
If one could fully describe how human functioning results from matter obeying known laws of physics, that would discredit the idea of an irreducible, non-epiphenomenal (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epiphenomenalism) soul.

Obviously the meaning of this question depends on what would constitute a "soul". One could define the term so broadly that it would correspond to something real no matter what is discovered, and indeed such a definition might be desirable. But of course, if you use "soul" to refer to the cause of some observed phenomena, whatever that cause might be, then it's no longer an attempt at an explanation.

(And "soul" then remains vague in proportion to how unclear you are about which phenomena you're referring to and what would distinguish one of multiple causes as "the" cause.)

Kallisti

2009-12-08, 10:19 PM

1. I think that the relevant point there is that a lot concepts are vague, and that a lot of the vagueness of language just models conceptual vagueness. I think that this is actually desirable; a lot of the time, we want to discuss vague concepts.

2. Well, the potential problem there is the "and therefore", since the question here would seem to be whether different/independent/separate/distinct/whatever bodies imply different/independent/separate/distinct/whatever minds.

3. Clarify, please: Are you using "I occupy my body but not my copy's" to mean something different than what you mean by "we have separate minds"? If so, what do you mean by each?

It looks like you might be counting an assumption as evidence of itself. I am hopeful that you will explain to me how I have misunderstood you (see below).

4. I'm unclear on what you mean by "just mostly dead, Princess Bride style" -- specifically on how this excludes temporary cessation of vital signs in real life.

Anyway, in the context of this conversation, what I meant to ask you was whether it's possible to be temporarily dead in whatever sense that you had meant "dead".

5. Well, if having subjective experiences is necessary for a mind's existence, then obviously the mind doesn't exist while it isn't having subjective experiences. But if a mind does not necessarily correspond to a continuous object continuously having subjective experiences, but instead simply to a continuous object having subjective experiences, then by this less strict standard a mind could exist for two non-contiguous intervals of time.

And by even less strict standards, the existence of a mind could be spread all over the place in seemingly bizarre ways. And those seemingly bizarre ways might even be the norm, even for minds that perceive themselves to be operating mundanely -- like, say, us.

... I really should get around to reading Permutation City at some point.

6. But the issue isn't what the the original consciousness experiences, for a fixed meaning of "the original consciousness". The issue is what to use "the original consciousness" to mean. We're not discussing a given entity that might or might continue to exist; at least I don't see how you could think that without confusing the map with the territory (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Map%E2%80%93territory_relation).

7. But those statements only have meaning within a given descriptive framework -- a given set of meanings for "destroyed", "created", and "replaced". Remember, if you're not translating, that's your fault.

"A replaces B; B is destroyed and then A is created" can always be alternately described as "B becomes A". This simply necessitates some change in perspective on what constitutes continued existence.

It doesn't seem like an author's choice of how to describe events should determine how you feel about them. Particularly if you're trying to imagine how you'd react to learning something about the real world. In such a case, should you not be trying to look past the particulars of how a hypothetical scenario is described and at the hypothetical scenario itself, as it were?

8. No insult intended. The message I meant to convey was not "You're clearly very inflexible about this", but "Are you really so inflexible about this?" I presented one possible reading of what you posted in part so that you could point out how that reading was incorrect, if it indeed indicated a misunderstanding of your viewpoint. You may find that I do that sort of thing from time to time.

You may also find that I sometimes put forth various sorts of interpretations, theories, perspectives, analyses, and/or whatever for the consideration of others; not necessarily in the hopes of convincing them of these things; but in the hopes of prompting consideration of unfamiliar ideas, clarification of one's thoughts to others or oneself, reevaluation of assumptions, production of synthesis from thesis and antithesis, and so on; so as to stimulate the production of new interpretations, theories, perspectives, analyses, and/or whatever; which will hopefully advance our mutual understanding of just whatever the heck it is that we're trying to understand.

I like to think that I don't generally approach discussions with the goal of swaying participants towards a particular point of view, but rather with the broader goal of swaying everyone towards better understanding. Thus I might appear in some cases to "take both sides" of a debate because I treat the analysis of a supporting argument as an interesting sub-discussion that I don't immediately intend to serve a larger conclusion.

Ideally, individual sub-discussions get resolved in an enlightening way, and then these results are woven together into some sort of overall conclusion which is hopefully surprising (since I can't improve my own understanding without adjusting it).

9. Yes, but "identity" in the sense that I was using that word in.

Yes.

No, it's what makes a chair that chair, a computer that computer, a story that story, and a dream that dream. And depending on what one takes a thing's essence to be, the applicability of a given noun (e.g. "five-year-old") might vanish, with the essence remaining.

No, no, no. Essence corresponds only to a thing's essential qualities, and not to its accidental properties.

Let me go over a few terms.

For every thing, that thing is its self (noun), and its self is it. (And itself = its self, myself = my self, yourself = your self, themselves = their selves, and so on.) Every thing has its own numerical identity (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Numerical_identity#Qualitative_versus_numerical_id entity) (noun) and it own essence (mass noun), and no other thing has the same numerical identity nor the same essence. Every thing is numerically identical (adjective) with itself and only with itself.

A personal identity (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_identity_%28philosophy%29) is the numerical identity of a mind.

Whew!

1. Ehhh, true.

2. The and therefore is not a problem at all, since I was making that statement as my opinion and not incontravertible fact. I believe that separate and independant bodies and the fact that both Kallistis can respond intelligently but independantly to situations proves that they have seperate and independant, but otherwise identical, minds.

3. I really am not sure how to phrase this. You live in it as though it were a suit of armor, you feel it and sense it, you have proprioception, you look out from the 'darkness behind the eyes.' Look down. You see what's beneath your eyes. Look up. You see what's above your eyes. Move your hand. The hand of your body moves. Your mind occupies your body. That's as clearly as I can explain it. I take the fact that I inhabit only my body as proof that the mind inhabiting my body--me--is distinct and seperate from the minds occupying everybody else's bodies. You would never argue that I am the same entity as my mother or my cat or that I am you. To me, it seems incorrect to suppose that just because the copy is very much more like me than any of those others we cannot be seperate entities.

4. :smallconfused:You...you don't know The Princess Bride?:smalleek::smallfrown::mad:

Go rent it. Now. I'll wait. GO:smallfurious:!!

...back? Enjoyed the movie? So did I, the first time I saw it. And all the other times. It never gets old.

(In the movie, one of the characters dies, but he gets brought back to life. The albino alchemist/sorceror who restores him says that people who die but can be brought back are just "mostly dead." So I meant dead, but able to be brought back.) Yes, I believe it might be possible to be temporarily dead if there is a soul or consciousness/mind that can exist independantly of the body, in which case also the Planck Time Destruction/Recreation wouldn't disrupt continuity. The teleporter I'd still be a little skeptical of because there will be a time of overlap, but if it could somehow do it without any moment of overlap, no matter how small, it might work as intended. But a soul or body-independant consciousness is a big if. A huge one.

Let me use an analogy. If there is no 'soul', a person is like a statue. Smash it and it's gone. Make a new identical one and the first is still gone.

But with a soul, they're more like jugs or vessels. You can empty one by putting its contents in the other. The destruction at each Planck length smashes each jug, spilling out the contents, builds a new one, and puts the soul back. The teleporter takes a new but identical jug and pours in an equal measure of soul. I say that even in this case it wouldn't work because to get the contents from one original vessel to a new one, the new vessel must have been empty, and the teleporter does not create the vessels smpty, as evidenced by the fact that if the original is not destroyed the two vessels can exist and act independantly.

Is that analogy clear enough to get my point across?

5. That interpretation is basically what I was allowing with the above metaphor, since it seems fairly believable. Although to interpret that way you don't need the soul/mind independant of body's life. But still, the copy isn't the same continuous object, so while that'd allow for resurrections and being temporarily dead, I still don't think the teleporter works under that interpretation.

I've never heard of Permutation City. What is it, exactly?

6. I'm not exactly sure I see what you mean. I've been using "original consciousness" to mean the consciousness possesessed by the original. What else would it mean and how exactly is this confusing the map and the territory?

7. Those two statements are not equivalent. Something is not necessarily destroyed when it changes state. A thing is not destroyed when it ages or is turned sideways. The contention in the Discworld example is that the universe is utterly annihlated and replaced with a new but identical one. Not that it becomes something new. That it is destroyed and replaced. I see what you're saying--it loses its original state, and the original is therefore destroyed--but that's not true. There is no actual destruction involved. It still exists. It just exists differently. Like if I write on a page. It's still the same piece of paper. It has not been destroyed. But now it's gone from being a blank page to being an essay or story or poem or sheet of notes.

8. Sorry to have snapped at you. I've been very tired for the past...well, the past few months, really, but the past few days in particular. So I'm a little crabby.

9. I've never studied philosophy formally. Never really had a chance. Being fifteen means having to take required courses first:smallannoyed:. So I didn't have those terms available.

Okay. So. I was taking essence to mean the properties of qualitative identity. You were taking it to mean the properties of numerical identity. Now I can explain that disconnect clearly.

So I have stated I find it most likely that the two Kallistis have only qualitative identity, not numerical identity, in common. You seem to have stated you find it more likely that you find it more likely that if the original is disintegrated the copy will have numeric identity with the original (although recently you've been more focused on getting the positions expressed more clearly). I have said that the original's personal identity is now dead/nonexistant, you have said it is now the copy's personal identity--the personal identities have numerical identity. Is this an accurate summary? If not, chalk it up to sleep deprivation.

Devils_Advocate

2009-12-09, 02:05 AM

I believe that separate and independant bodies and the fact that both Kallistis can respond intelligently but independantly to situations proves that they have seperate and independant, but otherwise identical, minds.
Ah, but we're talking about persistence of essence over time. If you're willing to accept different past and future versions of you, why not a different present version of you? Why, I do believe that I made this point earlier. And that you responded by saying that the real issue is that the copy is discontinuous with you. And now I'm trying to work out just what kind of discontinuity it is that you find objectionable. But you seem to have gone and sort of regressed the discussion.

Bad philosopher! No biscuit! :smalltongue:

Let me ask you this: What if it were possible to make a continuous journey back through time, so that someone could go back and stand next to a subjective-past version of himself? Would the time traveler be standing next to himself, or would the two versions of him have different essences? If they would have different essences, when did the older one pick up a new essence?

It seems like the obvious answer to that last question would be "Well, the moment when he reversed directions in time, dur hurr hurr." But what if his journey was such that the moment of time reversal can only be identified with respect to an arbitrarily chosen reference frame? What then, chuckles?! :smalltongue:

The thing is, in a case like this, the time traveler relates to his past self in a different way than you would to a copy. The time traveler, like a normal human, can still be thought of as a single, continuous four-dimensional body, just one that's twisted around in an unconventional manner. Looking at things that way, we clearly see that his past self is indeed him, and a copy is... not you.

But that does eliminate "Can you stand on his shoulders?" as a test for whether someone isn't yourself. :smallwink:

:smallconfused:You...you don't know The Princess Bride?:smalleek::smallfrown::mad:
Well, it has been a while since I've seen it, but I still kinda know it. You know, like a sandal is kinda a shoe.

(So I meant dead, but able to be brought back.)
OK, I'm still not seeing how that excludes real cases.

Is that analogy clear enough to get my point across?
I think so. You are zeeink zelf as zinkle vour-dimensional object vis zubstance, be it natural or zupernatural, da?

No, I'm not sure why I felt compelled to type that in a Russian accent. (Or whether that's a good one.)

I've never heard of Permutation City. What is it, exactly?
It's a novel by Greg Egan.

I look forward to the day when it will just be commonly assumed in online discussions that people will just go ahead and google unfamiliar terms. I feel that we are transitioning to this state of affairs as we speak. Come on, society! Almost there!

I'm not exactly sure I see what you mean. I've been using "original consciousness" to mean the consciousness possesessed by the original. What else would it mean and how exactly is this confusing the map and the territory?
I'm saying that the issue of "whether they'd come back as the original consciousness or an identical copy" is entirely one of whether the designation "the original consciousness" extends to the consciousness after revival.

The sharing or non-sharing of essence between the person before death and the person after death lies in the map, not the territory. It's entirely about how you conceptualize things, unless I'm missing something.

Those two statements are not equivalent. Something is not necessarily destroyed when it changes state. A thing is not destroyed when it ages or is turned sideways. The contention in the Discworld example is that the universe is utterly annihlated and replaced with a new but identical one. Not that it becomes something new. That it is destroyed and replaced. I see what you're saying--it loses its original state, and the original is therefore destroyed--but that's not true. There is no actual destruction involved. It still exists. It just exists differently. Like if I write on a page. It's still the same piece of paper. It has not been destroyed. But now it's gone from being a blank page to being an essay or story or poem or sheet of notes.
As I said to Lord Seth, this seems like a distinction without a difference.

As I see it, there are changes in the total state of the universe, and we look at 'em, and decide to describe some of 'em as a changes in things, and others as replacements of things with different things. And there are lots of different heuristics we could use to draw lines between what gets described one way and what gets described another way.

But "an object being instantaneously replaced with an identical copy of itself at the same location in space" describes zero change, save for the ordinary passage of time. Do you agree with that? If not, please attempt to impress upon me what actual change in the universe that description could conceivably correspond to.

Sorry to have snapped at you. I've been very tired for the past...well, the past few months, really, but the past few days in particular. So I'm a little crabby.
Responding to perceived insult in an entirely polite fashion is "snapping" now? What, are you doing that genteel thing where apologizing for bits of perfectly normal social interaction is itself treated as a form of perfectly normal social interaction?

I mean, is the implication that you're not supposed to convey remotely negative thoughts or feelings about your interaction with the person you're speaking to, or that it's somehow wrong to have such thoughts or feelings in the first place? Either way, no. You just shouldn't be a jerk about it. And you can totally criticize another person's interactions with you without being a jerk about it. Which you did, in this case.

Maybe your criticism was based on a bit of a misunderstanding, but it was an understandable one, and giving voice to your feelings gave me the opportunity to correct misapprehension. And, once again, you did it in a totally non-jerk fashion, so no harm was done. So you really should not be apologizing.

I've never studied philosophy formally. Never really had a chance. Being fifteen means having to take required courses first:smallannoyed:. So I didn't have those terms available.
Heck, I just recently found them on Wikipedia because I was searching for reasonably well-defined terminology to facilitate this discussion.

So I have stated I find it most likely that the two Kallistis have only qualitative identity, not numerical identity, in common. You seem to have stated you find it more likely that you find it more likely that if the original is disintegrated the copy will have share numerical identity with the original (although recently you've been more focused on getting the positions expressed more clearly). I have said that the original's personal identity is now dead/nonexistant, you have said it is now the copy's personal identity--the personal identitie(s) have are numerical identity(s). Is this an accurate summary? If not, chalk it up to sleep deprivation.
Slight corrections to word usage marked. (Your meaning was clear, but you seem to be trying to learn how to use these terms precisely, so I'm trying to help.)

I don't think that I've taken a position one way or the other about which way to describe things. I have taken the position that both descriptions apply to the same state of affairs, and are different maps of the same territory.

Kallisti

2009-12-09, 02:21 AM

Ah, but we're talking about persistence of essence over time. If you're willing to accept different past and future versions of you, why not a different present version of you? Why, I do believe that I made this point earlier. And that you responded by saying that the real issue is that the copy is discontinuous with you. And now I'm trying to work out just what kind of discontinuity it is that you find objectionable. But you seem to have gone and sort of regressed the discussion.

Bad philosopher! No biscuit! :smalltongue:

Let me ask you this: What if it were possible to make a continuous journey back through time, so that someone could go back and stand next to a subjective-past version of himself? Would the time traveler be standing next to himself, or would the two versions of him have different essences? If they would have different essences, when did the older one pick up a new essence?

It seems like the obvious answer to that last question would be "Well, the moment when he reversed directions in time, dur hurr hurr." But what if his journey was such that the moment of time reversal can only be identified with respect to an arbitrarily chosen reference frame? What then, chuckles?! :smalltongue:

The thing is, in a case like this, the time traveler relates to his past self in a different way than you would to a copy. The time traveler, like a normal human, can still be thought of as a single, continuous four-dimensional body, just one that's twisted around in an unconventional manner. Looking at things that way, we clearly see that his past self is indeed him, and a copy is... not you.

But that does eliminate "Can you stand on his shoulders?" as a test for whether someone isn't yourself. :smallwink:

I'm not the one who regressed the discussion. You kept pressing me to find a clearer way to express my point and I kept reiterating it as clearly as I could.

I actually brought up the concept of time travel to meet a self from a different past earlier, but in reverse--a past version being brought into the present. But the two, unless they're from very close times, may have very different minds and personalities, and even different physical traits. And they're both still capable of thinking and acting independantly of the other. So while they would both be points from the same four-dimensional object, they'd be different people, essentially, with temporal causality from one to other. I know I've changed a lot in the past few years. If I met me from four years ago I'd box his ears because I was a brat then. So they'd have what I'll term 'temporal identity', but not personal, numerical, or qualitative identity. Both would percieve the other as a seperate entity--and be sort of wrong and sort of right. So the past me is still me, but a semi-separate me. Closer to being me than a copy, even though the copy would have qualitative identity as well. For an analogy, let's use the two ends of a bent bar. Both are separate and independant ends. They share no personal, qualitative, or numerical identity. But they're still part of the same overall entity--the bar. So would the two time-travelers be--different persons with different midns and different characteristics, but part of the same four-dimensional object. I'm terming this 'temporal identity' for lack of a better word.

OK, I'm still not seeing how that excludes real cases.

It...isn't supposed to. It's supposed to clarify what I meant in case you'd never seen the movie, that's all.

I think so. You are zeeink zelf as zinkle vour-dimensional object vis zubstance, be it natural or zupernatural, da?

Da. And I thought it was German for Dr. Freud, since you're analyzing my beliefs and views. Although I assure you there is nothing Freudian about my views on meeting myself or a copy of myself. No sir.

It's a novel by Greg Egan.

I look forward to the day when it will just be commonly assumed in online discussions that people will just go ahead and google unfamiliar terms. I feel that we are transitioning to this state of affairs as we speak. Come on, society! Almost there!

I assumed you'd tell me a little more, have some thoughts on it, share an opinon, something. I would have Googled it if all I expected was the answer.

I'm saying that the issue of "whether they'd come back as the original consciousness or an identical copy" is entirely one of whether the designation "the original consciousness" extends to the consciousness after revival.

The sharing or non-sharing of essence between the person before death and the person after death lies in the map, not the territory. It's entirely about how you conceptualize things, unless I'm missing something.

As I said to Lord Seth, this seems like a distinction without a difference.

As I see it, there are changes in the total state of the universe, and we look at 'em, and decide to describe some of 'em as a changes in things, and others as replacements of things with different things. And there are lots of different heuristics we could use to draw lines between what gets described one way and what gets described another way.

But "an object being instantaneously replaced with an identical copy of itself at the same location in space" describes zero change, save for the ordinary passage of time. Do you agree with that? If not, please attempt to impress upon me what actual change in the universe that description could conceivably correspond to.

Fair enough. As I said, I don't know whether the original personality would "wake up" and return or whether a new but qualitatively identical personality would be created. I suspect it'd be the former, but I'm not sure.

The way I see it, when something ages it changes but is not destroyed or replaced. Something is not physically destroyed and replaced with a new copy when it changes its state. See, I define "an object being instantaneously replaced with an identical copy of itself at the same location in space" as "The object is destroyed and replaced with an entirely new and qualitatively but not numerically identical object." They're different objects with the same qualitative properties. It makes no difference to any outside observer. It makes no difference to the new object. It often makes no difference to the old object. But we've been discussing this point the entire thread, whether "an object being instantaneously replaced with an identical copy of itself at the same location in space" undergoes a change or not. So it's a distinction I'll make.

Slight corrections to word usage marked. (Your meaning was clear, but you seem to be trying to learn how to use these terms precisely, so I'm trying to help.)

I don't think that I've taken a position one way or the other about which way to describe things. I have taken the position that both descriptions apply to the same state of affairs, and are different maps of the same territory.

To be fair, I was (and am) enormously tired, so if my spelling and grammar aren't as pristine as usual, that's probably why.

That said, if I am factually wrong, correct me. If I break a rule, notify me. If I use a word wrong, tell me. How else will I learn?

I think you have defaulted to the position of "the opposite of whatever Kallisti puts forward" by sheer virtue of us being the only two who post and respond this regularly. Although you were just playing devil's advocate. Just out of curiosity, is there one idea or interpretion you think is more plausible?

Also, look for a thread titled Socrates Cafe and let me know what you think of trying to start a Playground version. If I can find enough people I'd like to launch my own knockoff--the Diogenes Club ITP.

GoC

2009-12-09, 02:37 AM

If I knew how to do it I'd have invented the damn thing already.

Theoretically, though, it'd either call the soul back to the body or restart the life processes. Restarting the life processes would cause one of the following: 1. The original consciousness is reawakened from oblivion/Heave/Hell/Thud/death; 2. A new but essentially identical personality is created. 3. Oh dear God zombies we're all going to die run for your lifdfafgfgghdhhhhhhhhhhhh. Or braindead bodies that exist nominally alive in a persistant vegitative state. No mind, new or original, at any rate.

In cases 1 or 2 we don't know the difference and celebrate the amazing resurrection machine. In case 3 either we give up or find a way to use chemical traces in the brain to recreate the personality, in which case we have a new but essentially identical consciousness.

Those are my guesses anyway.
So by your definition there is no way to disprove the existence of a soul?

I have a machine that swaps one atom in your body for an atom with the same quantum numbers from elsewhere. I put you in the machine until it's likely that 50% of the atoms in your body have been replaced. Are you experiencing discontinuity of conciousness?

Kallisti

2009-12-09, 02:57 AM

So by your definitions there is no way to disprove the existence of a soul? Or will you admit error and use D_A's definition?:smalltongue:

I have a machine that swaps one atom in your body for an atom with the same quantum numbers from elsewhere. I put you in the machine until it's likely that 50% of the atoms in your body have been replaced. Are you experiencing discontinuity of conciousness?

It'd be very difficult to prove or disprove the existance of a soul, and a miracle resurrection machine wouldn't prove it conclusively. I'm not sure it can be proven conclusively one way or the other, given the unreliability of the human mind and senses and the way humans love to decieve ourselves.

First off, atom swapper? Baron, you fiend!

On-topic, I'd say no, being replaced one atom at a time does not cause discontinuity of consciousness because the change at any given time is so infinitely small it has no impact on the mental or biological processes. Getting a cut doesn't cause that discontinuity either, and it's an incredibly much larger change. Death, though, might. Or might not. There's only one way to find out, and I can wait to know.

GoC

2009-12-09, 03:20 AM

It'd be very difficult to prove or disprove the existance of a soul, and a miracle resurrection machine wouldn't prove it conclusively. I'm not sure it can be proven conclusively one way or the other, given the unreliability of the human mind and senses and the way humans love to decieve ourselves.
If the hypothesis cannot be proven or disproven then how do you know the word "soul" actually identifies a phenomena or object in the world and isn't just a confusion in your mind?

On-topic, I'd say no, being replaced one atom at a time does not cause discontinuity of consciousness because the change at any given time is so infinitely small it has no impact on the mental or biological processes. Getting a cut doesn't cause that discontinuity either, and it's an incredibly much larger change. Death, though, might. Or might not. There's only one way to find out, and I can wait to know.
Oh yeah, forgot to mention that each atom swapped away is positioned so that when all of your constituent atoms are swapped away the swapped away atoms form an exactly identical living body.
Please don't read the spoiler until you've formulated your reply:
Also, the entire process takes a thousandth of a second.

Kallisti

2009-12-09, 03:30 AM

1.Then how do you know the word "soul" actually identifies a phenomena or object in the world and isn't just a confusion in your mind?

2. Oh yeah, forgot to mention that each atom swapped away is positioned so that when all of your constituent atoms are swapped away the swapped away atoms form an exactly identical living body.
Please don't read the spoiler until you've formulated your reply:
Also, the entire process takes a thousandth of a second.

1. I don't. I never claimed to.

2. Congratulations, you just invented the teleporter we were discussing earlier. You're a mad genius.

Also, my response is still the same. My mind is, since I was not destroyed to keep there from being two of me, continuous. There is, occupying a new body composed of my old atoms, a qualitatively but not personally or numerically identical Kallisti. The speed at which the atoms are replaced is irrelevant as long as they are replaced instantaneously so that, at each point in time, there is an atom of the appropriate type in every spot in the original body, although "original location of Kallisti" is probably more accurate than "original body" when we're talking about this kind of replacement. Because at every point, the consciousness has the body it needs to survive continuously. It's effectively the same as the teleporter.

GoC

2009-12-09, 09:53 AM

Interesting...
So if your entire body was instantly moved to another location you'd say you've died and there is now a copy of you at the new location?

Kallisti

2009-12-09, 03:27 PM

Interesting...
So if your entire body was instantly moved to another location you'd say you've died and there is now a copy of you at the new location?

Depends on how I got moved. If I was dissassembled and my component atoms were reassembled, yes. That's exactly what happens. Unless there's a soul.

If I somehow just magically poof there, no, because A Wizard Did It.

If we use a wormhole/tesseract/other method of folding space in which I cover the intervening space (or I just walk), then no, because I was never destroyed or dissassembled.

The problem with teleportation isn't that the location changes, it's that in most examples the original (and possibly only) traveler either laughs at the laws of physics because A Wizard/Scientist Did It or undergoes some kind of destructive process like dissassembly or disintegration.

GoC

2009-12-09, 08:52 PM

Depends on how I got moved.
As described above. All atoms move a certain distance.
Consider two circumstances:
A. All atoms in your body moved two feet to the right
B. As per the previous hypothetical. All atoms in your body moved two feet to the right but are replaced in the same motion. This is just to confirm that you think you'd be the person in the original location.

Kallisti

2009-12-09, 08:58 PM

As described above. All atoms move a certain distance.
Consider two circumstances:
A. All atoms in your body moved two feet to the right
B. As per the previous hypothetical. All atoms in your body moved two feet to the right but are replaced in the same motion. This is just to confirm that you think you'd be the person in the original location.

A. If they're all moved at once I'd stay together and so it'd be the original that arrives. If I'm dissassembled, moved, and reassembled, it's a copy.

B. I'd say that as long as it's instantaneous and simultaneous it wouldn't disrupt life processes.

Devils_Advocate

2009-12-09, 11:10 PM

Kallisti, what if creating a really big wormhole for even a few seconds takes too much energy, so instead, a scientist invents a device that creates for a few milliseconds a different wormhole for each of your molecules? The wormhole mouths it creates in you are linked to an equivalently configured set of wormhole mouths in a distant region of space, allowing your molecules to continue their original trajectories in their original configuration.

(The wormholes aren't necessarily stationary with respect to each other, so no need to worry about any of your molecules moving too slow in any particular frame of reference.)

The entry of molecules into wormholes isn't precisely synchronized, so you're transferred to another region of space a bit at a time, but you're not really dismembered. The device is just exploiting the fact that you're already made of lots of little bits with loads of space in between them.

Of course, wormholes do have a way of making "distant region of space" a relative term...

I thought that this was how the teraport worked in Schlock Mercenary, but apparently it's a bit different (http://blogunderschlock.com/d/20000707.html).

I actually brought up the concept of time travel to meet a self from a different past earlier, but in reverse--a past version being brought into the present.
Did you? Could you point out where, so I don't have to hunt it down?

So while they would both be points from the same four-dimensional object
Do you mean that each one would be a point, or that each one would be multiple points?

Because if we talk about the time traveler for only one particular duration of time -- said time traveler as he exists from, say, from 1 PM to 2 PM -- that's still a four-dimensional object that's part of a larger four-dimensional object. He's not one infinitely thin 3D slice, but an infinite collection of them -- just a subcollection of a larger collection. Like a line segment that's part of a larger line segment, with the supersegment containing all of the points in the subsegment plus more.

(And you would describe the temporal visit by saying that the same time traveler is there for the whole hour, not that a different one is there each instant, right?)

they'd be different people, essentially, with temporal causality from one to other. I know I've changed a lot in the past few years. If I met me from four years ago I'd box his ears because I was a brat then.So they'd have what I'll term 'temporal identity', but not personal, numerical, or qualitative identity. Both would percieve the other as a seperate entity--and be sort of wrong and sort of right. So the past me is still me, but a semi-separate me.
Now, wait a minute. Doesn't someone who is you have the same personal identity / numeric identity / essence as you by definition?

But I think that what you're getting at is that you see two different relationships here. So, in that context, I ask you: Can a numerical identity, as you use the term above, exist at different times? More broadly, are you numerically non-identical with previous versions of yourself as a normal matter of course, or is such a state of affairs only introduced by time travel?

Is either of the relationships you're describing relative, rather than absolute? Is it possible to be more or less numerically identical with something? Is it possible to be more or less temporally identical with something?

It...isn't supposed to.

being "temporarily dead" as I took you to mean it--just mostly dead, Princess Bride style--is pure fiction.

I assumed you'd tell me a little more, have some thoughts on it, share an opinon, something. I would have Googled it if all I expected was the answer.
Well, it's just... its relevance to our conversation is pretty obvious once you've read a synopsis of it. And I don't have many thoughts on it because I haven't actually read it yet.

OK, OK, I'll relate a few pieces of reviews of it from memory, because I think they're cool and worth sharing, but I still think that it's a bit much to expect that. I am a rather busy with other things, purely within this discussion.

In this book, people can create simulated copies of themselves that exist in a virtual world.

Now, some of you might be saying "Darn it, you went and spoiled the book's introduction of a new technology for me!" Oh, no, my friend. This idea is introduced on the first page as the central premise. The surprises come later.

Imagine living in a world where you can experience anything you want. However, this ability comes at a price: The knowledge that you are a Copy, a mere digital simulation of an actual human being, and nothing you experience is real.

There is, however, a way out. Every copy is allowed by law to return to flesh-and-blood existence.

You pull down the menu. You select "Quit". But it doesn't work. The bail-out option has been blocked! And you know the bastard who did it.

You did it. The real you. The one who wants to keep you trapped here forever.

See, I define "an object being instantaneously replaced with an identical copy of itself at the same location in space" as "The object is destroyed and replaced with an entirely new and qualitatively but not numerically identical object."
One of those is a rephrasing of the other. That's not what I'm asking for.

Can you taboo (http://lesswrong.com/lw/nu/taboo_your_words/) "new", "original", "copy", "numerically identical", "same", "essence", "change", "replace", "destroy", etc. and then describe what membership test an object passes that an identical replacement fails? The challenge here is not to find more words to refer to your concept, but to explain -- or perhaps discover -- what, if anything, is being conceptualized. To replace the symbol with the substance (http://lesswrong.com/lw/nv/replace_the_symbol_with_the_substance/), if you will -- not literally, by physically showing me an example of what you're speaking of without using words, but by describing a standard by which I could distinguish between what you're claiming are two different situations.

Kallisti

2009-12-09, 11:46 PM

1. Kallisti, what if creating a really big wormhole for even a few seconds takes too much energy, so instead, a scientist invents a device that creates for a few milliseconds a different wormhole for each of your molecules? The wormhole mouths it creates in you are linked to an equivalently configured set of wormhole mouths in a distant region of space, allowing your molecules to continue their original trajectories in their original configuration.

(The wormholes aren't necessarily stationary with respect to each other, so no need to worry about any of your molecules moving too slow in any particular frame of reference.)

The entry of molecules into wormholes isn't precisely synchronized, so you're transferred to another region of space a bit at a time, but you're not really dismembered. The device is just exploiting the fact that you're already made of lots of little bits with loads of space in between them.

Of course, wormholes do have a way of making "distant region of space" a relative term...

I thought that this was how the teraport worked in Schlock Mercenary, but apparently it's a bit different (http://blogunderschlock.com/d/20000707.html).

2. Did you? Could you point out where, so I don't have to hunt it down?

3. Do you mean that each one would be a point, or that each one would be multiple points?

Because if we talk about the time traveler for only one particular duration of time -- said time traveler as he exists from, say, from 1 PM to 2 PM -- that's still a four-dimensional object that's part of a larger four-dimensional object. He's not one infinitely thin 3D slice, but an infinite collection of them -- just a subcollection of a larger collection. Like a line segment that's part of a larger line segment, with the supersegment containing all of the points in the subsegment plus more.

(And you would describe the temporal visit by saying that the same time traveler is there for the whole hour, not that a different one is there each instant, right?)

4. Now, wait a minute. Doesn't someone who is you have the same personal identity / numeric identity / essence as you by definition?

But I think that what you're getting at is that you see two different relationships here. So, in that context, I ask you: Can a numerical identity, as you use the term above, exist at different times? More broadly, are you numerically non-identical with previous versions of yourself as a normal matter of course, or is such a state of affairs only introduced by time travel?

Is either of the relationships you're describing relative, rather than absolute? Is it possible to be more or less numerically identical with something? Is it possible to be more or less temporally identical with something?

5.Well, it's just... its relevance to our conversation is pretty obvious once you've read a synopsis of it. And I don't have many thoughts on it because I haven't actually read it yet.

OK, OK, I'll relate a few pieces of reviews of it from memory, because I think they're cool and worth sharing, but I still think that it's a bit much to expect that. I am a rather busy with other things, purely within this discussion.

6. One of those is a rephrasing of the other. That's not what I'm asking for.

Can you taboo (http://lesswrong.com/lw/nu/taboo_your_words/) "new", "original", "copy", "numerically identical", "same", "essence", "change", "replace", "destroy", and then describe what membership test an object passes that an identical replacement fails? The challenge here is not to find more words to refer to your concept, but to explain -- or perhaps discover -- what, if anything, is being conceptualized. To replace the symbol with the substance (http://lesswrong.com/lw/nv/replace_the_symbol_with_the_substance/), if you will -- not literally, by physically showing me an example of what you're speaking of without using words, but by describing a standard by which one could distinguish between what you're claiming are two different situations.

Low on time, so I'm back to ugly numbered posts:smallsigh:.

1. I'd say that'd work. You're never entirely in pieces. The problem with dissassembly is that it should be fatal. It's equivalent to destroying the original. In fact, in many examples of the 'teleporter'--the one the OP linked to, at the very least--the original is disintegrated down to component atoms...which sounds very much like dissassembly.

2.
Scenario B: I murder a man and flee into the Haunted Forest. The witch who lives there uses her magic to grab the me from one second ago and hop him into the present. Which is responsible? Both are the person who committed the deed, but different iterations of him.

3. Multiple points, unless each was the traveler as he existed for one and only one given Planck time. Subcollection of points would have been a better phrase than point.

4. They do. So I am saying that, within the context of a hypothetical temporal visit, we'd need to be considered to have different numerical, personal, and qualitative identities--because I have neither numerical (any more) nor qualitative (any more) identity in common with 6th grade Kallisti. And, because we'd have two independantly acting consciousnesses--both, however, subsets of the larger continuation Kallisti--we don't share personal identity, either. But we're both subsets of the temporal entity Kallisti. Hence, I coined the term "temporal identity" and gave an example.

I am indeed numerically non-identical with previous/future versions of myself if we exist simultaneously in the same frame of reference. What happens to one does not necessarily happen to the other, what one experiences we do not both necessarily experience, etc.

I'd say yes, identity can be somewhat relative. You either have a given type of identity in common to some degree with something or you do not. But that degree would be variable. I suppose I share some degree of numerical identity with past or future selves. We're different points along the same line. But not fully, since we can experience some things seperately if we exist in the same frame of reference. Something that happens to a past me would affect me only if its effects would have lasted until my present--the amount of time that seperated us in normal causality and space-time. But I don't see how temporal identity could be relative. Either something is a timeshifted version of you or it is not. I don't see a lot of ambiguity about whether time travel occured or not.

5. Well, I'd never read a synopsis of a book that sounded interesting--why cheat myself of the chance to read the book for the first time? First times are special.

But that's the kind of information I assumed I'd get--the way the novel is relevant to our discussion, without much in the way of spoilers or non-relevant plot. Thank you.

6. Continuity is the failed test. Points on a line are continuous with all other points on the same line. Points on a nearby line are not continuous with those points on line A, no matter who similar the lines are. People's lives are a line of continuous mental states. Only that line is continuous with itself. Its like the reflexive property in geometry. Line A=Line A.

Trog

2009-12-10, 12:19 AM

...or not to be. Forsooth, we went four pages without someone bringing that up. Had to be done. =P

Devils_Advocate

2009-12-10, 12:22 AM

But in a scenario where "an object is instantaneously replaced with an identical copy of itself at the same location in space", the "original" object is continuous with the "copy", just like how two halves of a line segment are continuous with each other.

And in a scenario where "an object is instantaneously transported to a different location in space", the "one object" is discontinuous with itself (in location).

Now, I can see how you could accept the second description if you're talking about continuity in something other than location. Obviously, one type of continuity is not another. (Hence do I ask: What types of continuity are you talking about?)

I can't see how you could accept the first description. I fail to see how the "original" and "copy" therein are not continuous with each other in all ways, and why you should not therefore dismiss the first description as wrongly describing the continuous existence of a single object.

People's lives are a line of continuous mental states.
Ah, but I can categorize the total set of all mental states in spacetime into different sets of lives depending on how I line 'em up in my model.

I can also adopt any of a wide variety of standards for what it means to say that a given mental state exists in spacetime.

I'm pretty sure that Permutation City explores both of these points, which is why I really should read it some time.

Kallisti

2009-12-10, 01:03 AM

1. But in a scenario where "an object is instantaneously replaced with an identical copy of itself at the same location in space", the "original" object is continuous with the "copy", just like how two halves of a line segment are continuous with each other.

And in a scenario where "an object is instantaneously transported to a different location in space", the "one object" is discontinuous with itself (in location).

Now, I can see how you could accept the second description if you're talking about continuity in something other than location. Obviously, one type of continuity is not another. (Hence do I ask: What types of continuity are you talking about?)

I can't see how you could accept the first description. I fail to see how the "original" and "copy" therein are not continuous with each other in all ways, and why you should not therefore dismiss the first description as wrongly describing the continuous existence of a single object.

2. Ah, but I can categorize the total set of all mental states in spacetime into different sets of lives depending on how I line 'em up in my model.

I can also adopt any of a wide variety of standards for what it means to say that a given mental state exists in spacetime.

I'm pretty sure that Permutation City explores both of these points, which is why I really should read it some time.

1. Because in the first description the original is "replaced," so it must go somewhere. Something must happen to it. Either it is moved elsewhere to make room for the copy or it ceases to exist. Either way, it is replaced.

2. It sounds like I need to read it, too. It sounds...fascinating.

Yes, you can categorize points from different lives together. You can categorize yourself as a tea-strainer, too, but it's still not accurate:smallwink:. Although the tea-strainer is much more egregiously wrong.

But you're right. Those standards are nebulous, since we're dealing with such as abstract concept.

But I doubt you'd categorize, say, you and I as continuous consciousnesses. You accept that we're different, seperate people (I assume). So what is it that makes us different? Why don't you categorize us as continuous? As you pointed out, you could. So why don't you?

Lord Seth

2009-12-10, 01:06 AM

I'd still like for Lord Seth to address my "distinction without a difference" argument, if only to concede the point.

(That's right, LS, I'm insinuating that you aren't responding because you don't have a counterargument! So, what you gonna do about it? Huh? Huh?)I wasn't responding because when I check the "Friendly Banter" board I ordinarily only bother to look at the upper posts, and this was never there when I checked. So I just assumed it was over and done with. I happened to see it there when I checked today, which is why I'm back. There's no need to add "Huh? Huh?" by the way; it makes you look like some kind of petulant child.

Glancing through the reply you made to my most recent post (not counting this one), your points seem to largely make little sense at all to me. It's hard for me to argue with something that looks like a non sequitur. This includes the "distinction without difference" part. Maybe it's my fault that I can't understand it, or maybe it's your fault for either presenting a bad argument or presenting a good argument badly. Or maybe I worded my argument badly, and you misunderstood it and that's why your counter-argument doesn't make sense, because it's arguing against something I didn't argue. Whatever the reason I don't understand it is, I can't really argue against something that doesn't make sense to me. Given that I've long since lost interest in what we were arguing, I really don't have much incentive to continue this.

You've successfully obfuscated me and I've lost interest, so if you want to count that as "conceding" then go ahead.

EDIT: For the record, I probably came across as more harsh in this post than I intended. But if you really want some kind of justification that will satisfy you, just go with that whole Astral Plane thing.

GoC

2009-12-10, 04:09 AM

A. If they're all moved at once I'd stay together and so it'd be the original that arrives. If I'm dissassembled, moved, and reassembled, it's a copy.
Ok then. Two new modifications:
A. Half your atoms are teleported. A Planck second later the rest are too.
B. Half your atoms are teleported. A Planck second later the entire universe including the half that have been teleported are teleported two feet back the way they came.
Are you "dead" in either scenario?

There's no need to add "Huh? Huh?" by the way; it makes you look like some kind of petulant child.
He is clearly joking and didn't include the ':smalltongue:' because he thought it'd be obvious.

Maybe it's my fault that I can't understand it, or maybe it's your fault for either presenting a bad argument or presenting a good argument badly.
Just an FYI: I understood his arguments.

Lord Seth

2009-12-10, 11:05 AM

Just an FYI: I understood his arguments.Oh, in many cases I did understand his argument, I just couldn't figure out what his point was supposed to be or how it related to the discussion.

GoC

2009-12-10, 01:07 PM

Oh, in many cases I did understand his argument, I just couldn't figure out what his point was supposed to be or how it related to the discussion.

Could you give an example? It might help D_A clarify his point.

Devils_Advocate

2009-12-10, 10:20 PM

Because in the first description the original is "replaced," so it must go somewhere. Something must happen to it. Either it is moved elsewhere to make room for the copy or it ceases to exist. Either way, it is replaced.
:smallsigh:

Obviously, the object is being "replaced" according to whatever standards are being used for the description; that's a given. My point was that it seems to me that you should be concluding that the standards used for the description must be different from your own. Because by your standards as I understood them, an object is never instantaneously replaced with an identical copy of itself at the same location in space.

(Tangentially, are you sure that you want to say that something that ceases to exist "goes somewhere", or did you goof up your wording? It seems like "doesn't go anywhere but also doesn't remain in the same place" would be the description to use for that case.

As a related question, do you regard the accidental property of location as necessary for existence -- i.e., do you think that something must have a location in order to exist? Or might some things simply be, without being anywhere?)

Let me attempt to illustrate my point by laying out three scenarios according to my own understanding of things:

1. Object O1 exists at location L1 until time T1. Immediately after time T1, object O2 exists at location L1. Object O2 is identical to object O1. No other object is identical to object O1 after time T1.

2. Object O3 exists at location L2 until time T2. Immediately after time T2, object O4 exists at location L2 and object O5 exists at location L3. Object O4 and object O5 are both identical to object O3. Location L3 is not location L2.

3. Object O6 exists at location L4 until time T3. Immediately after time T3, location L4 is empty and object O7 exists at location L5. Object O7 is identical to object O6. Location L5 is not location L4.

I had thought that, by your standards, object O2 is object O1, object O4 is object O3, object O5 is not object O3, and object O6 is not object O7.

Scenario 1 seems most straightforward to me, so I'll focus on that for now.

I ask you: Are there additional factors, unaccounted for in my description, that could make O2 either be or not be O1? If so, can you tell me what those factors are, while tabooing "new", "original", "copy", "numerically identical", "same", "essence", "change", "replace", "destroy", etc., and also "continuous"?

Because I'm not sure what you mean by "continuity". I had thought that its meaning in this context was obvious, but it seems that you may have been using it in a different way than I understood it, so perhaps I was wrong. Could you explain what you mean by "continuous with" and so on?

In what way might Scenario 1 describe something other than the perfectly mundane continued existence of a single object over time? What might be special about time T1 that would cause you to consider "object O1" and "object O2" have different referents rather than the same referent?

You can categorize yourself as a tea-strainer, too, but it's still not accurate:smallwink:. Although the tea-strainer is much more egregiously wrong.
Is a tea-strainer not distinguished by its ability to strain tea? Do I not have a high tea-strainer quotient by that standard? :smalltongue: It seems to me that human beings play a more essential role than tools in the tea-straining process. One could even go so far to say "Little sieves don't strain tea, people strain tea!", though such a statement strikes me as dubious at best. (I feel inclined to suspect that someone saying such a thing is selectively employing an unusual and dubious standard as to what it means for something to do something -- a standard that he or she does not even typically employ in his or her own speech.)

But I doubt you'd categorize, say, you and I as continuous consciousnesses. You accept that we're different, seperate people (I assume). So what is it that makes us different? Why don't you categorize us as continuous? As you pointed out, you could. So why don't you?
There may be, distributed throughout the multiverse, a set of intermediate states between yours and mine. But, significantly, I don't remember observing that string of intermediate states, and neither does anyone else I know (so far as I know).

It can be practical to classify things based on one's remembered observations, and on the reported observations of others, independent of their relationship to any hypothetical Ultimate Reality. Perhaps you have noticed this yourself. :smallwink:

Glancing through the reply you made to my most recent post (not counting this one), your points seem to largely make little sense at all to me. It's hard for me to argue with something that looks like a non sequitur. This includes the "distinction without difference" part.
I had thought that my point there was clear, but it seems that Kallisti also failed to grasp it, so maybe I didn't explain well enough. What I meant was that, e.g., in describing Scenario 3 above, one could say that O6 is O7 or that O6 is not O7; but I don't see what would cause one to call the identical object at a new location the original in one such situation and a copy in another such situation. What difference between the situations would cause one to describe them differently in such a fashion?

If that's still not clear, I could attempt to put it in plainer language. I do seem to have a tendency to use sentences with overly complex grammatical structures.

B. Half your atoms are teleported. A Planck second later the entire universe including the half that have been teleported are teleported two feet back the way they came.
Are you "dead" in either scenario?
In Scenario B, don't half of your atoms wind up at a different location than the other half? That seems pretty likely to kill you.

Maybe I'm not following.

He is clearly joking and didn't include the ':smalltongue:' because he thought it'd be obvious.
You have correctly discerned my intent. But, in retrospect, I suppose that my jest was subtly, not blatantly, sardonic, and including a ":smalltongue:" is just what I should have done.

(See, I felt that, with that "if only to concede the point", I was already "calling out" Lord Seth, as it were. So I thought that by clearly demonstrating that this was simply immature posturing which by no means should be taken seriously by anyone, including myself, I might avoid giving offense.

But it seems that such obvious immaturity was perceived as obnoxious, and that its not-entirely-obvious subtext was not discerned, such that it made my message more offensive than it would have been had I not included it at all. How ironic!)