Hypothetical Question [Archive] - Giant in the Playground Forums

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Foeofthelance

2012-12-12, 02:08 PM

Kato

2012-12-12, 02:15 PM

LordHavelock

2012-12-12, 02:18 PM

If a city is repeatedly cloning the same people over and over again, and filling them from a standard template of memories (for example, John Pearson Clone B gets cloned and programmed with the memories of John Pearson, not the memories of John Pearson + John Pearson Clone A) in a closed environment (dome city) would you expect the population to continuously re-enact the same scripts over and over again, or would they deviate from their first set of choices? Why?

Assume the following details:

1) The city is an entirely closed off environment with access to effectively unlimited resources.
2) Once a predetermined period of time has passed, any surviving clones are terminated by the city, physical locations and objects are reset to a 0 state, and the next cycle starts.
3) The city is effectively omniscient, and can mechanically replicate the physical state of the initial cycle. For example, if for some reason there was a glitch in the traffic lights in the first cycle, the city will replicate it in all other cycles. An original glitch in the third cycle, however, would not be replicated.

Hmmm . . . it depends on whether or not imprinting the clones with a standard set of memories includes determining their ultimate ensuing brain states which will result from that starting set of memories.

I'm inclined to say, no, the city will not repeat things in exactly the same way, however it should play out in remarkably similar fashion, as the progression of brain states is not well understood and potentially subject to randomized effects which even your stated conditions cannot control for (even if you have to reach down to the quantum level). Just because a person has a certain set of memories does not mean they are going to behave the same way as a genetic clone with the same set of memories. Their neurons may very well fire in an entirely different manner based on factors we can't possibly hope to understand or control for.

So basically you wonder whether free will or some analogy to it exists. Or am I missing something?

And the answer is... I don't know. And I don't think we ever will. But I HATE the thought of not having free will - all scientific evidence aside - and I decide to belive I have it. Which means in your scenario yeah, there would be deviations when people have to make certain decisions which might more or less develop into bigger changes of the system.

Suppose I pointed out to you that a delusion of Free Will makes sense as an evolutionary adaptation for early apes struggling with the stirrings of consciousness and sentience? There is some evidence to suggest that their is a natural psychological predisposition for human beings to take for granted their own free will, because it very much produces the opposite effect (that they behave as though they didn't have free will).

CarpeGuitarrem

2012-12-12, 02:21 PM

Foeofthelance

2012-12-12, 02:24 PM

So basically you wonder whether free will or some analogy to it exists. Or am I missing something?

And the answer is... I don't know. And I don't think we ever will. But I HATE the thought of not having free will - all scientific evidence aside - and I decide to belive I have it. Which means in your scenario yeah, there would be deviations when people have to make certain decisions which might more or less develop into bigger changes of the system.

Sort of one, sort of half a dozen of the other. I'm not talking about the clones recreating every event word for word. It's more along the lines of, "If the original John falls in love with Emily, and Emily cheats on John with Dave causing John to murder Dave, how often would you expect Dave to get murdered in the repeated scenarios?"

Foeofthelance

2012-12-12, 02:28 PM

I'd say that's the sort of question you write a story about. Because we don't have an objective answer to it. So write a story wherein you ask those tough questions. That's what good sci-fi boils down to, actually.

Also, this reminds me of Dollhouse, sorta. They did a lot of wrestling with "what makes a person a person?"

Also, methinks you're misusing the word "omniscient", but I can't think of a better one.

That's actually why I asked. I'm considering writing such a story, but wanted to get people's views first. As for omniscient, that's the best I could come up with. Knows all, sees all, remembers all, can position inanimate objects and systems, but can't actually make decisions for the organics.

warty goblin

2012-12-12, 02:44 PM

While each generation would be overall highly similar, I strongly suspect there would be differences, and as a generation ran on, they would accumulate.

This doesn't actually require free will though. All that divergence in this scenario demands is a certain amount of stochastic behavior on the part of humans, which can occur entirely below the conscious level.

In short we can still be meat puppets, but the meat pulls some of the strings at random.

Traab

2012-12-12, 02:52 PM

Chaos theory alone would say that no, their lives would most likely not be fundamentally the same. All it would take is for one of the clones to stumble at a different time to throw the entire thing off, and the errors would pile up from there. A slight delay in time would throw off all the other elements that have been carefully timed and prepared to run exactly like the previous lifetime.

GoddessSune

2012-12-12, 02:55 PM

I'm sure that each clone would do the exact same things, over and over again.

After all, this is what people do: they do the same things over and over and over again. And even when people do have the advantage of knowledge, they will still pick the same path over and over again.

Kato

2012-12-12, 03:25 PM

I'm inclined to say, no, the city will not repeat things in exactly the same way, however it should play out in remarkably similar fashion, as the progression of brain states is not well understood and potentially subject to randomized effects which even your stated conditions cannot control for (even if you have to reach down to the quantum level). Just because a person has a certain set of memories does not mean they are going to behave the same way as a genetic clone with the same set of memories. Their neurons may very well fire in an entirely different manner based on factors we can't possibly hope to understand or control for.
Well, I might have misunderstood the original point but to me it seemed like the goal was really to reset the system on a level more than "we arrange everything the same way it was before" but on a omniscient/omnipotent level of basically rewinding time.
(I was about to ask the OP but apparently I misunderstood)

Suppose I pointed out to you that a delusion of Free Will makes sense as an evolutionary adaptation for early apes struggling with the stirrings of consciousness and sentience? There is some evidence to suggest that their is a natural psychological predisposition for human beings to take for granted their own free will, because it very much produces the opposite effect (that they behave as though they didn't have free will).
Interesting idea... yet I don't think the first problems of a creature that develops a sentience is to question it's free will it would certainly be advantageous to believe you have a free will... on a certain level.
Though it not entirely answers the question because there is indeed a free will it would probably result in the same outcome.

Sort of one, sort of half a dozen of the other. I'm not talking about the clones recreating every event word for word. It's more along the lines of, "If the original John falls in love with Emily, and Emily cheats on John with Dave causing John to murder Dave, how often would you expect Dave to get murdered in the repeated scenarios?"
Well... it is pretty close if not identical. But if we not assume that every action is identical there is even the question raised whether John falls in love with Emily, whether Emily and John have the same experiences together and alone whether John's relationship with Dave is the same... Is everything happens the same killing someone is not really a "random decision" or should not be but something based upon experiences made. So if everything else up to this point was sufficiently identical the chance is that most likely he will kill Dave in all/none of the scenarios.

Chaos theory alone would say that no, their lives would most likely not be fundamentally the same. All it would take is for one of the clones to stumble at a different time to throw the entire thing off, and the errors would pile up from there. A slight delay in time would throw off all the other elements that have been carefully timed and prepared to run exactly like the previous lifetime.
Well, Chaos theory is a bitch. It says small events can cause massive changes but it does not have to. I for my part think the butterfly-hurricane story is a bit exaggerated though. But a person stumbling is already a pretty big event in that scenario if it means there are closely timed events following (which would also have to have some cause... do people stumble randomly for no reason? It's back to "how identical are our scenarios?")
Yes, chaos theory would suggest that even slightest changes can have a massive impact there but it depends a lot on the events...
Let's make a reasonable example: Person A enters a bus and sits next to person B for five minutes and than leaves. They don't interact in any way, none of them have any special features. In the next scenario person A does not sit next to person B. Would there really be any sensible effect this could have in the future?

LordHavelock

2012-12-12, 03:31 PM

Interesting idea... yet I don't think the first problems of a creature that develops a sentience is to question it's free will it would certainly be advantageous to believe you have a free will... on a certain level.
Though it not entirely answers the question because there is indeed a free will it would probably result in the same outcome.

Probably not the first problems, but I can well imagine that any early human ancestors grappling with the implications of their own existence would be hampered in attempts at hunting and gather if they were constantly worried about whether or not they had free will. Any proto-humans not inclined to think along such lines were more likely to survive and it's not until the advent of agriculture and relative plenty in resources that true scholarly consideration can be given to the topic.

KillianHawkeye

2012-12-12, 05:11 PM

Let's make a reasonable example: Person A enters a bus and sits next to person B for five minutes and than leaves. They don't interact in any way, none of them have any special features. In the next scenario person A does not sit next to person B. Would there really be any sensible effect this could have in the future?

It wouldn't have much effect on Person B.

However, consider that because Person A misses his bus, he decides to hail a cab. This cab had been about to pick up Person C a block away, who was in a hurry to make it to an important meeting. Person A takes Person C's cab, causing Person C to be late to his important event and thus having a drastic change on Person C's day.

In other words, these things usually have some sort of effect somewhere, sometimes you just have to broaden the scope to see it.

Traab

2012-12-12, 05:43 PM

It wouldn't have much effect on Person B.

However, consider that because Person A misses his bus, he decides to hail a cab. This cab had been about to pick up Person C a block away, who was in a hurry to make it to an important meeting. Person A takes Person C's cab, causing Person C to be late to his important event and thus having a drastic change on Person C's day.

In other words, these things usually have some sort of effect somewhere, sometimes you just have to broaden the scope to see it.

Exactly, eventually the entire thing goes off the rails because a changes b which changes c which changes d which causes e f and g to fail. That being said, its possible to truman show things to such an extent that even though he DID trip, the bus still shows up to pick him up, even though if it was running on a schedule he would have missed it. But even then there could be a change. His happiness about catching the bus when he thought he would miss it for sure could effect his day and decision making differently than just another same day caught bus at the same time type of setup.

Kato

2012-12-12, 06:29 PM

warty goblin

2012-12-12, 08:42 PM

This seems a case where it's useful to boil back to the actual meat of the question. It seems to me that the key point of the story probably isn't the ramifications of chaos theory (although I could be wrong) but whether people are more than the sum of nurture and nature. Which in turn strikes me as a case where the author probably needs to decide the point in advance, and structure the tale accordingly. The fundamental question appears, in short, philosophical.

erikun

2012-12-13, 12:23 AM

I think that is you cloned John Pearson repeatedly and ran his clones through the same static situation, they would react similarly. This is because people tend to react in a predictable manner to predicted stimuli. There would be variances, and the variances would diverge more the longer things progressed, but overall everything would be similar.

I don't think this is exactly what you are suggesting. You're not talking one person in an enclosed environment with the only changes being ones they initiated or predetermined ones. You're talking about a large gathering of people (thousands to millions) interacting with each other in unknown and sometimes subconcious means. You might be able to predict that repeated city-restarts would act similar within the first few hours, or even days, but after that the differences in each scenario will likely diverge due to these minor actions building up and making significant changes. (Chaos Theory)

To use an example:

In an enclosed area, John Pearson may walk left one time and right the next, before proceeding to the next area. By itself, the action is irrelevant and does not pertain to the overall situation. But with other people in the area, his walking left may block the way of some people rather than walking right. This may make the people annoyed, or grumpy, or curious, and provoke different reactions than if he had gone the other way.

In other words, you'll likely see minor variations in both tests. It's just that in the city-test, minor variations tend to ripple outward and start having larger results.

Also, methinks you're misusing the word "omniscient", but I can't think of a better one.
I think "omnipresent" would be a better term.

This seems a case where it's useful to boil back to the actual meat of the question. It seems to me that the key point of the story probably isn't the ramifications of chaos theory (although I could be wrong) but whether people are more than the sum of nurture and nature. Which in turn strikes me as a case where the author probably needs to decide the point in advance, and structure the tale accordingly. The fundamental question appears, in short, philosophical.
Odd statement, as the original question was not about a story but a scenario. :smalltongue:

It is also unusual, because I see neither nature nor nurture coming into play. The people involved have already been grown in regards to nature/nurture, and both values (a person's genetic makeup and the actions throughout the city) are artifically kept the same.

ForzaFiori

2012-12-13, 02:27 AM

Odd statement, as the original question was not about a story but a scenario. :smalltongue:

It is also unusual, because I see neither nature nor nurture coming into play. The people involved have already been grown in regards to nature/nurture, and both values (a person's genetic makeup and the actions throughout the city) are artifically kept the same.

The OP mentioned that he asked the question in regards to a story he is hoping to write.

I think that rather than nature vs. nurture, this is a decision between free will and predestination. Whether there is the option for humans to actively make a choice (and therefor, the option for things to go differently) or whether they are locked into the same events (or at the very least, the same ending, though the events may differ - IE, John will always die Nov. 19, year 4 of the experiment, but in one run he's hit by a bus, another he's murdered, and a third he from being gored at the rodeo).

I personally doubt the answer is knowable, though science points towards yes, but not of our own free will - Chaos theory, as well as some new science about the sub-atomic world, points towards a large amount of randomness built into the universe, making it basically impossible to have the same situation always turn out the same way.

Of course, you could also buy into some of the new parallel universes theory, where in THIS universe it always goes one way, but in another universe, it would always go a different way, etc.

Forum Explorer

2012-12-13, 02:55 AM

If a city is repeatedly cloning the same people over and over again, and filling them from a standard template of memories (for example, John Pearson Clone B gets cloned and programmed with the memories of John Pearson, not the memories of John Pearson + John Pearson Clone A) in a closed environment (dome city) would you expect the population to continuously re-enact the same scripts over and over again, or would they deviate from their first set of choices? Why?

Assume the following details:

1) The city is an entirely closed off environment with access to effectively unlimited resources.
2) Once a predetermined period of time has passed, any surviving clones are terminated by the city, physical locations and objects are reset to a 0 state, and the next cycle starts.
3) The city is effectively omniscient, and can mechanically replicate the physical state of the initial cycle. For example, if for some reason there was a glitch in the traffic lights in the first cycle, the city will replicate it in all other cycles. An original glitch in the third cycle, however, would not be replicated.

Every cycle would be very similar but not necessarily identical. This is due to several things.

1) Literal random chance. Unless you are duplicating things like dice rolls and coin flips which themselves are based partly on chance and partly on very tiny things like how much force you put on that flip, how sweaty your palms were stuff like that, which are very variable. (Try and flip a coin exactly the same way twice.) These things can have big impacts, but are almost certainly minor.

2) 50-50 decisions and whims. Stuff where you are really on the fence about a decision and so you just choose one. Whims are different but may be followed or not depending on the whim. Whims really depend on the person.

3) Small variations: lets say in one cycle Bob steps on a tack. Next cycle Bob doesn't step on the tack. Why? Just simple variation in his stride and where exactly he's walking. We may be creatures of habit but we don't repeat the same pattern perfectly.

These changes generally won't have an impact but have the potential to cascade into a big change. Going back to the cheating Dave murdered by Bob example. Lets say that Bob was already in a bad mood because he stepped on a tack, lost the coin flip for lunch, and when he went to indulge his whim for more coffee he burnt his tongue, Dave cheating caused him to snap. However lets say that none of that happened. He missed the tack, won the coin flip and didn't drink any coffee, that might be enough to make him able to take Dave cheating and spare Dave, though he would certainly still be in a rage.

Kato

2012-12-13, 05:24 AM

To go a step back... Obviously for the story to work (unless one wants to copy paste the cycles) there needs to be deviation. If each cycle is identical there really is very little to it, unless you consider outside influence or you tell the same events in a different manner.

But assuming the goal of the story is to show the differences that can be caused by slight variations. While I think Explorer's summary of how a person in a bad mood is more likely to kill than a person in a better mood (a normal person would/should base that on more fundamental parts of his personality) the exact events surely would be different.

Of course if you include an outside influence it might be more interesting and useful to replicate evetns perfectly identical - which given an omnipotent controller and the uncertainty of science on predetermination at the moment (not including artistic license) is quite possible.

Kjata

2012-12-13, 06:17 AM

I seriously doubt each scenario would play out even close to the original. They would all start fairly similar, then deviate.

Take, for example, the most defining point of my life. 7 years ago, I was tired of being viewed as that geeky kid. Glasses, drab clothes, carried around gaming books, etc. So, over the summer prior to my freshman year of highschool, I got contacts, new clothes, changed my outlook. And I stopped being that geeky kid. I became that generic nobody loser. Instead of being picked on, I was invisible. But I was still hopelessly depressed, and if I was having a bad day, I wouldn't do ANYTHING, no matter what it was.

Fast forward to late spring. I was having one of the best weeks ever, and a couple of people I knew were talking about a party. I, extremely uncharacteristically, asked if I could go. The people looked at each other hesitantly, then one of them who I was kind of friends with shrugged and said "why not?"

That party changed my life. The people there told me that they thought I was just going to be a dork and kill the mood wherever I was, hitting on girls in a way that made them uncomfortable, and things of that nature. But, I basically just sat there, not talking a lot, but making everything I said count. I was mostly just throwing out quips that got a quick laugh, but nothing killed the mood in a creepy way. I was told by the person who said I could go he only said yes because he didn't want to be an ass, but he was surprised that I was actually fun to be around. So I got invited to another, then another, then they were my friends who i hung out with on a regular basis.

Fact is, had somebody randomly been a jerk that day, I would have either blown the party or just been to depressed to even ask. Had I been 10 feet away, I never would have known about the party. There were so many random variables that could have prevented me from making a good impression. Like, had I been drinking a different drink. What I was drinking was a mix at roughly 5% alcohol. had I been drinking the one that was closer to 30, I would have got hammered and puked everywhere. I'd never drank before, I didn't know the effects, I easily could have over drank.

So, for the scenario where the guy kills his cheating girlfriends lover, the chances of them meeting and going out are nowhere NEAR 100%. the chances of the girl meeting the other guy, and for him to be charming enough to cheat are nowhere near 100%. The chances that Mr. Murder, who is obviously not completely stable and of upstanding character, meets a girl and HE is the one cheating instead are higher than 0%.

Even seemingly innocuous things like deciding on a route to drive could have drastically different results. Say there are 2 paths, with almost equal drive time to the same destination. Path A has nobody on the road. Path B has a drunk driver. Even this scenario has a ton of different results. Take path A, everything is good. Take path B, hit by driver and killed. take path B going 1 mph slower, and are almost hit, and are incredibly shaken for the rest of the day, changing your day from if you had taken path A. Take path B, and are almost hit, but the driver swerves to avoid you and hits a tree. You get out to help, and never make it to where you going. What if Mr. Murder met Ms. Cheaty at said destination? They never meet. Or, he is too shaken to talk to her. Or he is dead. Either scenario, from events completely unrelated to his initial memories, Mr. Dead winds up not murdered.

(Note, that story I posted is fairly fabricated and misremembered, it was 6 years ago. That night DID change my life, and had things gone differently I would be completely different, so It works for the purposes of this discussion.)

TL,DR: No, each event would likely be largely different. Read the god damn post for details.

Chen

2012-12-13, 08:39 AM

I think this depends on how precisely the clones are being made. Is the city capable of EXACTLY duplicating the person and their memories? As in down to the exact neuron firing and the same atoms at each location in the body? Or is it generic genetic cloning (say grown in a vat) and then imprinted with a fixed base memory?

In the latter case, things would almost certainly be drastically different. The clone's brain would work differently than the originals (even if only in minor ways) and this would likely make even the smallest differences start to balloon outwards.

In the former case (exact atom to atom copy), it gets more interesting. Even in a deterministic universe, some quantum phenomena are, as far as we can tell, random. If this is true randomness, I suspect it would eventually works its way into the macroscopic system and cause differences. If it ISN'T actually random though and is purely deterministic, then perhaps in this scenario everything would ALWAYS result in the same thing, assuming the computer control was that absolute (i.e., making wind/air patterns EXACTLY the same each time).

Both cases can make interesting stories, as long as in the second case you have some plot device that lets people start making changes. Clearly just looping exactly the same thing would make a pretty boring story.

qwertyu63

2012-12-13, 08:45 AM

Kyberwulf

2012-12-18, 02:32 PM

Isn't this the sorta what The Matrix, and i think to a lesser exstent, Dark City where asking?

shadow_archmagi

2012-12-18, 06:49 PM

It will play out in exactly the same way until chance gets involved. The moment someones actions are decided by chance, the cascading changes will send everything on a different course. So if they have gambling or something like Dungeons and Dragons, then things will change. And humankind always invents gambling.

EDIT: Some say quantum mechanics would alter things, but that would just be chance in action.

Of course, you could argue that if John 2 is feeling the exact same as John 1, then he'll throw the die with exactly the same force and trajectory, causing it to land on the same side.

That's some pretty precise cloning though.

SlyGuyMcFly

2012-12-18, 08:09 PM

My guess is that even if humans are biological machines without free will, random events will guarantee increasing deviation from the initial sequence as time goes by.

If the computer can control even the really tricky random events, like which individual muscle fibres contract when a person flips a coin and the exact air currents in the room and etc etc... then things get real interesting. At least, conceptually. If everything happens the exact same way every time then I guess it'd be pretty boring to read about. :smalltongue:

CarpeGuitarrem

2012-12-19, 10:52 AM

You could justify adherence even in the presence of the deviation of chance. Chaos itself has every chance to send things caroming off the rails, but the story could just as easily make the point that humans have enough of a will to contain it. Even if events play out exactly the same, their meaning and impact on the person can be wildly different, and if they play out differently, their meaning and impact on the person could be the same. It all depends on what the person chooses to make of their circumstances.

Let's say that Person A loses all their money on a critical wager the first go-around, but doesn't lose it on their second. They could easily keep wagering and lose their money anyhow, because that's the sort of person they are.

Tvtyrant

2012-12-19, 10:58 AM

I think the average mortality rate would hurl the whole thing into the abyss. Who dies to create that rate is somewhat randomly distributed, and if we isolate just the accident area we are still left with different people getting hit by buses/slipping on wet paths and bumping their heads in each scenario.

Tiki Snakes

2012-12-19, 11:50 AM

Mmm. Random Chance would eventually tear down the whole thing, I think.

Because simply put, over sufficient repetitions, everything that CAN happen, WILL happen. Including, presumably, the Truman Show/Logan's Run situation, with the actors learning the truth and attempting to change their situation/prevent their inevitable termination.

The only question is how many repetitions might it have taken to get there?

The whole setup and the themes contained are potentially facinating, if done right. If you're thinking of writing a story around the idea though, one would assume that the scenario would take place during one of the more eventful, less predictable cycles (potentially the one that breaks the loop, or threatens to), so that you can both establish and demolish the status quo.

EDIT - For extra credits, you could get into the whole metaphysical side of things. Just because John Pearson 1 is genetically and physically identical, down to the last atom to John Pearson 3,999 doesn't make them the same person. Or does it? Is there something more to a person than meat and bio-electrical impulses? Do the citezens of Cycle City have souls? What is a soul? What are the consequences of an infinate cycle of cloning and destruction. etc etc.

EDIT 2 - Here's a thought. You could layer it, too. Obviously one of the obvious questions a story like this raises would be, who is performing this experiment and why? There are two valid schools of thought, that you should answer this, and you should not.

You can, however, appear to do both. Have the cycles apparently run by an outside/upper group, like the production staff of the Truman Show. They set up the city, monitor the results and attempt to keep the whole thing from breaking down. Then when it's over, they instigate the end of the cycle and the death of the clones in the city. But they are, themselves, part of the cycle. They are clones just the same as those in the city, part of the same experiment. They just start with their memories intact a period of time before the city itself is set up, and their reactions to the experiment in the experiment and their own deviations are in turn, just part of the larger experiment.
Administered of course, by mysterious and unexplained beings/forces for inexplicable reasons.