Self, death, and teleportation devices

[El_Machinae]

IIRC, some cells stay put your whole life. However, the molecules within probably get changed over.

A huge number of cells are the same cells that you were born with. There are cells that slough (intestinal, skin, etc.) and there are cells that don't slough (e.g., neurons).

The idea that atoms recycle is an interesting one. In fact, atoms don't recycle completely.

http://www.cellmedicine.com/radiocarbon-cardiac-age/

The carbon-14 produced from nuclear testing in the post-WWII cold war made it into the non-sloughing tissue of people alive at the time. These cells retain the C-14, and can be used to distinguish from newer heart cells that were generated after the C-14 was no longer as present in the ecosystem.

In other words, the recycling of atoms is not fast enough such that pre-1960 cardiac cells are indistinguishable from post-1960 cardiac cells. While carbon comes and goes, it seems that most of that coming and going is metabolic. The cell-membranes (etc.) don't have as much turnover.

 

[Quackers]

I will never use a teleportation device in my life

 

[BuckyRea]

You know why it's pointless to answer questions about a teleportation device? Because there's no such thing as a teleportation device.

Pfff, flat earther.

 

[Ayatollah So]

Anyone with a brief acquaintance with epistemology will be aware that it seems like we're all out of ways in which we can validly reason; in which we can come to true conclusions.

What about linguistic knowledge, knowing what our words mean? It's not always as straightforward as deductive logic with mathematical axioms. Sometimes you have to try out various examples and test your intuitions before you know whether a definition is correct. That could be what we're doing here.

http://www.cellmedicine.com/radiocarbon-cardiac-age/

Cool beans, thanks

 

[Leoreth]

Solipsistic approach: you'll never know unless you try it.

Which is why I will never enter this device even when everyone tells me "they" didn't cease to exist.

 

[Freemanuncg]

isnt this the exact plot hook in 'the prestige'?

unrelated to that, i have always believed we are the sum of our parts if you exactly copy you then you needent worry about which you is you, your both you. you exist made of the same quarks, electrons protons and neutrons in the exacft same configuraion as before, one assumes that memory personality ect is stored in either a physical fashion in your brain or in electrical signals in your brain and if those are exactly duplicated well then from that point foward different perspectives and experiences can change them but for a moment there are just as they were before your body was dissassembled.

of course this all assumes the ability to infact map the exact locations of each of the infinite number of constantly moving sub atomic particles in a human body

 

[uppi]

of course this all assumes the ability to infact map the exact locations of each of the infinite number of constantly moving sub atomic particles in a human body

Which is impossible, as such information does not even exist. So there is no point in assuming that it is possible to extract it.

 

[Freemanuncg]

hence my rather 'well whatever' opinions on the problem of personality deterioration in an impossible concept

 

[Souron]

of course this all assumes the ability to infact map the exact locations of each of the infinite number of constantly moving sub atomic particles in a human body

You certainly don't need it to be exact; misplace an atom and you're still you. It is not known whether it is within the laws to preserve cognitive ability with an accurate as possible device, but there's no reason to assume you can't.

 

[Smellincoffee]

In Star Trek, people remain conscious throughout the process. This turned up in an episode ("Realm of Fear", I think, TNG) in which Lieutenant Barclay thought he was seeing things inside the transporter buffer.

But yeah, in other cases it seems like the copy of one person is killed, and reconstituted somewhere else. The fellow who popped up on the other end would have had all the old memories, and so from his point of view it was a seamless transport, but the original guy is actually gone.

I'm surprised no one doing Trek lit, either professionally or in fan writing, has come up with people who reject their use on that basis.

 

[Valka D'Ur]

I recall a Star Trek episode (TOS I think) where someone saved himself by either "looping" the teleportation or somehow storing himself in it (only doing the "first part" of teleportation) and then eventually was discovered and saved by the Enterprise team. Don't remember what happened next.

You're thinking of "Relics", which was a Next Gen episode, not TOS. The Enterprise-D finds a Dyson sphere and to their immense surprise, a Federation ship trapped in it. Upon investigating, they discover that it's still partially functional, and that there are still patterns in the transporter buffer. So they rematerialize the patterns (there are two), and the individual that survives happens to be Captain Montgomery Scott (Scotty), who's been stuck in the buffer for the last 75+ years!

He'd put himself and the other person there because that was the only long-shot way he could think of to save themselves.

But yeah, in other cases it seems like the copy of one person is killed, and reconstituted somewhere else. The fellow who popped up on the other end would have had all the old memories, and so from his point of view it was a seamless transport, but the original guy is actually gone.

I'm surprised no one doing Trek lit, either professionally or in fan writing, has come up with people who reject their use on that basis.

Seems to me that there has been a lot of discussion of this very point in Star Trek. I haven't read all the novels, and I doubt that anybody could possibly read all the Star Trek fanfic ever produced - there are probably tens, if not hundreds, of thousands of stories written over the last 40+ years. But I do remember reading in at least one story that original works of art, such as paintings, sculptures, musical instruments (ie. Stradivarius violins) are not permitted to be transported, because that would destroy their uniqueness - that once an object was part of a transporter buffer, it could possibly be duplicated, thus destroying its originality. So if the original Mona Lisa were ever taken off Earth to go on tour to another planet, it would be flown by shuttlecraft up to a starship, put in secure storage, and taken on tour that way.

 

[PeteAtoms]

Don't know if it was introduced already, but this short cartoon is an awesome video to watch that relates to this conversation.


Link to video.

 

[aelf]

This seems to be a problem that is excising a number of people here. That if you could use a teleport device to perfectly replicate yourselves, but your original self remained, the replica is obviously not you. From that it follows that a teleport of the type described would obviously not preserve your life if you were to use it.

Obviously? That strikes me as a very odd word to use here. let's step back a second: What we have one is give a certain hypothetical scenario and assessed our intuitive response to it. We have drawn the hypothetical Clement draws and seen that our intuitive response is to conclude the original person is 'you' and the replica' obviously not you'.

That seems like an interesting type of reasoning. It's certainly not deductive reasoning; we haven't proceeded from any set of premises via a sequence of logical deductions to conclude that the replica is 'not you'. Nor is it clearly inductive reasoning. We haven't gone and gathered evidence about repeated instances of the situation in question; it's a hypothetical!

Anyone with a brief acquaintance with epistemology will be aware that it seems like we're all out of ways in which we can validly reason; in which we can come to true conclusions. What we're doing is intuitionist, and for some reason we're meant to trust that. Why are we meant to trust that? I think it is plausible to suggest that the only reason we have to trust our intuitions is the they tend to produce correct answers in common cases. If I throw a brick at a window I intuit that that window will break and so far, without fail, that intuition has been correct. In fact, my intuitions tend to be correct; I can justify following my intuitions inductively. Most of the time my intuitions are correct.

Intuitively I reckon that if I drop a hammer and a feather the hammer is going to hit the floor first. And I'm almost always right. But if I were to try this in a very unusual situation I might not be right at all. That's because when I say 'My intuition are usually right' I'm drawing on my experiences of common everyday cases. I make a mistake when I try to apply my common intuitions to extraordinary case. I no longer have any reason to believe that they are going to be correct. They simply haven't been formed to deal with such cases.

It seems to me that a scenario in which an exact replica of me is made is quite definitely not a common everyday case. It is an extraordinary case quite outside my experience. Consequently I am not justified in taking my intuitive response seriously; I am not justified in saying that the replica is obviously not me.

If I want to say this, I better come up with some actually reasoning behind simple intuition.

Coming up with some premises doesn't strike me as impossible. Isn't that why there is a debate about what constitutes a contiguous/unitary self? Clement seems to be implying that it's closely tied to sense-perception (perhaps that I know what is 'I' and what is 'not-I' by reference to what can be perceived by the senses as distinct from my physical body), and I don't see why that should be so readily dismissed.

EDIT: Following your argument about intuition, if sense-perception can normally be relied on to tell 'not-I' apart from 'I', why shouldn't one trust it in the next instance when a copy of oneself is created? At worst, there are two possibilities: Either sense-perception tells one as per normal that the copy is not oneself, or it does not (e.g. if you are somehow able to sense what the copy is sensing and vice versa). Only in the latter scenario would the question become a lot more complicated, whereby recourse to other deciding criteria (if they can be found) would become necessary. As such, what sensory input indicates serves as a perfectly good first test for whether the clone is not the same person.

And so, evidently, we can discuss this issue rationally.

 

[Rashiminos]

Don't know if it was introduced already, but this short cartoon is an awesome video to watch that relates to this conversation.


Link to video.

Of course, I don't think we've really discussed the possibility of altering the person in transit or being "cloned."

Such a technology would imply the ability to do so, and some nefarious possibilities.

 

[Narz]

I didn't read this thread in full but you guys should read the awesome book on a similar theme (minus the deportation thing) The Duplicate. I read it in 5th grade & thought it was awesome & like 7 times since then & even convinced my GF to read it.

 

[Narz]

That's a weird video. I would totally clone myself.

 

[El_Machinae]

The best time to clone oneself is shortly after an expensive (and competitive) education. You step into the machine with the understanding that you'll take on half of the student debt (regardless of whether you come out the 'clone' or 'not clone' side). You'll then get two jobs, and be able to undercut the wages of competitors (because you only have half the student loan payments they have).

It would be less tempting to clone oneself after you've got some assets, because you'd have to agree to assume half the assets of the 'original' once you step out of the machine.

So, Bill Gates wouldn't want to clone himself, because he'd lose half his wealth each time. A person with a very expensive education could clone himself and totally depress the wage for his profession. Hell, I could become a fleet of doctors, each with negligible student loans, and charge many tens of thousands of dollars less in salary. Each clone would be better off than if I'd just try to pay off my whole loan with just my one wage.

It would totally change the economy!

 

[Rashiminos]

The "clone" device operator might just recognize that and raise his/her prices. Or perhaps more insidiously, he makes a change on the "clone" whereby the "clone" believes he owes the operator a vast sum of money.

 

[Narz]

(regardless of whether you come out the 'clone' or 'not clone' side).

"You" will always come out the original side. "You" do not go on as your clone (or a computer simulation, etc.). In that YouTube vid, all the original will ever remember is walking into the machine & being murdered & then... the end. The clone may be instilled with all the original's memories (up until being murdered) but they are not a continuation of your consciousness.

 

[Narz]

Consciousness isn't a soul. It's just a sense of identity and continuity. It's the product of biology. So a Consciousness dieing only mean that a body is dieing.

So you can have multiple people who exist at the same time that perceive themselves as having identical childhoods. And there would be no way to say which is the original, because atoms in your body recycle regularly. Biologically, all copies would be the same, and see themselves as the original.

You could make slight alternations in the clone.

Personally I would never walk into a chamber that would murder me.

A better idea is that the duplicate would be short-lived. He could carry out his mission & then die a few days later (due to perhaps, some noxious but odorless gas released into the reconstruction chamber).

Only problem is, if the duplicate was a full copy of me he'd know the deal about duplicates & he'd know he was the duplicate (due to coming out the other end & he was be upset about dying & might not want to properly complete his mission).

But it would be better than me dying.