Self, death, and teleportation devices

[El_Machinae]

I get your objection to my post. The death of the original was not required. However, the clone is a unique being who feels like he's me. Essentially, I'm contracting with myself, in a way that's acceptable whether I feel like I walked out of either machine.

Creating something, just to murder it (with odorless gas), is evil. Especially when you think it should serve you in some way, in the interim.

 

[Narz]

He feels like he's you but if you die you still die, he might live on "as" you but the real you won't get to enjoy that.

I agree, murdering your clone is evil but it would be irresponsible to let a bunch of clones of people run around. I really don't see any responsible way to allow cloning (maybe if the original is already on his deathbed & perhaps hasn't sired any children...).

 

[Mise]

El_Mac and Ayatollah So have both said similar things about "contracting with oneself"; would the same thing apply to reincarnation? The Caste system? Those things are nonsense, of course -- we don't really get reincarnated after we die, just as we don't really have our consciousness carried on in our identical copy in the second scenario in the OP. But do people who believed that living a virtuous life would cause them to be reincarnated as a higher cast have an advantage over the rest of us? Not really. Moreover, why does the ability to believe probably false things feel like a bad thing?

 

[warpus]

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.

The word 'obviously' is used here because you obviously couldn't control 2 bodies with one 'soul' (or whatever). It's obvious because such a thing has never been documented before, nor would it really make sense.

Obviously the clone would be just like you in every way imaginable, and you could call him "me" to an extent. You wouldn't control his body though.

 

[warpus]

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.

"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.

That's exactly what would happen, if such a thing were possible.

 

[El_Machinae]

Well, most religions do what we consider to be a sign of intelligence. We contract with our future selves. "I'll forgo this vice now, and the future me will reap the benefit". Whether it's 'you' in 5 minutes, 5 years, or a completely different dimension, the principle remains the same.

If you speak of 'advantage', then what we're actually asking is whether the person's total happiness will be increased by contracting with their future selves (I think) and whether that happiness is beneficial if the future contract ends up being voided.

For example, I could buy a lottery ticket with the happy expectation that I'll win. I'm happy while I own the ticket. It was a wise contract if I end up winning. It was an unwise contract if I lose. However, I have the interim happiness of hold what I expect to be a winning ticket. In normal memory, we usually discount the interim happiness when we find out the ticket lost.

If I get hit by a bus before the lottery draw, then it doesn't really matter whether my ticket won or not: I'd still have had the interim happiness.

So, it seems that they get the interim happiness of trying to get through the afterlife successfully (if they assume they will). Whether it's true or not doesn't really matter, right now. It will only matter later if they can experience the results of their gamble.

/ramble

 

[Narz]

But do people who believed that living a virtuous life would cause them to be reincarnated as a higher cast have an advantage over the rest of us? Not really.

Clearly spirituality gives an evolutionary advantage or it would not exist in pretty much every culture. Feeling connected to a whole & part of a continuum feels better than feeling like a random mutation.

When you feel connected to the universe or with "God" (I've never felt the latter but I assume it's a similar feeling to the former) it's easier to do the right thing, people seem to step & birds seem to fly in tune with the music on your iPod & it seems to shuffle to just the right song. It's human to see omens in things, to imagine synchronicity & destiny & to talk about them at cocktail parties.

I think it's possible to play with such notions in your mind & reap the emotional benefits which on some level realizing that you're making it all up just for fun. I think actually this gives the highest advantage (of rationality plus a sort of hobbyist "spirituality").

 

[Bill3000]

I died last night.

 

[Souron]

You could make slight alternations in the clone.

You could, and small alternations to the body, such as enhanced muscle size would not make the copy have a unique identity. I recently had a thread about living forever, and some people claimed that a body that was the same except for an inability to get bored was sufficiently similar to the original to be considered a worthwhile future you.

I died last night.

Yes you did. but we're glad you were restarted again in the morning. Glad that a body somewhere has the same Bill.

 

[Gogf]

Warpus, your statements throughout this thread are confusingly self-assured. I tend to have the same intuitions as you do, but ultimately the question raised in the OP is vexed epistemically because it is impossible for us to determine whether or not I should actually be afraid to enter the machine. There are legitimate philosophical questions at play here, like what constitutes consciousness, how it arises, and what the being of the self is. If my EXACT CONSCIOUSNESS died and was reconstitutes elsewhere, would that actually just seem to me like I had teleported, or would it be "someone else"? Intuitively the answer seems to be the latter, but that doesn't mean it definitely is the latter.

 

[El_Machinae]

I died last night.

That's nothing, I just lost my lap.

 

[Hakim]

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.

Well the concept doesn't die completely. If the process was indeed perfect, then as you said in 2nd paragraph, the copy would feel in all his fibers that he was the man that stepped through. He could keep reminding himself about the truth but his psyche would constantly revert to the identity he was given. It felt like he just walked through. Now let him come to terms with that and then after a while let him see a juicy carrot on the other side of a teleporter and he would probably step through again, much more willingly then the first time.

For state bureaucracy, people killing them selves by walking into teleporters would cause a problem because now there's an alien there without citizenship but who have same dna and fingerprints as another citizen, along with memory to access various systems he have no right to. Knowing the original died in the process, what would be the easiest solution to this? Simply transfer the identity to the new person. His mental issues from the experience is of no concern. He can change his name if he want to.

The copy have all the knowledge and ability from the original. Perhaps he's reached a high important in society, with lots of responsibility and dire consequences if his 'person' disappears. Imagine a president caught in a situation where he will surely die (in a city where the news of a planted nuke has clogged all city exits and no air transportation in reach). He may well be thrown into the teleporter against his will so that his copy can walk out safe on the other side. Probably he would accept his fate in loyalty to his country. Perhaps the position would include a clause about this possibility in the fine print.

In fact this may well be a fine print clause in lower rank positions as well, when the 'person's' knowledge simply can't be replaced. For instance, it's hard to replace space crew far away. Hey, we give you the job to travel to the other side of the galaxy, but if something happens there that requires your knowledge to be at another place in short notice...

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.

Thanks! It's all explained in the first few seconds here:

Link to video.
"...and then cross connecting with the phase inducers"

 

[Souron]

El_Mac and Ayatollah So have both said similar things about "contracting with oneself"; would the same thing apply to reincarnation? The Caste system? Those things are nonsense, of course -- we don't really get reincarnated after we die, just as we don't really have our consciousness carried on in our identical copy in the second scenario in the OP.

Reincarnation is kind of the reverse dilemma. With reincarnation, some part of you is passed on, but the result is a totally different person. Here, the result is an identical person, but no part is passed on.

The word 'obviously' is used here because you obviously couldn't control 2 bodies with one 'soul' (or whatever). It's obvious because such a thing has never been documented before, nor would it really make sense.

Obviously the clone would be just like you in every way imaginable, and you could call him "me" to an extent. You wouldn't control his body though.

It's not contorted by the same soul, cause there is no soul. But It's identical in every way.

 

[Narz]

That's nothing, I just lost my lap.

My girlfriend would be sad if I lost my lap.

Warpus, your statements throughout this thread are confusingly self-assured. I tend to have the same intuitions as you do, but ultimately the question raised in the OP is vexed epistemically because it is impossible for us to determine whether or not I should actually be afraid to enter the machine. There are legitimate philosophical questions at play here, like what constitutes consciousness, how it arises, and what the being of the self is. If my EXACT CONSCIOUSNESS died and was reconstitutes elsewhere, would that actually just seem to me like I had teleported, or would it be "someone else"? Intuitively the answer seems to be the latter, but that doesn't mean it definitely is the latter.

I'd say the chances of my soul/consciousness/whatever magically teleporting from my dead body to this new one is near enough to be zero to allow such confidence.

 

[Rashiminos]

El_Mac and Ayatollah So have both said similar things about "contracting with oneself"; would the same thing apply to reincarnation? The Caste system? Those things are nonsense, of course -- we don't really get reincarnated after we die, just as we don't really have our consciousness carried on in our identical copy in the second scenario in the OP. But do people who believed that living a virtuous life would cause them to be reincarnated as a higher cast have an advantage over the rest of us? Not really. Moreover, why does the ability to believe probably false things feel like a bad thing?

i)Citation needed.

ii) People will base their decisions on these false beliefs, and the results may be detrimental. Anyone who argues against religion is essentially stating that false beliefs have led to wrong practices (not going into specifics here, mind you).

The word 'obviously' is used here because you obviously couldn't control 2 bodies with one 'soul' (or whatever). It's obvious because such a thing has never been documented before, nor would it really make sense.

Obviously the clone would be just like you in every way imaginable, and you could call him "me" to an extent. You wouldn't control his body though.

Why is such a control not possible? Does it have to make sense to us with our current knowledge before it can exist?

 

[Souron]

If the we say that the existance of a soul is not such a small possibility that it's existance is worth considering, then Rashiminos is quite right to say that any proposed properties of that soul cannot be dismissed either. A soul could be split, copied, or moved. There are no rules for the mystical.

 

[Rashiminos]

Or none that we really know enough about to consider as rules at the present.

 

[Souron]

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.

I like this video.

I'd like to draw people's attention to the final conclusion here: that the copy is, according to it's logic, guiltless. It obviously isn't. Going through a teleportoer will not make bluejay sit on you. The copy is trying to escape guilt because it is convenient, but it is still the same devious person. All faults of the original are still there in the copy. It does not deserve a clean slate. By the same token, all virtues of the original are also present in the copy. The copy deserves to be treated as a continuation of the original person.

It is a continuation of the original person.

 

[Ayatollah So]

El_Mac and Ayatollah So have both said similar things about "contracting with oneself"; would the same thing apply to reincarnation?

? Here's what I said:

The identity of the survivor isn't worth fussing over, either. If you look forward to their experiences, you won't be mistaken. Because there's nothing to be mistaken about.

No contract. I'm all about you-now looking forward to a life after teleportation. As for reincarnation, I personally find it a lot harder to look forward to a life after reincarnation, since that person doesn't think like me, remember the stuff I remember, have my character traits, etc. But if you look forward to a life after reincarnation, more power to you. I have no idea how you would pick which life to look forward to, but there are certainly plenty to choose from, and if you choose one, you won't be mistaken. Because there's nothing to be mistaken about. (In looking forward to that life, more so than others, that is - of course you can be mistaken about which events will happen in that life, but that's not what we're talking about here.)

Heck, you could choose more than one. I'd prefer insta-cloning to teleportation by a lot, and would look forward to both lives.

 

[warpus]

Warpus, your statements throughout this thread are confusingly self-assured. I tend to have the same intuitions as you do, but ultimately the question raised in the OP is vexed epistemically because it is impossible for us to determine whether or not I should actually be afraid to enter the machine. There are legitimate philosophical questions at play here, like what constitutes consciousness, how it arises, and what the being of the self is. If my EXACT CONSCIOUSNESS died and was reconstitutes elsewhere, would that actually just seem to me like I had teleported, or would it be "someone else"? Intuitively the answer seems to be the latter, but that doesn't mean it definitely is the latter.

The question can be settled definitely enough by imagining what happens if your 'exact consciousness' gets reassembled in 2 or 3 different places.

The scenario would have been exactly the same if you were asked: "Would you step into a machine that scans every single atom in your body and saves this information somewhere and then kills you?". The fact that this information is or isn't sent somewhere else and then used to re-build your body and brain is irrelevant. The sending of data does not bring people back from the dead - I don't understand how anyone could think that unless they believe in God or reincarnation.

It's not contorted by the same soul, cause there is no soul. But It's identical in every way.

Sure, an exact copy is an exact copy. By 'soul' I mean consciousness, or whatever you want to call it.

You can't control 2 bodies at once. You get 1 body, that's it

If the we say that the existance of a soul is not such a small possibility that it's existance is worth considering, then Rashiminos is quite right to say that any proposed properties of that soul cannot be dismissed either. A soul could be split, copied, or moved. There are no rules for the mystical.

If we start bringing the mystical into this discussion then you could just say: "Of course teleportation would work, the matter stream is controlled by Q and transfers your consciousness to your new body". You could say anything you want.