hedonologist

Would you pay to have your copy transported to Mars while you stayed on Earth? It is still two for the price of one!

Mecha_Dude

I'd rather not risk it and go with the much safer wormhole option where you prop open the neck of a wormhole with some antigravity and just slide through...

tronvillain

hedonologist:
Depends on how much it costs and if I'd be coming back.

Francois Tremblay

I am not sure how you can read so badly as to confuse "complete decomposition and recomposition" with "molecules have shifted around". Even if the latter is always true, I always keep my personal bodily integrity, and therefore I am always the same person.

If all movements had no impact on the self, if I stab you in the chest, you should still be alive. The molecules in your chest are just being moved around. Stupid reasoning.

[ February 13, 2002: Message edited by: Franc28 ]</p>

Strelnieks

Any Stanislaw Lem fans out there? Have you read "Dialogues"? That's what this thread is about.

What seems to be missing here is a discussion of continuity. You are not just a brain state, but the illusion of continuity between brain states.

But there are breaks in continuity that we are used to. The drunken blackout is one possibility, but even sleep should count.

So copying yourself, having the copy rebuilt somewhere else and killing the original is really no different than going to sleep and waking up again somewhere else. The continuity is broken, but the brain state, the memories, the interests, the personality - it's all there and intact. And there is an assuredness that the break in continuity was not "essential" or meaningful in a dramatic way. It would seem like a blackout or sleep.

It is a good test of real "soul belief" to see if someone who claims to not believe in a soul (such as myself) would agree to be transported in such a way. To be more precise: The original is killed and reduced to atoms. Different but identical atoms are reassembled and charged up at a different location. The person being so transported wouldn't notice change or appear to care. But there remains a sinking intuitive feeling beforehand that the process would really mean the end.

If you DON'T kill the original, both copies will be you, endowed with your memories and personality, but would be two different people starting at that point. They would have much in commmon, but would "grow apart" as their experiences differ. They would have to agree, for example, which one has to stay married to Harriet and which one gets to get out of Dodge. Or who gets to keep the $4000 Stelling Banjo. Or the BA from Bob Jones University.

Deeper questions present themselves: If you were gay, would you find yourself sexy and jump in the sack with yourself? If one had hard luck and ran out of dough, would s/he blackmail the other by threatening to reveal secrets? If your a masochist, do you attack yourself or yourself? If you had split personality before the transport, are there now four of you?

There is no point in arguing about which one is the "real" you unless you want to get into some silly dualistic system.

Strelnieks

crocodile deathroll

Your body is an extremely fluid system Every particle in your body is changing position and that is part of us because particles have to change position for us to retrieve memories and store them. Can you imagine existing with all our particles fixed permanently in position like the molecules in a block of ice or atoms in a rare coin? Also there may well be many molecules in your body that was once a part of somebody else at one stage, and some of the molecules that were once apart of you are now apart of somebody else, all this material is in flux, skin cells, bone cells and even neurons with their synapses are turned of constantly and it is only largely the pattern and your tooth enamel that remains. If you get a full set of dentures, not if they remain

The thing we really feel we are a part of is our episodic memories. You feel you are the person you are by virtue of your episodic memories. The first time you used a computer mouse, places you have been to on holidays, vacations, etc, those memories are you in phase space. You more emerged in those memories that you are emerged in the physical material of you body.

crocodile deathroll

Laurentius

Agree.

And there's more to you. You are all this unique continuum of episodic memories PLUS the manner you relate them to the moment marked PRESENT on the line of this continuum, AND to what represents FUTURE on the same line. Due to these additional fluid relations, as soon as there are two of you, each will start distinguishing from the other because of the branching of the initial common continuum into two new ones, each bearing its own attributes, because the two different ways each of you will establish the relation between the different PRESENTS on the continuum line, and because of the different manner the dimension FUTURE is going to shape up for each of you.
N.B. The fact that one of you - that is the original you that remains home(and the societaty alongside with that one) - will consider the other a subsequent copy of himself will add to the differences already mentioned.

Another brainstorming: The two of you will be two different people who, at least involuntarily, will hate each other for knowing one another's secrets so well. It's maybe like the British Empire and its American colonies. They hated each other first, and then they became different, preserving resemblances, but developing contrasts as well, with Great Britain claiming the superiority of its originality ("origin"), and with the United States also claiming the superiority of its originality ("difference").

And I should not forget to mention my choice:
No, I would not double myself in that way, simply because I would not find myself in the copy for more than a split second.
AVE

[ February 14, 2002: Message edited by: Laurentius ]</p>

Devilnaut

How about if you could modify the traits of your copy, to your advantage? Why not give yourself nicer hair, make yourself more handsome, maybe a stronger build. Hell, why not give yourself some better knowledge? Or more interesting memories?

At which point does the copy cease to be you? At which point in the modification process would you be prevented from 'waking up' as your copy, once you were destroyed?

What if the copy was made, then you dyed your hair green and THEN were destroyed for the "teleportation"? Would it work then? Why/why not?

I personally would not submit to such a thing. I think it is pretty obvious that you wouldn't 'wake up as yourself' on the other end of the teleporter.

If you get annihalated, you're dead, regardless how many copies of you are flying around somewhere else. I suppose it would make no difference at all to any outside observers, however..


very interesting topic...


devilnaut

edit to elaborate;


Could this be some form of naturalistic afterlife? If you die, but in twenty thousand years a scientist comes across your information and makes an exact copy of your brain, do you "wake up" as the copy? I think it would seem that way to the scientist and the copy, but isn't the original brain still every bit as dead?

[ February 14, 2002: Message edited by: Devilnaut ]</p>

tronvillain

Devilnaut:

I'd be willing to make some modification, especially to the body, but probably to the brain as well.

At no point does the copy cease to be me - there is simply a smooth continuum from "me" to "not me."

Would what work? The "you" with green hair dies and the "you" without green hair doesn't.

I thinks it is pretty obvious that you would "wake up as yourself" on the other end of the teleporter. How could you not? Everything that defines you still exists.

What exactly do you mean by "the orginal brain"? It may seem like an odd question, but it's important. If the scientist tracks down every atom that composed the original brain and puts them together in their original configuration, isn't the original brain alive again? It's hard to see how anyone could defend saying that it isn't, but it seems that the same thing could be accomplished using different atoms. In other words, a copy of the original brain is the orginal brain in every sense that matters.

[ February 15, 2002: Message edited by: tronvillain ]</p>

crocodile deathroll

the orginal brain!! May be the part of the brain that motivates you to have orgies. I guess you really mean the original brain
Due to the problem of quantum indistinguishability, It would be impossible for anyone to ever track down every original atom that composed the original brain. And what's more, you have not got that same brain atom for atom that you had when you were ten years old, so the original brain of you as a ten year old is every bit dead. If fact you may well have molecules inside brain that once a part of someone else's.
To invigorate the original brain back to life all you would have to do is reassemble one with atoms of the same element and atomic mass from anywhere like resetting 15 red snooker balls into a triangle; it does not match the order the red snooker balls were in the previous game or they came from another table, just so long as they were all red, 15 of them, and the same size set in the same shaped triangle.