Sorry about that ridiculous watermark.
this post was submitted on 25 May 2024
728 points (97.4% liked)
TenForward: Where Every Vulcan Knows Your Name
3736 readers
693 users here now
/c/TenFoward: Your home-away-from-home for all things Star Trek!
Re-route power to the shields, emit a tachyon pulse through the deflector, and post all the nonsense you want. Within reason of course.
~ 1. No bigotry. This is a Star Trek community. Remember that diversity and coexistence are Star Trek values. Any post/comments that are racist, anti-LGBT, or generally "othering" of a group will result in removal/ban.
~ 2. Keep it civil. Disagreements will happen both on lore and preferences. That's okay! Just don't let it make you forget that the person you are talking to is also a person.
~ 3. Use spoiler tags. This applies to any episodes that have dropped within 3 months prior of your posting. After that it's free game.
~ 4. Keep it Trek related. This one is kind of a gimme but keep as on topic as possible.
~ 5. Keep posts to a limit. We all love Star Trek stuff but 3-4 posts in an hour is plenty enough.
~ 6. Try to not repost. Mistakes happen, we get it! But try to not repost anything from within the past 1-2 months.
~ 7. No General AI Art. Posts of simple AI art do not 'inspire jamaharon'
~ **8. Political commentary is allowed, but please keep discussions civil. Read here for our community's expectations.
Fun will now commence.
Sister Communities:
Want your community to be added to the sidebar? Just ask one of our mods!
Honorary Badbitch:
@[email protected] for realizing that the line used to be "want to be added to the sidebar?" and capitalized on it. Congratulations and welcome to the sidebar. Stamets is both ashamed and proud.
Creator Resources:
Looking for a Star Trek screencap? (TrekCore)
Looking for the right Star Trek typeface/font for your meme? (Thank you @kellyaster for putting this together!)
founded 10 months ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
But it doesn't and that's the point. You are not the collection of atoms that make up your body, YOU are the software program that is running on your brain-computer. The software program can be transferred (or copied) and you are still you. There is no "you" outside of that software.
Your idea of what constitutes "you" Is wrong. Your subjective experience ends when you get dismantled. We can say this definitively, because when the transporter fails to dismantle the original, they don't get to see through their copy's eyes. If they don't get to see what the transporter clone sees when both are alive, then it stands to reason that if they get dismantled, they still don't get to see what their clone sees. Their subjective experience ends.
I disagree with you, but I don't know that I can explain it anymore clearly than I already have. There is no metaphysical "you" that exists outside of the software running in your head. You would experience perfect continuity if your body was dismantled and reconstructed. There is no real "you" except the software program that is running on your meat CPU.
Like I said, this is a hard thing to wrap your head around.
100% agreed.
I'm going to explain it a different way.
This is Bill.
🕺⬜⬜⬜⬜⬜
I'm going to transport Bill over here.
☁️⬜⬜⬜⬜🕺
That's still the same Bill, right? There's continuity?
Now I'm going to do a Tom Riker, and unsuccessfully transport Bill.
🕺⬜⬜⬜⬜🕺
Which one is the real Bill?
If I'm understanding your argument right, you seem to think both of these are Bill. Which they are, but they're not the same Bill. Despite both of them subjectively feeling a sense of continuity, only Left Bill has existed for more than a few seconds. If I correct my mistake by shooting Left Bill in the head, his subjective experience of being Bill is over. If I never made the mistake, and successfully dismantled him, the same would occur. For him, continuity is not maintained through the transporter.
I was never concerned with whether the me that steps out of the transporter experiences continuity. I'm only concerned with whether the me that exists right now does.
You understand me correctly and correctly predicted my response. Your last paragraph is the interesting part however.
Imagine you have an AI. It's a fully functional self aware AI. Let's call this software "Bob". From one instance to the next, this software is just memory and processing inside a computer. It is aware of it's place in the universe to the same extent we are. Let's say you pause the CPU. Did you just kill the AI? Of course not. Now lets say you make a perfect copy of the AI on two separate computers in two separate locations. The AI asks me "which one is the 'real' me?" My answer is their both the "real you," but one moment they start processing independently, they're now two different individuals that deviate from the moment of the copy.
Now lets say you change a stick of memory in the original AI, is that the same entity? If you unplug the memory cards and fly them to another location and plug them back in, is that the same entity? If you FTP the entity from California to Germany and install it on another machine, is that the same entity? It's all the same answer as making a copy.
We humans are only the sum of the software in our heads. There is no real us, only the code executing line by line in our biological processor. That's why there is no "real you" in this discussion, only software, and the person on the other side of the transporter is just as much the real you as the copy that's destroyed. You are just a self-aware program.