this post was submitted on 25 Jul 2023
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I'm assuming it's painless and that my clone would have my memories. That's still "me". "I" am the sum of the structures in my brain and what my brain does with it.
It's "you" for other people, and even for the clone. But it's not "you" for your your present you, this "you" dies (in startrek style teleporter)
But what difference does that make? I wouldn't even notice.
Its the same as dying. If you're that blase about dying then yea- makes no difference.
In death, my consciousness stops. That's not the case here.
It is though. There's a separate consciousness that starts around the same time, but it's separate and a divergence from yours. A copy of your consciousness goes on, but the one you're experiencing stops.
You seem to imply that's because it's a "different" body made of different atoms. The atoms in our bodies are constantly exchanged already, we're constantly recreating our bodies even without transporting. I don't think that's any different.
Your consciousness stops for you in both scenarios. In the teleporter scenario a clone lives out the rest of your life. To everyone around you its as if nothing has changed but for you, specifically, time stopped progressing at the sending-teleporter.
You're right, instant painless death, then no regrets (I'm assuming you - like me - don't believe im afterlife, or souls, as startrek style teleporters are incompatible with those).
But I don't want to cease to exist just yet.
No afterlife, no souls - though I can see how it would be tricky for a believer. But I can't see teleporting as "ceasing to exist", simply because I consider my "self" and my consciousness to be identical to the structures in my brain. There is nothing else but the atoms that have come together in the specific combination to form my body, and those atoms are constantly being replaced by other atoms anyway. When using a transporter, the current combination of atoms is simply recreated at the other end to seamlessly continue its function and processes (assuming perfect copies of course), thus effectively "transporting" my consciousness.
PS: On the afterlife/soul issue, yes it'd be tricky - that's why I assumed you (like me) didn't follow that line of thought.
Assuming a soul inhabits the body would require either that the transporter technology had the hability to convert/rebuild souls - and in Riker's case to CREATE new souls, which would be the highest heresy - or that the souls would have to figure out where the transporter would materialize their body, and through supernatural powers, self-transport instantly there to reposses it. And in Riker's case, one of the bodies would be souless, and having no soul to get ethernal damnation or salvation, this copy would be free from God's blackmailing. I bet the writers didn't think of the consequences of that episode, if conservatives had understood that...
In one episode of startrek ng a glitch ends up creating two copies of Riker (transport is apparently aborted, he's recovered back to the ship, but the transporter on the other side materializes "him" too - bad handshaking in comms do that kind of thing in real life transactions too).
Both believed they were the original (and one believes he was abandoned on the planet).
Same goes for using it as a replicator (if the information can be sent as data, it can also be copied, stored and rematerialized multiple times). The aforementioned episode makes that canon.
Then if you're not dead, who are you after multiple copies are created? If your conscience was effectively transported to the copies, do you now have split personalities? Because each copy will live a different life from this moment on.
Assuming the original ceased to exist, and the other - or others - are copies is more consistent imo, because assuming you "are" the produced being on the other side doesn't work for multiple copies.
I don't know. From my understanding, Thomas Riker is indeed the same person as William - in the very first instance after transporting. After that, their experiences are different and their consciousnesses diverge to form different people. I'm not the same person I was two seconds ago, even without transporting, while sitting motionless in my chair.
Split personalities, btw, would mean two personalities in the same brain, that's not what's happening here.
But if your personality was transported to to two bodies, that is literally splitting a personality, which will diverge from there. Not the same meaning used for the term in real life, but effectively a splitted personality. If you have one somehing and it becomes more than one, it was split.
It's a copied personality. The same brain structures recreated in two identical bodies. Is that an issue?
No issue, I'm not confronting you.
imo we're having an interesting philosophical chat about a completely hypotetical situation, and I don't think there's a right or wrong. That's why I spread some "imo" around.
I just pointed out that if you consider that "you" didn't die because you are still the person on the other side, then when copies are made (something possible in that reality), then "you" become more than one person (split you, or split personality).
It all boils down to what we consider "I", I guess. It seems I consider "I" as a continuum from birth to death, a set of continuous conscience and experiences - if I'm braindead then start from scratch today, I don't consider that individual is "me" anymore; it's just my body, now belonging to another person. The previous "I" died, and even if others see that body as "me", for "dead me" that's not the case.
You on the other hand seem to consider that "you" are what you are at this moment. So the copies (or the single rebuilt if the transporter doesn't glitch) are not "you" anyway, because as you said, you are not the same person as a second ago, sitting in your couch. So dying here and being rebuilt there makes no difference.
Just different takes on "self" conscience.
I've been on the internet for too long, so based on experience I start vaguely suspecting confrontation in any exchange longer than two comments :)
The Riker problem is of course interesting and I don't know what I'd do in that situation ~~(other than make out - just like Will and Tom did)~~ or how I think I/we would decide who gets to be the "real one", for lack of a better term. I'm very glad I won't ever have to figure that out. But yes, that's probably what my view implies: there'd be two of "me", exact copies. Like when I copy a file to two different hard drives and then delete the source. There'd be no "real" one, they're both the same file, just in different places.
I'll have to think about your view because, I have to admit, I'm having trouble really seeing it and that's annoying me. It's just too different from how I think, I suppose. Thank you for giving me some food for thought then :)
Well thank you; we then exchanged good thought sandwiches.
I think what we are musing about with this impossible situation boils down to defining the nature of conscience (awareness of existence), which has been discussed for centuries with no absolute single definition. If we could prove with no doubt that any of us is right or wrong, we'd probably be the first to get a Philosophy Nobel prize.