this post was submitted on 25 Jul 2023
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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.