You have a mind and are conscious. You now create a copy of your mind and let it run on some other hardware, e.g. the teleported body. You are still conscious in your old body and a new entity is created in the other body. You can also create ten new copies, with ten consciousnesses , you will still be conscious in your old body. You now destroy your body - you’re dead.
I surely don’t think Kirk has a great job.
Even the ancients struggled with the question “why does a soul stay connected to a particular body?” And they were playing on easy with their belief in the soul, this problem feels so much harder for the materialist.
And how is thinking it's the same type of process related to "quantum woo"?
A copy is a perfectly cromulent concept without any consideration of quantum physics at all.
You will have to invoke 'quantum woo' to suddenly argue that your sense of self will switch, not that the status quo remains.
But bodies do change over time; cells use molecules from food to create new ones, old cells die, people lose limbs. Now we're dealing with a Ship if Theseus[0] problem. And what if somebody has their arm cut off? Are they not the same person, but a fraction of their previous identity? Is their arm the other fraction?
If you want to argue that the mind defines the person, then what about dementia? Some people will say they aren't the same person as before, but where's the line? Is a forgetful person doomed to never be the same person day to day?
In my opinion, the only consistent belief is that the "self" is a useful mental model and nothing else. A leaky abstraction we shouldn't use for solid reasoning. Like paper money only has value because we agree to use this simple concept, "self" only has meaning because it helps us survive and achieve goals.
We're not dealing with a Ship of Theseus problem, that's something else entirely.
I personally am horrified by possibly developing dementia one day, exactly because of that. But this is also a different problem because it affects the original body.
Tangent: this line of thinking in reflection has led me to become profoundly forgiving. Different paths could have led me to be homeless, in prison, an insufferable bastard, insane, and so on. Other paths may have made me a better person than I am now. Even worse it’s hard to tell what those paths might have been except far in retrospect.
When we judge others harshly we really are being profoundly small minded and provincial.
think of firefox. you start it and it "lives" in the memory of the computer. however, turned off it is gone. the process is eliminated and purged from memory. when restarted, however, it remembers your browser history, sessions and passwords. still it is a new process.
basically this is what happens each night when we sleep. every morning a new you wakes up.
so when a cloned asset of cross linked (aka relational) memories is spinned up, the resulting process does not have a distinct possibility to determine if it is being cloned. it just have it same associative pathways in its wetware as the original. yet it will believe being the original and also act accordingly. when you ask outsiders who know you, they wont be able to make out a difference, and label the clone as original. the clone (depending on the age of the information) will also believe it is original as it knows your passwords, your mental setup (and lives by that because of reasons) and it remembers whatever has happened to you, too.
this can only mean one thing: our so called consciousness is a fake conclusion. yes, cogito ergo sum, but only for the moment. new day, new me.
Nonsense.
edit: typo
Again, nonsense.
The analogy between "sleep" in biological brains and "sleep" functions in modern operating systems is only that - an analogy.
My main point is it's not as cut and dry. Yes the body is essentially a machine "executing" your consciousness. But that consciousness is self-modifying, and modified by the environment.
How is that a paradox that people develop differently when making different experiences?
The question is what happens at t=t0?
The option of modifying it to not dematerialize you, but copy you, is how this question stops being tautological. Imagine there's a "copy/move" mode switch. Is the act of switching it to "move" a decision to murder the "input you" (or commit suicide, if you're operating the device yourself)?
EDIT:
Downstream from that come the legal questions like, does the person leaving the transporter at the destination have rights to your identity, accounts, assets? Are they married to your spouse? Does this depend on whether the switch on transporter was on "move" or "copy" position? If so, why? And how does this square with ethics?
Do you die every night when you go to sleep?
> What does that even mean?
What does what even mean? To stop existing? Is that a serious question?
We are not the same person, because we are different in some other characteristics and in our circumstances.
What's the reason you and your copy are not the same?
My copy and I are different persons because my copy has its own mind in its own brain in its own body. Just like you and I. Why would there be any more reason to think my copy and I are the same self, than to think you and I are the same self?
Again, how do you resolve making several copies?
[edited some formulations to make it clearer]
Of course not! It's a different person every time.
The legal status of the file will have to be decided by society for solving practical problems.
I think this kind of question is particularly important to people brought up with strong religious beliefs.
If I install the same piece of software on ten identical computers, they will all think they’re the same, because they have the same serial number, hash, etc. but obviously they’re different instances.
I see that accepting this could be problematic if you think you need some divine spark (how are twins reconciled? They’re one individual split in two, after conception). However, I still don’t see a paradox.
More on-topic, how is teleportation different to losing consciousness? You "know" you're the same person that went to sleep, but how do you know? Memory. The copies will have the same memories, and thus think they are the original. (as illustrated by some big blue guys in the great and gory animated show Invincible) You don't consider going to sleep to be "dying".
Likewise, if you were to get teleported, you'd be fine, as long as the original was destroyed. As long as there's only one "me" as defined by the sum of my memories existing in a single body, then we're OK.
You can give your car (your memories) to someone else, but that doesn't imply that you're the one to enjoy it/them.
How would your model work if you created ten copies? Would you be a hive mind? Now you teleport one of those, how many people do you have to kill before your postulated magical mind jump occurs? And how does it know where to jump to?
The simplest answer, that resolves all paradoxes is: it doesn't have to because it doesn't jump.
They look the same, have the same fingerprint, have the same genetics, the same behaviour, the same memories, they all remember being the original and stepping into the copy machine. Your distinction that you are more special and more genueinly "you" than "they" are has no basis to it. Yes it very much does imply that you're the one to enjoy the memories, because you are the memories. without any telepathy or soul transference, but because the copies are you.
I don't need to be special for this argument to work. I could be the tenth or one millionth nautilius for this. You can make further copies and create new instances, but that doesn't change who you perceive as your 'self'. If I'm the 'original', I will perceive the 'original' as myself, if I am No. 10000, I will perceive No. 10000 as myself.
Also, it absolutely does not imply that only the original can enjoy the memories, they all have them (as you accurately write), so they all will enjoy them.
If "you" are "the original" then stepping into the teletransporter and being disassembled killed "you". "you" died. If "you" are the clone, then stepping into the teletransporter moved you. You didn't die. If the original and the clone both walk out of the machine, the single lifeline branches into two, and English and law and conversation don't have common words to describe what happens next.
To me the problem is not "do the two people telepathically have the same thoughts", the problem is that from the viewpoint of the original I walk into a teleporter and walk out of it. Someone on Mars alledgedly exists but I have no knowledge of their experience so they can't be me. From the viewpoint of the clone, I walk into the transporter and arrive on Mars. Someone on Earth alledgedly still exists but I have no experience of it so they can't be me. I set out to travel to Mars, arrived, and so I clearly am the original. Both situations are individually coherent, but they shatter my expectation that "I" will have a single future.
Both people think they are the original. In the case of this hypothetical, the clone is identical in every way so even God pretends not to be able to tell the difference.
It's language, society, law, convenition which breaks down. Which one gets to sleep with nautilus' partner? Does the partner have any reason to prefer one or the other? Does the partner have any right to accept one nautilus and spurn the others? If the transported are different people then a marriage contract applies only to the original. If they are all the original and all the same person, what happens.
To me it is an argument about word definition, and about subjective experience, not about spooky action at a distance and soul transference.
My personal conclusion is that I need to set my thoughts up pre-branching so that I would be equally happy to walk out of the transporter on Earth or on Mars, because I will do both. See also stories by Greg Egan exploring this theme, like the guy who was mind-uploading himself into a computer, but his thought process was always that the person outside was "really him" and so when he woke up inside the simulation he was bitter that he was an inferior copy and the original was "free" outside. Or the one where the characters had a machine (jewel or dual) implanted into their skulls at birth which cloned their brain patterns into itself as they grew up, then the brain was removed and the jewel carried on so they could be immortal. People who always identified as the meat brain felt like brain removal was death and an imposter was taking over. People who identified as the dual, merely "learning" from the meat brain felt like it was no problem. From the outside, nothing measurably changed before/after the removal of the meat brain.
So in your thought experiment, why (and how?) would your “self” be transported after copying? Why would you assume that? And what happens to the “original self“? You describe the experience of stepping into the teleporter and then stepping out, but this experience would require some magic to transfer the self. The much more plausible solution is that you step into a teleporter, you die, a copy of you continues your life happily on Mars but you have nothing to do with it. What would happen if you created several copies? Your model has no explanation for that. The only solution for your model is then the hive mind; the much more consistent answer is that each copy has their own mind, and does indeed think they’re original.
I agree with your first paragraph: I don't think there is a "self" separate from the arrangement of matter and energy, no magic is needed, there is no hive mind, body on Earth cannot see through Martian's eyes. I agree with the end of your second paragraph, a consistent answer is that each copy has their own mind and thinks they are the original, but moreso - each copy is the original. Then, I must disagree with the middle bit - you step out on Mars and you have everything to do with that life. A copy of nautilus and nautilus himself step out on Mars, no fundamental distinction between them. Not in a hive-mind way, just as a necessary conclusion of your position.
Your second paragraph makes no sense: if each copy has their own mind, how can they simultaneously have your mind? And then you just wave away the necessary implications of that (hive mind). How else could it be in your model?
They're either separate entities, or they're not. If they are, the copy is a different person, and the Mars nautilius self is different from Earth nautilius self, running on the identically copied hardware. This position resolves all possible contradictions.
How would you step out on Mars without magic to replace the self of both Earth-you and Mars-you? How do you resolve just making several copies?
So which one owes the bank the next mortgage payment? If they're not the same legal person then one of them doesn't. Twins have different names, different birth records, different memories, different legal and social identities. If the twins are honest people then they won't pretend to be each other and will self-separate to clear this up. Both Nautilus's, if they are honest people, will be adamant that they are Nautilus and try to use their genetic and biometric and memory records to prove it, neither will want to be the discarded one who must change their name - and neither will have any priority. At t=t0 they are, from the outside, two separate bodies who are the same person.
> "if each copy has their own mind, how can they simultaneously have your mind?"
If they are hardware identical, memories identical, who else's mind could they possibly have (at t=t0)? You copy OpenOffice onto two computers, they both simultaneously have OpenOffice. One doesn't have a different software just because future changes on one will not magically happen on the other. If brain and hardware and memories is not "what it means to be Nautilus", the what does? What else is there? The copy's internal experience will not be the experience of being a copy, it will be the experience of being nautilus with the same continuity of life experience that you have right now.
> "They're either separate entities, or they're not. If they are, the copy is a different person, and the Mars nautilius self is different from Earth nautilius self, running on the identically copied hardware. This position resolves all possible contradictions."
If they are identical in all ways at (t=t0), what specific difference are you pointing to when you say "different person"? And before you say "location", if I move location I don't become a different person. If they are identical then it shouldn't matter if you switch that sentence around and say the Martian is the real one and the Earth one is the "different person". Since you earlier said "you die, someone else goes on living on Mars and you have no knowledge of it" I think you wouldn't be as happy with that phrasing. The weirdness is that the viewpoint "I stay on Earth, a stranger appears on Mars" and "I arrive on Mars, who cares what happens on Earth" are both valid, both people experience actually being nautilus as validly as each other and neither has any better claim to the one true continuity of experience.
I beg to differ. I think id have quite a hangover, a sense of impending doom and a sense of transgression against god, and id be terrified where my clones are and what is happening to them.
Maybe athiests arent bothered at all. Maybe theyve only convinced themselves that
If i go out and black out and embarrass myself but don't remember what happened, according to you and other posters i would feel no anxiety or remorse. I think that would be true if i had a social circle that made me feel fine, but sans that i would probably worry!
I don't determine whether I am me by cataloging my observable characteristics.
If I was only the sum of my observable characteristics, there wouldn't be any "me" to evaluate them.
Also, I am not aware of all my memories in one timeless moment. Remembering things is a process. e.g. Proust and his madeleines.
People can be, sometimes are, disoriented when they wake up. Part of it can be remnants of dreams, part of it is just that sometimes threads of memory need to be gathered somehow.
Very few people habitually think in the way "you went on a 12 hour flight, you are older, more radiation damaged, have different memories than before you set off, so you are a different person". Many people think "you went on a 6 month expedition, you had mind opening experiences, it made you a different person", but don't go on to conclude "therefore you no longer have rights to the original person's bank account and posessions and citizenship".
We have agreed ideas on what it means "to be" someone, matching genetic information at the scene of a crime with a suspect says the suspect was at the crime scene. We also have agreed ideas that people cannot be in the same place at the same time, so if two people are in different places at the same time they must be different people.
The teletransporter makes it possible to have two people in different places (must be different people) who are also "the same" person by any other test we have. They can't be both the same and different, but paradoxically they must be.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friendship_paradox can be explained, that doesn't stop it being, or appearing, paradoxical.
Other than that, we already have the exact situation you describe: a twin on the crime scene will leave the exact genetic information. Does that mean there is a paradox? No. Does that mean it has to be the same person? No. It’s two different conscious entities that happen to have the same DNA. Just like a copied person. No problem, no contradiction, no paradox.
If the criminal is honest and wants to admit their crime, the Twins scenario will result in one denying the crime and one admitting it, correctly. If you imprison them both it would be unjust for one of them. If you imprison one of them and the other goes free, no injustice is done. If one human did the shooting, stepped into the teleporter, now two humans are honestly admitting to it, what do you do? If you imprison only one of them - one shooter, one person in prison - is that justice? If so, which one do you imprison and why? The other one experiences comitting a shooting and admitting to it and walking free unpunished, that doesn't seem right. If you imprison them both, then you must at some level agree they are both the same person who pulled the trigger, yes? If you don't agree they are both the same person who pulled the trigger and both need punishing, which one isn't and what's the difference about that one?
Of course if you instead build a transporter that uses some funky form of a wormhole, you simply move from one frame to another. In that case you are still the original.
Maybe it's not so much a paradox as a headache inducer.
And it's fundamentally different from just moving through a wormhole.
However once you have the complete information, it should be possible to make any number of copies, all of them starting with identical memories until the moment when the original was destroyed.
In your model, why would the ability to make copies, based on the complete information you have successfully gathered, stop the instance you destroy the original?
All the copies would start with the same memories the original had before being destroyed, but after that they would all live different experiences.
I have replied to the question why the destroying of the original might be necessary.
With the currently existing techniques we can imagine how complete information may be obtained destructively.
We do not know any method that could allow us to obtain complete information about a body non-destructively.
All the known imaging and spectroscopic methods can determine partial information about the internal composition of a solid body but even when using all of them there is no chance of obtaining complete information.
[0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No-cloning_theorem
(As far as I know this doesn't really cover whether or not we can do "good enough" cloning/teleportation, meaning, good enough to preserve all our bodily functions and memories, even if not perfect at a quantum level.)
Second, how do you know the requirements of a teleporting machine that doesn’t exist? Seems like a cheap way out of the discussion to simply declare that the technical implementation will have certain properties that make the discussion simple.
Maybe the resolution you mention is not necessary. I can obtain all relevant information in a printed text by taking a picture, the exact quantum state is not necessary at all. Also: clones are already created routinely.