[HN Gopher] Teletransportation Paradox
___________________________________________________________________
Teletransportation Paradox
Author : miobrien
Score : 40 points
Date : 2021-09-17 00:20 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.wikipedia.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.wikipedia.org)
| Rygu wrote:
| I enjoyed how Rick and Morty inserted this theme repeatedly
| (robots, clones).
| booleandilemma wrote:
| My favorite thought experiment when it comes to consciousness is:
| if you could replace your brain's cells, one at a time, with
| nanomachines that mimic the function of the original cell, at
| what point do you die?
|
| Or do you stay conscious, and stay you, but with an artificial
| brain?
|
| Ship of Theseus with nanotechnology basically :)
| arrow7000 wrote:
| Why would you die at all? You'd be the same person, just
| implemented on different hardware.
| jjk166 wrote:
| When you reboot a computer, is it the same program running or is
| it a new program that simply has access to the previous program's
| stored memory?
|
| When you wake up in the morning, are you the same person who went
| to sleep, or merely a person with access to that past person's
| memories?
|
| Indeed, besides your memory, which could just as easily have been
| created from a copy of you, is there any evidence of your
| conscious existence before this infinitesimal moment? Who is to
| say that a new iteration of you isn't created with every cascade
| of firing neurons and immediately destroyed with the next?
| C19is20 wrote:
| LSD and other psychadelics: after use, very few people feel as
| if they are the same. /anecdata
| fjabre wrote:
| Indeed. Some may realize they are more than the sum of their
| parts. Not a popular position here on HN where most find us
| comparable to CPU memory architecture.
|
| The assumption is that all memory is stored in the brain and
| body, for where else could it be stored?
|
| The materialists do not believe in a ghost in the machine.
| /anecdata
| wizzwizz4 wrote:
| I don't understand. How does "more than the sum of their
| parts" lead to "a ghost in the machine"?
| satellite2 wrote:
| If the sleep is used to retrain your neural network with data
| accumulated during the day and clear this short term memory
| then you're clearly a new person every day.
|
| But assuming the new data set is consistent with previous
| experiences then you are probably converging to some local
| maxima or oscilating around some point and you change less and
| less every night as you get older.
|
| In that sense decompensation or PTSD would be symptoms of some
| retraining with some inconsistent data and having the network
| diverging.
| tmearnest wrote:
| The transporter is basically fork() followed immediately by
| SIGKILL.
| garaetjjte wrote:
| Not really, as fork() involves COW so nothing is really
| copied, and subsequent SIGKILL will only remove process
| structures, not data itself.
| emptyparadise wrote:
| I think that opens a whole new can of worms for
| philosophical debates but the paradox still stands.
|
| How would a sentient AI feel about executing `if (fork() >
| 0) { exit(0); }` in its own process?
| aaron695 wrote:
| > That accepted, it is a short extrapolation to conclude that it
| is also incumbent on society to protect an individual's "Future
| Self"
|
| Transporter paradox is anti abortion / killing young babies.
|
| Didn't see that coming.
|
| Unless it only protects future selves that have a current self.
| ziyangdev wrote:
| Permutation city is a great read for anyone interested in these
| sort of thought experiments.
| B-Con wrote:
| cgpgrey's concise overview: https://youtu.be/nQHBAdShgYI
| [deleted]
| perl4ever wrote:
| >Parfit's conclusion is similar to David Hume's view and also to
| the view of the self in Buddhism
|
| This comment is odd to me, because the idea that the self tracks
| similar physical bodies seems to me like the _opposite_ of my
| intuitive idea of reincarnation (not that I 'm a Buddhist).
|
| If you are reincarnated, you are completely different and yet the
| same soul, right?
|
| It's like a complete inverse of this idea some people have that
| interchangeable bodies share a soul.
| TheOtherHobbes wrote:
| You may have the same soul - for very approximately defined
| definitions of soul - but you certainly don't have the same
| _identity._
|
| The idea behind reincarnation seems to be that something
| persists, and is in some way definitive, but the only available
| definitions of that something are metaphysical and may not even
| be comprehensible in human terms.
|
| Many kids appear to show relics of a former identity up to
| around the age of 4. But even if you assume there are no
| conventional and mundane explanations for this, there are
| possible metaphysical explanations that don't require
| reincarnation.
|
| None of this is very useful scientifically.
|
| All of which is tangential to the original point that we don't
| really know what identity is. We _act_ as if we do because we
| have only really have one option - which is that people 's
| personalities tend to be associated with a body we can
| recognise.
|
| In reality personalities can change drastically because of
| trauma and illnesses like Alzheimers. So this is just a
| workable approximation.
|
| In fact we don't even know our own identities. We have a
| consistent self-symbol but it's not really stable, and elements
| change dramatically over time. (Example - I like pretty much
| the same music I did as a teen. I know many people don't, so
| something that happens to be stable for me isn't stable for
| countless other people.)
|
| People regularly surprise themselves with unexpected actions.
| And to a greater or lesser extent everyone has unrealistic
| beliefs about themselves and others.
|
| So identity usually reduces to a set of observable and
| consistent behaviours. It should be a set of consistent
| emotional and mental _states_. We can 't know the latter - not
| even with test equipment - so we assume the former somehow
| correlates.
|
| This isn't very useful scientifically either.
| arrow7000 wrote:
| > Many kids appear to show relics of a former identity up to
| around the age of 4
|
| This is the first time I've heard of this happening with
| anyone other than myself. Do you have a link to any more
| information about this phenomenon?
| perl4ever wrote:
| >You may have the same soul - for very approximately defined
| definitions of soul - but you certainly don't have the same
| identity.
|
| This is a contradiction in terms for me. I have no idea how
| soul and identity could be different.
|
| We apparently think differently. Changing tastes in music or
| finding out one's response to a new situation are not
| inconsistencies or changes to identity, from my perspective.
|
| I don't understand what you mean about "we can't know"
| emotional and mental states. _I_ can 't know _your_ mental
| state. But it doesn 't mean anything to say _I_ can 't know
| _my_ mental state. Who is "I" then? How can there be a
| mental state of someone who doesn't exist? If a series of
| 1000 cars was built, what is the paint code for #1001?
|
| I'm doubtful that actions or behaviors can really be
| inconsistent. I'd prefer to say that when observing someone
| else, the totality of their actions can be confusing to where
| I give up trying to model their mental state. But that
| doesn't mean there isn't one. And sort of, like, the physical
| world is defined as being consistent, isn't it?
|
| Identity has to be based on physical processes, and therefore
| I think I'd even say that can't be inconsistent. In
| principle, there would be a set of numbers that would fully
| describe a person over time, and it would have to satisfy
| physical law, and that's inherently consistent.
|
| What can be inconsistent, I think, is _explanations_ for
| actions and properties of the self. I think it 's good to
| focus on resolving the reasoning and explanations that are
| used to rationalize everything, but not to confuse it with
| one's actions and identity.
| nautilius wrote:
| I don't understand where the "paradox" part comes in:
|
| 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.
| shusaku wrote:
| How can you say for sure you are in the old body? After all,
| the new body is an indistinguishable copy of you, indeed the
| old body has now changed and is more different than the you at
| the time of cloning than the new one. "You are in the old body"
| might be the common sense answer, but short of invoking quantum
| woo there is no reason to believe it's true.
|
| 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.
| perl4ever wrote:
| How is a "copy" fundamentally different from a photo or
| video?
|
| 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.
| nautilius wrote:
| The old body has not changed. The same software is still
| running on the same hardware, what would change?
|
| You will have to invoke 'quantum woo' to suddenly argue that
| your sense of self will _switch_ , not that the status quo
| remains.
| vharuck wrote:
| >The old body has not changed. The same software is still
| running on the same hardware, what would change?
|
| 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.
|
| [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ship_of_Theseus
| nautilius wrote:
| The 'paradox' here is not how the person changes over
| twenty years, but what happens in the very moment of
| creating a copy.
|
| 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.
| api wrote:
| Also the moment all these copies are created their states would
| start diverging. It would not take long for them to become
| different people.
|
| 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.
| nautilius wrote:
| Sure, but that's not related to the question at hand. I don't
| think it's controversial that people with different
| experiences will develop differently, and that twins are, in
| fact, different people.
| [deleted]
| bloopernova wrote:
| There's a great pair of novels by Peter F Hamilton, _Pandora 's
| Star_ and _Judas Unchained_. In them, there 's an alien,
| MorningLightMountain, that expands by creating copies of
| itself. If it can't maintain the neural link to those copies,
| they diverge. A problem that in its early spaceflight
| experiments led to disastrous consequences.
|
| 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.
| nautilius wrote:
| Your consciousness example only works backwards: you can
| create ten copies of yourself, and they all will have a merry
| good time and think they're you. But how would that affect
| the conscious you? Not at all.
|
| 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.
| jodrellblank wrote:
| The question then is why are you "actually you" whereas the
| other people "only THINK they're you (but really aren't)"?
|
| 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.
| nautilius wrote:
| No that's not the question. The question is who do _you_
| think you are, that 's the only thing that matters in the
| transporter.
|
| 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.
| jodrellblank wrote:
| I think you are going down the route of "will they be a
| hive mind", whereas I am going down the route of "the
| definition of what it means to be 'you' will have to
| change. You say " _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._ " but if everyone has the same memories,
| aren't they all the original enjoying the memories? The
| concept of "original" only applies out here from our
| discussion. Inside the scenario there is no meaningful
| distinction between original and not.
|
| 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.
| nautilius wrote:
| I make no fundamental distinction between an Original and
| a copy, maybe that nomenclature is misleading. I use
| "original" for the entity to be copied; that entity could
| be the tenth copy of a copy of a copy. It makes no
| difference. There is nothing special about the zeroth
| member of that line, except that that person accrued the
| memories that are then copied and experienced in other
| entities as their own. And why wouldn't they, they're
| copies.
|
| 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.
| jodrellblank wrote:
| Your two paragraphs are confusing me. If you make no
| fundamental disctinction between Earth nautilus and Mars
| nautilus, doesn't that make them "the same person"? How
| can you say both "nautilus died" and "nautilus goes on
| living, but nautilus has nothing to do with it"? If one
| is alive and one is dead, that seems like a fundamental
| distinction, doesn't it? If the person on Mars is
| nautilus, then you have everything to do with that life,
| don't you?
|
| 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.
| nautilius wrote:
| No they're not the same person, all entities are
| individuals, all have their own mind and self. The
| hardware is the same, though (at least at t=t0). But the
| hardware is genetically identical between twins as well,
| without making them the same person.
|
| 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?
| perl4ever wrote:
| >The copies will have the same memories, and thus think they
| are the original
|
| 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.
| wilburTheDog wrote:
| I read it like this. Alice gets in the machine and creates ten
| new copies of her. Each of them thinks they are Alice. Are they
| all right? If so what does the concept of 'me' or 'self'
| actually mean? Are you a unique individual? Do you have (or are
| you) a soul or something that exists independently of the
| arrangement of atoms that makes up your body? Or is your
| identity and sense of self completely the result of the way the
| neurons between your ears are connected?
|
| I think this kind of question is particularly important to
| people brought up with strong religious beliefs.
| alisonkisk wrote:
| Twins exist too.
| nautilius wrote:
| If we confirm that the copies are 'perfect' (which is implied
| when we think about teleportation), then every entity has
| every right to consider themself 'the original', and at t=t0
| they are indeed by definition indistinguishable. They all
| have a self, but of course it has to be separate from the
| original. The only alternatives are that they develop no
| self, then by definition they are not proper copies, or they
| would all share a single mind which makes no sense
| whatsoever.
|
| 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.
| trixie_ wrote:
| What's your answer to splitting yourself in half, replacing the
| missing half with new material. Which one are you, are you
| conscious of both, or what?
| nautilius wrote:
| None. I'll be dead.
| aneutron wrote:
| It's a bit more complicated. The human body is not simply a CPU
| and memory executing dumb instructions (well it KIND of is at
| some level), it's impacted HUGELY by environmental variables.
| Suppose you're from the 1700s and your clone behaves badly in
| his diet (fast food is helluva drug), develops hypertension,
| some form of brain cancer and starts hallucinating. It's most
| definitely the same you. Because in the 18th century there were
| no fast-food chains in the 1700s.
|
| 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.
| nautilius wrote:
| Well of course once they start interacting with the
| environment they will become 'different people' - surely you
| don't think I think twins are essentially only a single
| person.
|
| How is that a paradox that people develop differently when
| making different experiences?
|
| The question is what happens at t=t0?
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| The important question is: if the transporter works as
| originally designed - dematerializing you in the process -
| is this just moving you, or is it _killing you_?
|
| 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?
| RobertoG wrote:
| I don't see any problem. I have a file in my computer, I
| send it to your computer, I can delete it from my
| computer or not.
|
| The legal status of the file will have to be decided by
| society for solving practical problems.
| nautilius wrote:
| No, that switch, even if it's only hypothetical,
| completely resolves the paradox, as I discuss above. You
| destroy your body, you die. Someone else does it for you
| - they murder you. There is no paradox. Sure, it may give
| a a warm fuzzy feeling that someone else with your
| background will continue to live, taking your memories
| with them, but you press the button and your light goes
| out.
| RobertoG wrote:
| if there is a exact working copy of you, then you don't
| "stop existing". What does that even mean?
|
| Do you die every night when you go to sleep?
| nautilius wrote:
| Well, I'd maintain that your memories 'live' on, but
| you're no longer there to enjoy them, that's someone
| else. If that's enough for you, great for you. I
| personally enjoy having experiences myself.
|
| > What does that even mean?
|
| What does _what_ even mean? To stop existing? Is that a
| serious question?
| RobertoG wrote:
| you can not define what is that 'you' that is not there
| to enjoy, so, how do you know that it didn't transfer
| too? is a faith thing?
| nautilius wrote:
| Ultimately, "I think therefore I am", so I know what "I"
| am.
| RobertoG wrote:
| but that copy of you would think too, so, what's the
| difference?
| nautilius wrote:
| _You_ think so, too, does that mean we are the same
| person? I don 't think so. The same holds for the copy.
| RobertoG wrote:
| But we are the same on that, that's what "same" means.
|
| 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?
| nautilius wrote:
| I don't understand your point. Are we 'same' (your first
| sentence) or are we not 'same' (your second sentence)?
|
| My copy and I are different persons because my copy has
| its own mind in its own brain in its own body. Why would
| there be any reason to think my copy and I are identical?
|
| Again, how do you resolve making several copies?
| Y_Y wrote:
| > Do you die every night when you go to sleep?
|
| Of course not! It's a different person every time.
| coldcode wrote:
| It's a funky version of relativity. From the perspective of the
| original consciousness life was terminated as soon as the
| machine started up, from the perspective of the duplicate on
| the other end, you continued without any issues. Make a hundred
| copies, and each thinks itself as the original.
|
| 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.
| BoardsOfCanada wrote:
| And perhaps we "die" every moment, even without entering a
| teleporter, the consciousness existing a moment at a time but
| with memories of the previous consciousnesses.
| booleandilemma wrote:
| I feel like functional programmers would love this.
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| They're too busy being excited about "timeless physics".
| nautilius wrote:
| Why would creating a copy necessarily destroy the original?
| That's an additional assumption you put in there. And I see
| zero connection to relativity.
|
| And it's fundamentally different from just moving through a
| wormhole.
| adrian_b wrote:
| It might be impossible to obtain enough information about
| the original without destroying it, e.g. by instant
| freezing and then removing and identifying the molecules
| one by one.
|
| 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.
| nautilius wrote:
| This is a philosophical, not a technical 'paradox'.
|
| 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?
| adrian_b wrote:
| I have already said that once the information is obtained
| destructively, making any number of copies should be
| possible.
|
| 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.
| nautilius wrote:
| Your sentence "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." is not
| unique, but now I understand what you want to say.
| zuminator wrote:
| Because there's a principle of quantum mechanics called the
| "no-cloning theorem"[0] which results from not being able
| to determine the exact quantum states of particles. If you
| can't determine them, you can't clone them and you can't
| teleport them. With the essential caveat that you _can_ use
| quantum entanglement to transmit the information from one
| particle to another and thereby destroying the original
| quantum state of the first particle. So the mechanism of
| perfect teleportation requires destroying the quantum state
| of the original.
|
| [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.)
| nautilius wrote:
| First, really this is a philosophical rather than a
| technical paradox.
|
| 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.
| jodrellblank wrote:
| "Paradox: A person, thing, or situation that exhibits
| inexplicable or contradictory aspects". Depending on how you
| view it, they are the same person or they aren't the same
| person, which seems like a situation exhibiting contradictory
| aspects.
|
| 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".
| nautilius wrote:
| I know what a paradox is, and your application falls quite a
| bit short from the very definition you give. 'Depending on
| how you view it', a rainbow could be caused by light
| refraction or by a farting unicorn. This statement doesn't
| make a rainbow a 'paradox', there is nothing _inexplicable_
| about it.
| jodrellblank wrote:
| That you observe two different behaviours of light, one
| like a particle, one like a wave, and they clash and cannot
| both be true could be paradoxical. That one person says a
| rainbow is caused by farting unicorns, is not paradoxical.
|
| 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.
| nautilius wrote:
| But you just _declare_ that my rainbow is not
| paradoxical, your argument for the teleporter provides no
| logic beyond it. Here, I also declare "there is no
| teleporter paradox". Are you convinced? A mere
| contradiction does not imply a paradox.
|
| 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.
| wizzwizz4 wrote:
| The Machine: https://existentialcomics.com/comic/1
| namelosw wrote:
| I don't see any paradox here. The principle could be the same as
| in computer science: You can move data either by copying or
| referencing. In a world that having teleportation (like MMO
| games, or real-world if we figure it out somehow) the principle
| should not be any different.
|
| 1. Moving by copy: Create new data which looks exactly the same
| (deep copy), and put the data in desired new address. So
| teleporting by copy is just create the exact same character in
| the new position, and then make the old one disappear.
|
| 2. Moving by reference: The data is the same, it's the pointer to
| the address we're updating. So teleporting by reference is like
| there's an external table of characters, and the world is just
| referencing them with positions. Teleportation is a process that
| originally the position that points to the character was A, then
| the teleportation creates a new position B, and reference the
| exact same character and then remove position A.
|
| In short expect(character).toDeelEqual(teleportedCharacter)
| should always be true, but
| expect(character).toBe(teleportedCharacter) should be true if
| it's referencing, but false if it's copying.
|
| Although it could be either way I don't see any paradoxes in
| both.
| emptyparadise wrote:
| Now let's say it's the player character, you implement the copy
| mechanism, and play your game.
|
| You launch it, start the process, the code faithfully creates a
| copy of the player character, then you suddenly see a game over
| screen as if your character just died.
|
| You had a bug: you created a new character for the player, but
| didn't update the gameplay code to reflect the change to the
| copied character.
|
| This is the paradox.
| rafaelvasco wrote:
| In my current understanding, after studying material from some
| "consciousness explorers (Waldo Vieira, Joshua David Stone, Ingo
| Swann, George King, Edgar Cayce, Jane Roberts, Dolores Cannon,
| Robert Monroe, and others)", consciousness is a multilayer and
| very very complex system.
|
| Some of those layers reside in the brain, some exist
| independently from the brain and remain for eternity even after
| the brain shuts down.
|
| In that sense there is no paradox at all. The machine would only
| be able to copy a few "layers" of consciousness. The resulting
| copy of you would be an empty shell because the "master layers"
| can't be copied, as they're made of "data" that isn't "finite".
|
| Just my view. This is not absolutely verified by Science, and for
| me, it will take a long time to happen. Even then, there are some
| scientific experiments that validate, in part, this view:
| Controlled astral projection experiments, controlled remote
| viewing experiments etc.
| z5h wrote:
| Your are comprised of atoms. You drink some vodka and those atoms
| don't _affect_ you, they _become_ you. Then you piss them out.
| Well, you piss yourself out and flush yourself away.
| scollet wrote:
| This also should work backwards, temporally, if you want to look
| at time linearly.
|
| Parfit's extrapolation and commentary on morality is dubious,
| however there are no citations on this, so maybe the author(s)
| are projecting?
|
| That aside, it's a big responsibility either way.
|
| From a societal perspective, the UFP has probably had a lot of
| time to structure rigid laws and clauses to protect its citizens.
| Starfleet has a non-interference prerogative (a little ironic)
| which suggests their perspective as a society has shifted to
| accommodate the tele-tech.
|
| From a moral perspective Robert Angier can swing any direction
| for his murder or suicide whereas Sam Bell is most definitely a
| victim of murder.
|
| But from a personal perspective, is Simon Jarrett still at the
| bottom of the ocean, his battery draining until the inevitable
| collapse? Or is he among the stars with new friends and a new
| sense of liberty?
|
| I would argue both, but only if Jarrett is cognizant of his
| actions. If Jarrett understands that he is condemning himself,
| then both Jarrett and Jarrett share a personal responsibility to
| each other.
|
| Perhaps Jarrett is envious that Jarrett gets to live a full and
| happy life, and perhaps Jarrett feels guilty about this, and the
| personal duality persists. Maybe Jarrett accepts the decision he
| made to send himself to space, but Jarrett is still guilty. Is
| Jarrett still responsible for leaving Jarrett to die?
|
| "what matters" is almost entirely consistent, but establishes a
| negotiable dissonance where infinite Jarretts have a social bond
| within the same stream of consciousness.
| choeger wrote:
| The premise is already wrong. Any kind of copy mechanism will be
| imperfect. Even if we just consider classical physics (which is
| obviously a very coarse approximation), there is no mechanism
| that could scan every atom of your body at precisely the same
| time. Invariably, there will be an intervall ("all atoms have
| been scanned between t0 and t1"). Now relatively basic math tells
| us that the development of a complex dynamic system can change
| arbitrarily with small changes in the starting parameters. Maybe
| there could be an argument about the statistical behavior of the
| system (for instance, it is very unlikely that the copy would
| immediately lose an arm or a leg), but the state of mind would
| definitely not be identical.
| Y_Y wrote:
| Classically you should be able to measure any "information"
| present in the system. In general a useful machine cannot
| depend on indistinguishable microstates. If you include quantum
| mechanics then you may run up against to No-Cloning theorem,
| but that's a contentious question.
| adrian_b wrote:
| If a body is frozen to low enough temperatures, then the
| movements of all atoms are reduced to vibrations around some
| fixed average positions.
|
| After freezing, in vacuum, you could remove the atoms from
| known positions by shooting ions to them and then you could
| identify the removed atoms.
|
| Of course this would be exceedingly difficult to do for a large
| body, because identifying the type and positions of all atoms
| would take a huge amount of time and because if the body is
| large it is difficult to freeze its deeper interior fast enough
| to prevent any damage.
|
| Nevertheless, there is no theoretical reason for this to be
| impossible.
| choeger wrote:
| But you wouldn't measure the living body. You would measure a
| frozen (that is, dead) one.
|
| And even then your level of precision wouldn't be exact but
| subject to errors. Regardless how small your measurement
| errors might be, there cannot be such a thing as an identical
| copy.
| nautilius wrote:
| It's a philosophical 'paradox', not a technical one.
| choeger wrote:
| To the contrary, it postulates the existence of an impossible
| device. It's like asking questions about time paradoxes.
| nautilius wrote:
| Here's something you may find interesting:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thought_experiment
|
| On the other hand: you just single handedly disproved
| general relativity, because, clearly, there are no
| elevators in space https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Einstein%2
| 7s_thought_experimen...
| r721 wrote:
| I like Sean Carroll's post from 2009 on this topic (and some
| comments there are interesting):
|
| https://www.preposterousuniverse.com/blog/2009/12/15/who-are...
| NoblePublius wrote:
| Matter/energy transportation (Star Trek style) would likely kill
| you and then create a clone of you at the destination that would
| think it is you. Dimensional transport (Stargate style) is the
| only type of teletransportation that I would consider. It might
| also be easier just to tell people to watch The Prestige to
| understand this.
| notafraudster wrote:
| The Parfit version is one of the central ideas expressed in
| Douglas Hofstadter's "I Am A Strange Loop", which is a loose
| followup to "Godel, Escher, Bach" except centered around
| Hofstadter's ideas about consciousness and "life". I personally
| was a little cold on I Am A Strange Loop despite being a great
| lover of GEB, but I would recommend the book to others who liked
| GEB, and the Parfit short story stuck with me.
| abecedarius wrote:
| The Hoftstadter/Dennett book _The Mind 's I_ from 1981 is
| relevant in another way: the introduction jumps you into this
| exact scenario of finding yourself on Mars via a "Teleclone
| Mark IV Transporter" and getting beamed back before your
| instance on Mars dies, and raising these questions about
| identity.
| https://themindi.blogspot.com/2007/02/introduction.html
| Miiko wrote:
| That paradox implies that it's possible (even theoretically) to
| "records your molecular composition" and then "re-creates you ...
| each atom in exactly the same relative position". However, my
| understanding is that such things are not possible because of
| quantum Uncertainty principle - one cannot simply discard atom's
| momentum, as that would kill person being recorded, IMHO.
|
| Doesn't that solves the paradox, does it?
| alisonkisk wrote:
| Sure, "it's impossible" is always a resolution to a paradox.
| But not a very interesting one.
| NoblePublius wrote:
| In Star Trek, this is handled by the Heisenberg Compensator
| https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Heisenberg_compensator
| superposeur wrote:
| More precisely, the "no-cloning theorem" of quantum mechanics
| implies that one cannot replicate the exact quantum state of a
| clump of matter in a second clump of matter (although it is
| possible to "teleport" the exact quantum state by transmitting
| its information, provided one is willing to mess up the
| original).
|
| However, although no one knows for sure, it seems likely that
| the operations of consciousness are purely "classical" in the
| sense that the exact quantum state is not needed (Roger
| Penrose's ideas not withstanding).
| pontus wrote:
| Turns out that while the no cloning theorem does prohibit
| cloning, it does not prohibit perfect replication as long as
| the original is destroyed. This is the premise of quantum
| teleportation. Using some clever applications of entanglement
| it is possible to perfectly replicate the quantum state of a
| particle in a different location, it's just that the original
| particle is necessarily destroyed in the process.
|
| So, in short the no cloning theorem does not prevent quantum
| teleportation.
|
| In this sense, the follow-up in the paradox where you create
| 10 copies all of which are identical would not work. Quantum
| mechanics effectively ensures that there's ever only at most
| one of you.
| superposeur wrote:
| Yes, hence my parenthetical phrase:
|
| > ... (although it is possible to "teleport" the exact
| quantum state by transmitting its information, provided one
| is willing to mess up the original).
| pontus wrote:
| When I first wrote my comment, this part of your comment
| was not there. You must have added it after the fact
| (hence my comment)
| superposeur wrote:
| Definitely was there (note the lack of "edited" tag) :)
| no biggie, not trying to pick a fight
| pontus wrote:
| My bad, sorry! I could have sworn it wasn't there but
| you're obviously correct.
| zepto wrote:
| > it seems likely that the operations of consciousness are
| purely "classical" in the sense that the exact quantum state
| is not needed
|
| There really is no evidence for this.
| wizzwizz4 wrote:
| People don't die in MRI machines. That's evidence.
| zepto wrote:
| That magnets don't kill people, but not of much else.
| grumbel wrote:
| Not really. The issue is that you aren't the same from one
| moment to the other in the natural world either. You constantly
| change, large parts of your body even get rebuild regularly. So
| demanding 'quantum level perfection' of a copy just doesn't
| mesh with the ever changing mess that is the real you.
|
| As long as the copy is 'good enough', which can be far away
| from the uncertainty principle, it really shouldn't make a
| difference to the though experiment.
| ben_w wrote:
| The uncertainty principle is deeper than that. Not only is it
| impossible to perfectly measure both momentum and position, but
| they are not both simultaneously _well-defined_ even in perfect
| conditions -- the uncertainty in each is itself a real
| property.
|
| I would also be somewhat surprised if the most detailed scan
| possible under QM is even necessary for a functionally-perfect
| copy of consciousness: The perceptron model used in artificial
| neural nets is a mere _toy_ in comparison to a real neurone,
| yet very effective at duplicating interesting behaviours.
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| > _but they are not both simultaneously well-defined even in
| perfect conditions -- the uncertainty in each is itself a
| real property._
|
| This also implies trying to "dig deeper" doesn't matter -
| there's nothing to dig up. From this follows that either 1)
| "the most detailed scan possible under QM" is at least
| _sufficient_ to capture the entirety of consciousness, or 2)
| there 's something beyond QM we have no clue about, that
| makes uncertainty not fundamental, or 3) consciousness is
| magic and the universe makes no sense.
|
| I find 2) unlikely, and 3) is religion (the "separate
| magisterium from science" kind).
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