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Look at it like this: You are placed in a box. Moments later, you are told, "We have successfully made a copy of you. We are sending it home now. You must be d
by lhankbhl 10y ago
Look at it like this:
You are placed in a box. Moments later, you are told, "We have successfully made a copy of you. We are sending it home now. You must be disposed of."
Will you allow them to dispose of you?
This is the question being posed, not whether a copy will have no idea if it is the original. The point is that it isn't relevant if one is a copy. No one was moved, it's only that a second person now exists and killing either is murder of a unique person.
(Again, uniqueness is not a question of whether these people will think or react to situations in the same way, but rather that there are two different conciousnesses at play.)
- cakoose 10y agoI think the fact that the original is kept around (and asked a question) might be complicating things. For example, what if you were taken apart, your molecules were sent to Mars, and then you were reassembled exactly as they were? Would that be continuous consciousness? If so, how is that different from the cloning option if your clone were assembled on Mars and the original were completely destroyed at the very same instant? (Or maybe the original were destroyed just an instant earlier.)
- lazzlazzlazz 10y agoThe fact that the original is kept around is the entire point. Let's say your molecules were taken apart... and that's it. That's called "dying".
- mickeypi 10y agoYes, and if we actually had a way to disassemble and reassemble humans, the reassembled beings would tell you that the experiment works and their consciousness goes back to their first memories as a child. But the disassembled person would have been destroyed and therefore unable to share their opinion on the matter.
- dietrichepp 10y agoThis dodges the question. The question is not whether the original is destroyed, but whether it matters.
- mickeypi 10y agoSorry, that was intended to be implied. The original would say that it matters to them but to any observer it does not.
- gwright 10y agoAnd yet the atoms in your body are recycled over time. Your future self consists of an almost entirely different set of atoms as your current self. I'm not sure how to reconcile this with the nature of consciousness, but it certainly makes for an interesting thought experiment. https://www.quora.com/How-long-does-it-take-for-most-of-the-atoms-in-your-body-to-be-replaced-by-others https://www.quora.com/How-long-does-it-take-for-most-of-the-...
- fossuser 10y agoThis reminds of some of the thought experiments in Sam Harris' book Waking Up. This particular one reminds me of the teleporter example which is in this excerpt: https://www.getflashnotes.com/waking-up-by-sam-harris/ https://www.getflashnotes.com/waking-up-by-sam-harris/ (just control-f for teleporter). Basically our reasoning about identity is poorly evolved for duplicates. The closest we can come to feeling comfortable with it is going to sleep and waking back up. I think mostly because we're just used to doing that (since otherwise going to sleep and waking back up is similar to dying and coming back slightly different). Was an interesting book overall - I'd recommend it.
- snom380 10y agoMaybe I'm the odd one out, but if that was the original plan that I had intended, I wouldn't object to that (given that it was painless) - after all, minus that conversation the clone would be me "in spirit" if you will. If I didn't consent to the cloning, that would complicate things. Likewise, my trust in the cloning process would proably affect my decision. Or put it another way, let's say we live in a software simulation. Do you care whether our sysadmins live migrate our simulation over to a new Alien Web Services instance?
- exolymph 10y agoThis is exactly the question I was trying to pose. Thank you for expressing it so simply and elegantly.