2 ms·

Suppose that, in an instant, your body and mind ceased to exist. Just completely vanished. And suppose further, that nobody witnessed this, and that one insta

by jjs 16y ago

Suppose that, in an instant, your body and mind ceased to exist. Just completely vanished. And suppose further, that nobody witnessed this, and that one instant later, by some very unlikely process, some matter or energy spontaneously organized itself into an exact duplicate of you, down to every last quantum wobble, in exactly the same place that you were standing. Would either this new you or the old you notice? Would "you" still be "you"? And would it matter?

pavel_lishin 16y ago
What if instead of miraculously vanishing, you were instead vaporized by your neighbor, using a ray that recorded the position or every atom? It's murder, right? What if he recombines you, just like in your example an instant later. Is it murder? A minute later. Murder? An hour, day, week, month, year. Murder? What if he just promises to everyone to put you back together. Later. In the future. Murder?
- jjs 16y ago
  What if his name is Scotty, and rather than zapping you, he merely stored you in his transporter buffer and delayed beaming you to your destination for a moment? What if he didn't delay at all? Did he kill you just by letting your atoms get ripped apart and reassembled elsewhere? Or is this whole continuity-of-self thing a sham?
  - adrih 16y ago
    Don't these questions hint at "death" being a leaky abstraction? It seems that people have their own definition of death with details added to the general concept. Then, when exposed to these hypothetical scenarios, they either say "it is murder" or "it isn't murder", depending on what their personal definition of "death" is. The problem is that if we redefine death as "no chance of ever coming back", some people would still not be ok with being temporarily disintegrated because they believe it would be someone else who would come back. So the concept of death should actually be split in two: death as in "I believe it would not be me anymore", and death as in "the functional unit defined as you would not be operational anymore".
    - jjs 16y ago
      Or perhaps "self" is the leaky abstraction.

by jjs 16y ago

pavel_lishin 16y ago

What if instead of miraculously vanishing, you were instead vaporized by your neighbor, using a ray that recorded the position or every atom? It's murder, right? What if he recombines you, just like in your example an instant later. Is it murder? A minute later. Murder? An hour, day, week, month, year. Murder? What if he just promises to everyone to put you back together. Later. In the future. Murder?

jjs 16y ago
What if his name is Scotty, and rather than zapping you, he merely stored you in his transporter buffer and delayed beaming you to your destination for a moment? What if he didn't delay at all? Did he kill you just by letting your atoms get ripped apart and reassembled elsewhere? Or is this whole continuity-of-self thing a sham?
- adrih 16y ago
  Don't these questions hint at "death" being a leaky abstraction? It seems that people have their own definition of death with details added to the general concept. Then, when exposed to these hypothetical scenarios, they either say "it is murder" or "it isn't murder", depending on what their personal definition of "death" is. The problem is that if we redefine death as "no chance of ever coming back", some people would still not be ok with being temporarily disintegrated because they believe it would be someone else who would come back. So the concept of death should actually be split in two: death as in "I believe it would not be me anymore", and death as in "the functional unit defined as you would not be operational anymore".
  - jjs 16y ago
    Or perhaps "self" is the leaky abstraction.