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Not to trivialize the great unsolved question of WTF is consciousness... I think it's a bit easier to reason about this problem than you think. For example, g

Not to trivialize the great unsolved question of WTF is consciousness... I think it's a bit easier to reason about this problem than you think. For example, generally Star Trek wants us to presume the murder and cloning occur simultaneously. Let's say they don't. In the case that the murder occurs before the cloning, the waters are admittedly still muddy. Is it, in fact, like waking up from a sleep? Not very easy to tell. However, if we presume that the murder occurs after the cloning, things become quite clear. There can definitely only be one physical me in which I am conscious -- I feel comfortable rejecting an assertion that I would experience multiple simultaneous consciousnesses of a sequence of atomwise clones. Therefore, we work backwards. If I can't experience more than one consciousness simultaneously, then I can't experience two. If you clone me, I am not that clone, I am still the original. As the time between cloning and murdering (t) approaches zero, the same holds true. I am comfortable asserting there's nothing special about consciousness that would cause instantaneous consciousness transfer as (t) reaches zero and then becomes negative. Therefore a transporter clone will not be me from my perspective. Therefore the murder is my death, and the cloning is a birth of a new completely separate consciousness that I will never experience.

lisper 8y ago
> If I can't experience more than one consciousness simultaneously, then I can't experience two. One of you can't, but two of you might be able to :-) Kind of like how one core can't do real simultaneous multi-tasking, but two cores can.
- squirrelicus 8y ago
  Right. From a purely material standpoint, I agree that from the outside perspective, there are two identical MEs and any claims to legitimacy, originality, or specialness will be completely dubious. But I think it's easy to demonstrate that it would not be like waking up and the "true original" would definitely die in that it would not experience the clone's consciousness
  - lisper 8y ago
    > it's easy to demonstrate that it would not be like waking up Really? How would you demonstrate that?
    - squirrelicus 8y ago
      If you do not believe the parent of your last comment does so I would like to hear your thoughts
      - lisper 8y ago
        Imagine that we have the technology to cryogenically freeze and revive you with your subjective sense of self intact. Now consider two scenarios: Scenario 1: We freeze you, move your body to a different location, and revive you. Scenario 2: We freeze you, make an atomic copy of the frozen version of you, move the copy to a new location, and revive the copy. (The reason I want to freeze you rather than simply anesthetize you is that I want there to be no possibility of any physical changes to your body or brain while you are unconscious.) Unless you are a dualist, you must concede that your external behavior after being revived must be the same in both scenarios. So any experiment we do on you must have the same outcome in both scenarios. So no experiment can determine whether your subjective sense of self is the same or different in the two scenarios.

lisper 8y ago

> If I can't experience more than one consciousness simultaneously, then I can't experience two. One of you can't, but two of you might be able to :-) Kind of like how one core can't do real simultaneous multi-tasking, but two cores can.

squirrelicus 8y ago
Right. From a purely material standpoint, I agree that from the outside perspective, there are two identical MEs and any claims to legitimacy, originality, or specialness will be completely dubious. But I think it's easy to demonstrate that it would not be like waking up and the "true original" would definitely die in that it would not experience the clone's consciousness
- lisper 8y ago
  > it's easy to demonstrate that it would not be like waking up Really? How would you demonstrate that?
  - squirrelicus 8y ago
    If you do not believe the parent of your last comment does so I would like to hear your thoughts
    - lisper 8y ago
      Imagine that we have the technology to cryogenically freeze and revive you with your subjective sense of self intact. Now consider two scenarios: Scenario 1: We freeze you, move your body to a different location, and revive you. Scenario 2: We freeze you, make an atomic copy of the frozen version of you, move the copy to a new location, and revive the copy. (The reason I want to freeze you rather than simply anesthetize you is that I want there to be no possibility of any physical changes to your body or brain while you are unconscious.) Unless you are a dualist, you must concede that your external behavior after being revived must be the same in both scenarios. So any experiment we do on you must have the same outcome in both scenarios. So no experiment can determine whether your subjective sense of self is the same or different in the two scenarios.