13 ms·

Teletransportation Paradox

42 points by miobrien 5y ago

nautilius 5y ago
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.
- wilburTheDog 5y ago
  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 5y ago
    Twins exist too.
  - nautilius 5y ago
    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.
- aneutron 5y ago
  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 5y ago
    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 5y ago
      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?
      - nautilius 5y ago
        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.
- api 5y ago
  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 5y ago
    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.
- coldcode 5y ago
  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 5y ago
    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 5y ago
      I feel like functional programmers would love this.
      - TeMPOraL 5y ago
        They're too busy being excited about "timeless physics".
  - nautilius 5y ago
    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 5y ago
      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.
- shusaku 5y ago
  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 5y ago
    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 5y ago
    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 5y ago
      >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 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ship_of_Theseus
- bloopernova 5y ago
  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 5y ago
    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 5y ago
      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.
- jodrellblank 5y ago
  "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 5y ago
    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 5y ago
      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 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friendship_paradox can be explained, that doesn't stop it being, or appearing, paradoxical.
      - nautilius 5y ago
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- trixie_ 5y ago
  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 5y ago
    None. I'll be dead.
- _nub3 5y ago
  it doesnt work that way. you have that copy of your "consciousness" as long as you are awake. when being in deep sleep - opposed to REM phases where brain waves are measurable, or when highly dosed with narcotics such as for heavy surgery you (in the sense of your consciousness) do not exist anymore - no brainwaves. when you wake up, to be precise when you enter REM phases, your mind slowly boots up again. awake, you're reaching out to you assets, read memories, and cross checking references allows you to re-establish confidence who you are. 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.
  - omginternets 5y ago
    > basically this is what happens each night when we sleep. every morning a new you wakes up. Nonsense.
    - _nub3 5y ago
      Think of Firefox, same hardware (body), same profile (nerological pathways), yet a new process when restarted, b/c no brain activity measured in deep sleep, only with REM phases. edit: typo
      - omginternets 5y ago
Miiko 5y ago
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 5y ago
  Sure, "it's impossible" is always a resolution to a paradox. But not a very interesting one.
- NoblePublius 5y ago
  In Star Trek, this is handled by the Heisenberg Compensator https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Heisenberg_compensator https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Heisenberg_compensator
- superposeur 5y ago
  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 5y ago
    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.
notafraudster 5y ago
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 5y ago
  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 https://themindi.blogspot.com/2007/02/introduction.html
ziyangdev 5y ago
Permutation city is a great read for anyone interested in these sort of thought experiments.
jjk166 5y ago
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?
- tmearnest 5y ago
  The transporter is basically fork() followed immediately by SIGKILL.
  - garaetjjte 5y ago
    Not really, as fork() involves COW so nothing is really copied, and subsequent SIGKILL will only remove process structures, not data itself.
    - emptyparadise 5y ago
      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?
- C19is20 5y ago
  LSD and other psychadelics: after use, very few people feel as if they are the same. /anecdata
  - fjabre 5y ago
    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
r721 5y ago
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-you/ https://www.preposterousuniverse.com/blog/2009/12/15/who-are...
NoblePublius 5y ago
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.
Rygu 5y ago
I enjoyed how Rick and Morty inserted this theme repeatedly (robots, clones).
booleandilemma 5y ago
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 5y ago
  Why would you die at all? You'd be the same person, just implemented on different hardware.
- filoeleven 5y ago
  > if you could replace your brain’s cells, one at a time, with nanomachines that mimic the function of the original cell, I enjoy thought experiments, and have thought about this myself. And have probably read some good science fiction based around the premise. My current position is that a nanomachine which replaces a neuron or glial cell and behaves the same way that cell would is essentially magical thinking. It’s the everlasting gobstopper of consciousness. The gobstopper faces the issue of conservation of energy: how can it continue to have flavor and not get any smaller? The nanotech faces an analogous issue of “continuation of systemic process (as opposed to divergence)” that I don’t have enough clarity to describe yet. This makes my position weak, and I accept that. I think I am saying “if consciousness is a property of the body system, then introducing pre-built components that originated outside of the system will change it in unanticipated ways.” I’ll have to give it more thought if we start to create artificial replacements for simpler organs (heart, lungs, etc.) that work better than the originals. I’d like to live in that world and be faced with the question.
perl4ever 5y ago
>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 5y ago
  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.
  - perl4ever 5y ago
    >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.
choeger 5y ago
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.
- nautilius 5y ago
  It's a philosophical 'paradox', not a technical one.
  - choeger 5y ago
    To the contrary, it postulates the existence of an impossible device. It's like asking questions about time paradoxes.
    - nautilius 5y ago
      Here's something you may find interesting: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thought_experiment 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%27s_thought_experiments#Trains,_embankments,_and_lightning_flashes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Einstein%27s_thought_experimen...
      - choeger 5y ago
        You either don't get it or you are trolling. Einstein's elevator metaphor did not at all draw any important bits from the impossible construction. A spaceship under constant acceleration works just as well. A thought experiment that creates a problem out of an impossible premise is just worthless as such. First of all, everything can follow out of a wrong premise, and secondly you can create an arbitrary amount of such experiments, preventing any insights.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
aaron695 5y ago
> 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.
B-Con 5y ago
cgpgrey's concise overview: https://youtu.be/nQHBAdShgYI https://youtu.be/nQHBAdShgYI
wizzwizz4 5y ago
The Machine: https://existentialcomics.com/comic/1 https://existentialcomics.com/comic/1
namelosw 5y ago
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 5y ago
  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.
  - namelosw 5y ago
    The semantic is clear: If it is the copy mechanism, the old entity dies. It doesn't contradict itself like paradoxes (e.g., "Barber Paradox"[0]). [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barber_paradox https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barber_paradox
z5h 5y ago
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 5y ago
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.
rafaelvasco 5y ago
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.
dfa324flk 5y ago
This whole thing of what's you and what's not you, we may be discovering the real mccoy at some point. Whether if we are really actually a new person every morning, just reloaded with the old guy's stuff, or not. And surgeries and walking up from them, maybe as a new person as well. I'm not sure it will be of any importance, just like we * have * human rights and yet there's still millions of humans living out there without human rights.
Borrible 5y ago
There is no paradox. The copies are independent persons. Not only do you not get into the same river twice, it's also always a different person from one moment to the next. A concept, that of granular time, by the way, which also is just a tool for the brain to make the outside world easier to navigate. The sense of temporally overlapping unity of consciousness is a useful trick of the body to think of itself as an acting subject in its model of the world. The agent of the body's interests in it. In the brain, there is no distinction between software and hardware. If you build a machine whose software rewires the hardware and the hardware rewrites its software in real time under the influence of the outside world and some, over thousands of generations more or less hardwired structures, you get closer to what the brain and mind do and are. So, sorry no uploading of a somehow separate consciousness into a machine. Even if possible, you would have two beings. One still pure social/wetware. One, the 'copy' of the former, ended up in an artificial hell.

42 points by miobrien 5y ago

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.

wilburTheDog 5y ago
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 5y ago
  Twins exist too.
- nautilius 5y ago
  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.
aneutron 5y ago
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 5y ago
  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 5y ago
    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?
    - nautilius 5y ago
      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.
api 5y ago
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 5y ago
  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.
coldcode 5y ago
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 5y ago
  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 5y ago
    I feel like functional programmers would love this.
    - TeMPOraL 5y ago
      They're too busy being excited about "timeless physics".
- nautilius 5y ago
  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 5y ago
    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.
shusaku 5y ago
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 5y ago
  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 5y ago
  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 5y ago
    >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 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ship_of_Theseus
bloopernova 5y ago
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 5y ago
  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 5y ago
    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.
jodrellblank 5y ago
"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 5y ago
  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 5y ago
    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 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friendship_paradox can be explained, that doesn't stop it being, or appearing, paradoxical.
    - nautilius 5y ago
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
trixie_ 5y ago
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 5y ago
  None. I'll be dead.
_nub3 5y ago
it doesnt work that way. you have that copy of your "consciousness" as long as you are awake. when being in deep sleep - opposed to REM phases where brain waves are measurable, or when highly dosed with narcotics such as for heavy surgery you (in the sense of your consciousness) do not exist anymore - no brainwaves. when you wake up, to be precise when you enter REM phases, your mind slowly boots up again. awake, you're reaching out to you assets, read memories, and cross checking references allows you to re-establish confidence who you are. 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.
- omginternets 5y ago
  > basically this is what happens each night when we sleep. every morning a new you wakes up. Nonsense.
  - _nub3 5y ago
    Think of Firefox, same hardware (body), same profile (nerological pathways), yet a new process when restarted, b/c no brain activity measured in deep sleep, only with REM phases. edit: typo
    - omginternets 5y ago

Miiko 5y ago

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 5y ago
Sure, "it's impossible" is always a resolution to a paradox. But not a very interesting one.
NoblePublius 5y ago
In Star Trek, this is handled by the Heisenberg Compensator https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Heisenberg_compensator https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Heisenberg_compensator
superposeur 5y ago
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 5y ago
  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.

notafraudster 5y ago

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 5y ago
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 https://themindi.blogspot.com/2007/02/introduction.html

ziyangdev 5y ago

Permutation city is a great read for anyone interested in these sort of thought experiments.

jjk166 5y ago

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?

tmearnest 5y ago
The transporter is basically fork() followed immediately by SIGKILL.
- garaetjjte 5y ago
  Not really, as fork() involves COW so nothing is really copied, and subsequent SIGKILL will only remove process structures, not data itself.
  - emptyparadise 5y ago
    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?
C19is20 5y ago
LSD and other psychadelics: after use, very few people feel as if they are the same. /anecdata
- fjabre 5y ago
  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

r721 5y ago

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-you/ https://www.preposterousuniverse.com/blog/2009/12/15/who-are...

NoblePublius 5y ago

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.

Rygu 5y ago

I enjoyed how Rick and Morty inserted this theme repeatedly (robots, clones).

booleandilemma 5y ago

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 5y ago
Why would you die at all? You'd be the same person, just implemented on different hardware.
filoeleven 5y ago
> if you could replace your brain’s cells, one at a time, with nanomachines that mimic the function of the original cell, I enjoy thought experiments, and have thought about this myself. And have probably read some good science fiction based around the premise. My current position is that a nanomachine which replaces a neuron or glial cell and behaves the same way that cell would is essentially magical thinking. It’s the everlasting gobstopper of consciousness. The gobstopper faces the issue of conservation of energy: how can it continue to have flavor and not get any smaller? The nanotech faces an analogous issue of “continuation of systemic process (as opposed to divergence)” that I don’t have enough clarity to describe yet. This makes my position weak, and I accept that. I think I am saying “if consciousness is a property of the body system, then introducing pre-built components that originated outside of the system will change it in unanticipated ways.” I’ll have to give it more thought if we start to create artificial replacements for simpler organs (heart, lungs, etc.) that work better than the originals. I’d like to live in that world and be faced with the question.

perl4ever 5y ago

>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 5y ago
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.
- perl4ever 5y ago
  >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.

choeger 5y ago

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.

nautilius 5y ago
It's a philosophical 'paradox', not a technical one.
- choeger 5y ago
  To the contrary, it postulates the existence of an impossible device. It's like asking questions about time paradoxes.
  - nautilius 5y ago
    Here's something you may find interesting: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thought_experiment 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%27s_thought_experiments#Trains,_embankments,_and_lightning_flashes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Einstein%27s_thought_experimen...
    - choeger 5y ago
      You either don't get it or you are trolling. Einstein's elevator metaphor did not at all draw any important bits from the impossible construction. A spaceship under constant acceleration works just as well. A thought experiment that creates a problem out of an impossible premise is just worthless as such. First of all, everything can follow out of a wrong premise, and secondly you can create an arbitrary amount of such experiments, preventing any insights.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

aaron695 5y ago

> 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.

B-Con 5y ago

cgpgrey's concise overview: https://youtu.be/nQHBAdShgYI https://youtu.be/nQHBAdShgYI

wizzwizz4 5y ago

The Machine: https://existentialcomics.com/comic/1 https://existentialcomics.com/comic/1

namelosw 5y ago

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 5y ago
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.
- namelosw 5y ago
  The semantic is clear: If it is the copy mechanism, the old entity dies. It doesn't contradict itself like paradoxes (e.g., "Barber Paradox"[0]). [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barber_paradox https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barber_paradox

z5h 5y ago

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 5y ago

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.

rafaelvasco 5y ago

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.

dfa324flk 5y ago

This whole thing of what's you and what's not you, we may be discovering the real mccoy at some point. Whether if we are really actually a new person every morning, just reloaded with the old guy's stuff, or not. And surgeries and walking up from them, maybe as a new person as well. I'm not sure it will be of any importance, just like we * have * human rights and yet there's still millions of humans living out there without human rights.

Borrible 5y ago

There is no paradox. The copies are independent persons. Not only do you not get into the same river twice, it's also always a different person from one moment to the next. A concept, that of granular time, by the way, which also is just a tool for the brain to make the outside world easier to navigate. The sense of temporally overlapping unity of consciousness is a useful trick of the body to think of itself as an acting subject in its model of the world. The agent of the body's interests in it. In the brain, there is no distinction between software and hardware. If you build a machine whose software rewires the hardware and the hardware rewrites its software in real time under the influence of the outside world and some, over thousands of generations more or less hardwired structures, you get closer to what the brain and mind do and are. So, sorry no uploading of a somehow separate consciousness into a machine. Even if possible, you would have two beings. One still pure social/wetware. One, the 'copy' of the former, ended up in an artificial hell.