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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 hardwa

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

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