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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 d

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
  - nautilius 5y ago
    The 'paradox' here is not how the person changes over twenty years, but what happens in the very moment of creating a copy. We're not dealing with a Ship of Theseus problem, that's something else entirely. I personally am horrified by possibly developing dementia one day, exactly because of that. But this is also a different problem because it affects the original body.

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
- nautilius 5y ago
  The 'paradox' here is not how the person changes over twenty years, but what happens in the very moment of creating a copy. We're not dealing with a Ship of Theseus problem, that's something else entirely. I personally am horrified by possibly developing dementia one day, exactly because of that. But this is also a different problem because it affects the original body.