4 ms·

Several decades back I read a SF story (by Fred Pohl?) where the crew of a near lightspeed craft needed to be continually replaced by new members teleported in,

by russell 18y ago

Several decades back I read a SF story (by Fred Pohl?) where the crew of a near lightspeed craft needed to be continually replaced by new members teleported in, because the existing crew was being killed by radiation. For some nominal payment you stepped into a booth and a copy of you was teleported to the starship. You collected your payment and went and had a nice dinner or somesuch. Meanwhile your copy on the starship tried to cope while dying some horrible death. The angst of who is me and who is alive and who is dead has kept me from trying teleportation or brain downloads. I know that, when the organic part is shut off, my personality will continue to live. But is it really me?

moe 18y ago
I know that, when the organic part is shut off, my personality will continue to live. But is it really me? This will be an interesting discussion to have with your other self; "Who of us is the real me?". I think the question is largely irrelevant. The moment that you make an 100% exact physical copy of yourself there are obviously two "me"'s. Just that the other me doesn't have any connection to your "local" me anymore. From the POV of the original the copy is just another person that, by coincidence, happens to have the exact same expiriences and thought patterns as oneself. And vice versa. Nonetheless that initial discussion would indeed be interesting to watch. Imagine you can create an instant-copy of yourself and are then immediately confronted with your other self. I bet the conversation would begin with a lot of "jinx" and "Uh, yeah, I was gonna say the exact same thing".
- thwarted 18y ago
  This will be an interesting discussion to have with your other self; "Who of us is the real me?". The protagonist in Altered Carbon has this discussion, in the context of which set of memories are worth having, after he has to duplicate himself to another body to solve a crime.
stavrianos 18y ago
kinda kills the story I know, but while we're copying anyways, you'd think that they could just replenish the ship with copies of the original crew?
DarkShikari 18y ago
The Ship of Theseus has a rather interesting application to this concept, explaining a way to do brain downloads without any risk of losing "you". We basically know for a fact at this point that the "soul" is not stored in any one brain cell--that is, you can lose any single brain cell and you're still who you are. Thus, if we take one brain cell, digitize it into some form in which it exactly replicates the function of the original, including ability to reconnect to other cells and so forth, it will continue to function as the original cell. So you do this one by one for every single cell in the brain. In practice, this might be possible with nanotech or something of the sort. Since no single cell can store consciousness, and you ever have one less cell than normal in your brain, "you" must logically be fine. Yet once the process is done, not an atom of the original "you" remains. The only way I've found to poke holes in this concept is the idea that there is something "not replicable" about brain cells, which seems unlikely--for example, it's doubtful that there is a significant quantum effect on consciousness. This would of course stop one from doing this, since quantum states cannot be duplicated. See the last paragraph of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ship_of_Theseus#Other_examples http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ship_of_Theseus#Other_examples as well.
- rgrieselhuber 18y ago
  Reminded me of Ise Shrine (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ise_Shrine http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ise_Shrine) and also Shirky's reference to it (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xe1TZaElTAs http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xe1TZaElTAs). The point there is that function is also a meaningful definition of is-ness. Besides, aren't all of the cells in a human body replaced every x years already?
  - DarkShikari 18y ago
    Brain cells aren't normally replaced regularly, AFAIK, so they're an exception to the rule.
- pfedor 18y ago
  OK so let's take out one cell of your brain and build two identical electronic braincell replacements (if braincells need randomness, let's say they're both connected to the same source of randomness, or use they same pseudo-random algorithm.) Let's connect them both to the remaining part of the brain, i.e., all the outgoing signals from the brain go to a switch that splits the signal and sends it to both electronic replacements, and all the incoming signals from the replacement cells to the brain go through a switch that asserts that the two inputs from the electronic braincells are identical and sends out just one copy to the original brain. Now let's repeat the procedure for every remaining braincell, with the correction when the two electronic braincells should connect to one another, we connect them directly in both copies, without going through the switch. In the end of this procedure we will have two identical electronic brains, connected to the same input from the senses, and the same source of randomness so they work identically. We can make them to two completely different persons by bifurcating the input at some point, then the two electronic brains' states will bifurcate too. Which of the two is "you"? They are completely symmetric. And if neither is "you", then how is it different from your thought experiment?
parenthesis 18y ago
Philosopher Derek Parfit has some very interesting things to say about personal identity in such strange situations (and in general): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Derek_Parfit#Self_identity http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Derek_Parfit#Self_identity
dkokelley 18y ago
Recommended viewing: The Prestige. Spoiler alert From http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0482571/synopsis http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0482571/synopsis Angier, who only ever cared about the glory of wowing an audience, went to more terrible extremes. In his version of "Transported Man," he created a double of himself every time he used Tesla's machine, and he rigged the trapdoor to drown the one onstage. He never knew if he would be the Prestige or the man in the box. The room where the machine is being kept is filled with water tanks, all of which hold a drowned double of Angier for every time he performed the trick.

by russell 18y ago

moe 18y ago

I know that, when the organic part is shut off, my personality will continue to live. But is it really me? This will be an interesting discussion to have with your other self; "Who of us is the real me?". I think the question is largely irrelevant. The moment that you make an 100% exact physical copy of yourself there are obviously two "me"'s. Just that the other me doesn't have any connection to your "local" me anymore. From the POV of the original the copy is just another person that, by coincidence, happens to have the exact same expiriences and thought patterns as oneself. And vice versa. Nonetheless that initial discussion would indeed be interesting to watch. Imagine you can create an instant-copy of yourself and are then immediately confronted with your other self. I bet the conversation would begin with a lot of "jinx" and "Uh, yeah, I was gonna say the exact same thing".

thwarted 18y ago
This will be an interesting discussion to have with your other self; "Who of us is the real me?". The protagonist in Altered Carbon has this discussion, in the context of which set of memories are worth having, after he has to duplicate himself to another body to solve a crime.

stavrianos 18y ago

kinda kills the story I know, but while we're copying anyways, you'd think that they could just replenish the ship with copies of the original crew?

DarkShikari 18y ago

The Ship of Theseus has a rather interesting application to this concept, explaining a way to do brain downloads without any risk of losing "you". We basically know for a fact at this point that the "soul" is not stored in any one brain cell--that is, you can lose any single brain cell and you're still who you are. Thus, if we take one brain cell, digitize it into some form in which it exactly replicates the function of the original, including ability to reconnect to other cells and so forth, it will continue to function as the original cell. So you do this one by one for every single cell in the brain. In practice, this might be possible with nanotech or something of the sort. Since no single cell can store consciousness, and you ever have one less cell than normal in your brain, "you" must logically be fine. Yet once the process is done, not an atom of the original "you" remains. The only way I've found to poke holes in this concept is the idea that there is something "not replicable" about brain cells, which seems unlikely--for example, it's doubtful that there is a significant quantum effect on consciousness. This would of course stop one from doing this, since quantum states cannot be duplicated. See the last paragraph of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ship_of_Theseus#Other_examples http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ship_of_Theseus#Other_examples as well.

rgrieselhuber 18y ago
Reminded me of Ise Shrine (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ise_Shrine http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ise_Shrine) and also Shirky's reference to it (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xe1TZaElTAs http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xe1TZaElTAs). The point there is that function is also a meaningful definition of is-ness. Besides, aren't all of the cells in a human body replaced every x years already?
- DarkShikari 18y ago
  Brain cells aren't normally replaced regularly, AFAIK, so they're an exception to the rule.
pfedor 18y ago
OK so let's take out one cell of your brain and build two identical electronic braincell replacements (if braincells need randomness, let's say they're both connected to the same source of randomness, or use they same pseudo-random algorithm.) Let's connect them both to the remaining part of the brain, i.e., all the outgoing signals from the brain go to a switch that splits the signal and sends it to both electronic replacements, and all the incoming signals from the replacement cells to the brain go through a switch that asserts that the two inputs from the electronic braincells are identical and sends out just one copy to the original brain. Now let's repeat the procedure for every remaining braincell, with the correction when the two electronic braincells should connect to one another, we connect them directly in both copies, without going through the switch. In the end of this procedure we will have two identical electronic brains, connected to the same input from the senses, and the same source of randomness so they work identically. We can make them to two completely different persons by bifurcating the input at some point, then the two electronic brains' states will bifurcate too. Which of the two is "you"? They are completely symmetric. And if neither is "you", then how is it different from your thought experiment?

parenthesis 18y ago

Philosopher Derek Parfit has some very interesting things to say about personal identity in such strange situations (and in general): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Derek_Parfit#Self_identity http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Derek_Parfit#Self_identity

dkokelley 18y ago

Recommended viewing: The Prestige. Spoiler alert From http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0482571/synopsis http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0482571/synopsis Angier, who only ever cared about the glory of wowing an audience, went to more terrible extremes. In his version of "Transported Man," he created a double of himself every time he used Tesla's machine, and he rigged the trapdoor to drown the one onstage. He never knew if he would be the Prestige or the man in the box. The room where the machine is being kept is filled with water tanks, all of which hold a drowned double of Angier for every time he performed the trick.