Teleportation (forked from Sci-Fi Anti-G suit design)

[Artlav]

The person who is destroyed. :facepalm:

Who is "backed up" in a different location. What else?

 

[T.Neo]

The fact that there is a copy means nothing. The copy isn't the original person.

We've been through this again and again and again and it just turns into one big circular argument. :facepalm:

 

[Artlav]

Isn't that so.

But i'm still mystified, and persist to get an answer from you, why is it matter?
What is lost?

But you keep saying the same words again and again - i thought we settled that they are different objects/persons, and a while ago?
But what is lost?
What is the difference that you think matters?

 

[jedidia]

Only different in the amount of mess it makes, reliability and public image.

You still need to assume a soul or something external to get a difference before and after.

The difference is the question "Is it I that walks out the other end, or the one that gets shot or otherwise disasembled on this side of the platform. The "shooting"-analogy is to demonstrate that one of me has to go through the agony of staring at the gun and getting shot. Or tortured to death, or whatever. In the subjective view of the me being still on the sending platform afterwards, I die. Wheather or not I notice anything is of secondary importance, subjectively one of me dies in any case.
Objectivly, there's nothing lost. Subjectively, I died. Is that so hard to understand?

 

[Artlav]

has to go through the agony of staring at the gun and getting shot.

Like i said, that complicates things and makes them more messy. But that's an engineering and humanitarian question.

Objectivly, there's nothing lost. Subjectively, I died. Is that so hard to understand?

Yes, what's the difference between what you called Objectivly and Subjectively.

Again, assuming a "didn't notice anything" destruction and without invoking a soul or something external to the universe, what is the difference?

You die every day going to sleep, but next morning you wake up as if nothing happened. How is that different?

 

[Ghostrider]

You die every day going to sleep, but next morning you wake up as if nothing happened. How is that different?

Well... No. You don't die when you go to sleep, unless you dream of Freddy Krueger. Your consciousness goes dormant (and I'm not really positive on that, either) but your thought processes go on. A better analogy is if you really die and are resuscitated after flatlining for a couple of minutes like in that flick with Julia Roberts.

The problem is that we don't have an objective method to quantify self-awareness. You cannot examine the self as defined by John Locke (before he went all smoke monster) with any tool.

By the way, doesn't this raise an interesting question about multiple universes? If every choice we make results in a splitting of the universe, which one of those alternate selves are me? I'd like to know, because I can't seem to ever be the one who won the lottery.

 

[Artlav]

And yet, "subjectively" you stop existing for a while. Yes, near-death experience may be a better example, but it's about as good.

By the way, doesn't this raise an interesting question about multiple universes?

Not my favourite interpretation, by Occam razor at least. It raises more problems that it solves.
And Quantum Immortality idea is just plain scary.

 

[T.Neo]

But i'm still mystified, and persist to get an answer from you, why is it matter?
What is lost?

But you keep saying the same words again and again - i thought we settled that they are different objects/persons, and a while ago?
But what is lost?
What is the difference that you think matters?

I am just as mystified, because I keep on repeating over and over that you have destroyed one object and created another, yet you don't seem to understand what I'm trying to get at.

The original is destroyed. The original dies. The original is lost.

You can create an identical copy, and that can be fine for the copy. But the fact remains and is inescapable that the original is an entirely distinct entity from the copy.

The original is destroyed- that entity ceases to exist. You can create a copy or a million copies or a trillion copies of that entity and it wouldn't mean anything. They'd all be copies and none of them would be the original entity.

You die every day going to sleep, but next morning you wake up as if nothing happened. How is that different?

Wrong. For one, you're not destroyed or even disrupted in any way, and secondly just because you're sleeping doesn't fully mean your conciousness has stopped (there can be varying levels of conciousness, but I don't think we know whether they correlate fully to self awareness).

 

[Artlav]

you have destroyed one object and created another

Yes, we established that already.

The original is destroyed. The original dies. The original is lost.

Everything there was in the original is now in the copy.
If you claim that it's not, then what is lost?

You keep skipping the question, i keep asking.

 

[Ghostrider]

That's the same thing about the Thing in The Thing: in the movie (based on JW Campbell's Who Goes There short) an alien creature could imitate any lifeform down to its last cell. Now, if a person has been imitated down to the original memories and personality (and leaving out the icky bits and spiderheads), it's not the original but is it the same person in some way? Is there a way from outside to tell there has been an interruption of the original?

 

[T.Neo]

Everything there was in the original is now in the copy.
If you claim that it's not, then what is lost?

You keep skipping the question, i keep asking.

The actual original object.

The original object has been destroyed. The fact that the created object is identical is irrelevant; it is a seperate object.

 

[Artlav]

The actual original object.

The original object has been destroyed. The fact that the created object is identical is irrelevant; it is a seperate object.

And again you skipped the question why is it irrelevant, and what is so special about the original person?

 

[T.Neo]

I am not skipping your question, you are skipping my response. Repeatedly.

What is so special about the original person? Everything. The fact that they exist. Who they are. Their perception of the universe.

A copy can be identical to that person but a copy will never be the same person- the same object, the same entity.

That is almost such a silly question, that it requires no response at all. :facepalm:

 

[Artlav]

Yet either i don't word my question right, repeatedly, or you don't explain properly, also repeatedly.

Everything. The fact that they exist. Who they are. Their perception of the universe.

That everything the copy have too, exactly as it were.

copy will never be the same person

Again, what is left or missing?

 

[T.Neo]

That everything the copy have too, exactly as it were.

Wrong. The copy has the same traits as the original, but it isn't the original. It can't be the original, by virtue of being a copy.

Again, what is left or missing?

The original. Just by being a copy, the copy can't be the original. Ever. It's a copy. That's why it's called a "copy".

 

[Artlav]

The copy has the same traits as the original, but it isn't the original.
...
Just by being a copy, the copy can't be the original.

That's not the point!
It is not the original!

What is the difference that makes the "copy" inferior to the "original"?
Why does it "not being the original" matter?

 

[T.Neo]

The copy isn't inferior to the original, from the point of view of the copy.

But the copy is inferior to the original, from the point of view of the original- because it isn't the original, it's a copy!

It matters because it's not the same object/entity. It's a different object/entity, no matter how identical it might be. I've said this several times already...

 

[Artlav]

from the point of view of the original

There is no longer a point of view of the original, since original is destroyed.

If both are kept then this matters a lot as we have two separate entities, but it's not kept.

It matters because it's not the same object/entity. It's a different object/entity, no matter how identical it might be. I've said this several times already...

Yes, but it's a circular logic: Matters because it's different, different because it matters.

 

[T.Neo]

There is no longer a point of view of the original, since original is destroyed.

If both are kept then this matters a lot as we have two separate entities, but it's not kept.

Which is not the point. The point is the two seperate entities have two seperate views, if one of them is killed or not, it doesn't matter.

Yes, but it's a circular logic: Matters because it's different, different because it matters.

The fact that it matters that it is different, is inescapable.

 

[Quintuss]

What is the difference that makes the "copy" inferior to the "original"?

"Copy" lacks continuity of consciousness of the "original". "Copy" does not remember being desintegrated. It has never been desintegrated since its egsiting just for couple of seconds. Thus its not the same person.