Absurd Questions, Hopefully Unabsurd Answers

June 24, 2007 9:20 PM

Instead of continuously derailing the question about questions, we may as well move discussions of said-questions here.
posted by Ms. Saint to MetaFilter-Related at 9:20 PM (160 comments total)

First off, so far as transporters are concerned, I'd like to point out that The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy's entry on personal identity should be pretty helpful.

Heck, pretty much, the SEP is helpful for everything.
posted by Ms. Saint at 9:25 PM on June 24, 2007

Wait, why do we need this thread? What are you getting at?
posted by cortex (staff) at 9:32 PM on June 24, 2007

The question is for questions, not answers. So I guess this thread is for the answers.
posted by ThePinkSuperhero at 9:35 PM on June 24, 2007 [1 favorite]

MetaAskMetaFilter!
posted by the other side at 9:36 PM on June 24, 2007

A lot of the posts in the askmefi post are a considerably more interested in answering the questions than in just offering questions. I like some of the discussions about the questions and think it'd be cool for them to continue, but it really doesn't seem appropriate to go on in that thread. I mean, otherwise, we're just constantly going off-topic.

Or... What ThePinkSuperhero said.

I'm pretty new to mefi, so I could've gotten the purpose of Meta wrong. Sorry, if that's the case.
posted by Ms. Saint at 9:37 PM on June 24, 2007

cortex: ask metafilter is where we put the questions that are answers to the question. This thread is for answers to the question that are answers to the question. I assume further questions about those answers also belong here.

Actually...on second thought...none of that belongs here. I don't think this is what Metatalk is for.
posted by vacapinta at 9:38 PM on June 24, 2007

yes, we are not to say mean things in askme, so we say them here. "that is the most lame q evah"
posted by caddis at 9:39 PM on June 24, 2007

I could've gotten the purpose of Meta wrong
It's full of stars!
posted by dg at 10:07 PM on June 24, 2007 [1 favorite]

Your experience in the teleporter is the reason you have picked up and started reading this book, The Mind's I.
posted by Meatbomb at 10:30 PM on June 24, 2007

Answers to questions given as answers in a thread about questions is pretty damn meta. And they certainly don't belong in the original question, since the OP is explicitly looking for questions as answers, not answers. So to speak.

*gold clap*
posted by freebird at 10:43 PM on June 24, 2007

Or maybe this book, which is much shorter and more elementary, but a good read. It does, however, end on a bit of a sour note.

(I'm sorry -- I know I probably should be flaming out about now or something. I just don't think I'd be any good at that.)
posted by Ms. Saint at 10:44 PM on June 24, 2007

Just because you think you may not be good at something is no reason not to try. Let us be the judge of your ability.
posted by dg at 10:58 PM on June 24, 2007

Also: what would you find if you traveled past the edge of the universe? Before the beginning of the universe?

There is no "edge" to the universe. Like the surface of a sphere, the volume of the universe is finite but unbounded.

There is no time before the beginning of the universe. Time is a characteristic of the universe; without a universe there is no time.
posted by Steven C. Den Beste at 11:00 PM on June 24, 2007

Exactly how big/complicated/vast does something have to be before the human brain can no longer comprehend it?

There's a sardonic saying in AI research: If the human brain was simple enough for us to understand, we'd be too simple to understand it.
posted by Steven C. Den Beste at 11:03 PM on June 24, 2007

I think I understand: I don't understand how I think.
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 11:28 PM on June 24, 2007

Exactly how big/complicated/vast does something have to be before the human brain can no longer comprehend it?

Just beyond the horizon of comparison. I cannot personally conceive, for example, of anything more vast than the distance between what humans believe and what they actually comprehend about anything; but in a crunch, I'd probably describe our ignorance as being bigger than twenty football fields stretched end-to-end, folded in space, twisted into a Möbius strip, and tattooed on Carl Sagan's left butt-cheek.
posted by It's Raining Florence Henderson at 11:49 PM on June 24, 2007

OK wait. This MeTa is getting derailed with too many questions. I am gonna open an AskMe to ask how to handle the questions.
posted by The Deej at 12:00 AM on June 25, 2007 [1 favorite]

How recursively meta can we get before we all get swallowed by a black hole?
posted by Steven C. Den Beste at 12:20 AM on June 25, 2007

MetaTalk already IS a gray hole.
posted by wendell at 1:13 AM on June 25, 2007 [1 favorite]

One to change the bulb, one to hold the giraffe, and the third to fill the bathtub with brightly colored machine tools.
posted by flabdablet at 1:20 AM on June 25, 2007 [1 favorite]

These brightly-colored machine tools, do they hum and stroke?
posted by Kirth Gerson at 2:49 AM on June 25, 2007

The transporter thing is eerie, but I think I'd use it. There's a part of me (probably an irrational part) that is turned off by it, because by it seems like I'd be killing myself. But when I think about it in practical terms, I don't see how it would be different -- from the point-of-view of actual experience -- to sleep.

When you go to sleep, before you enter REM state, you have a complete stoppage of consciousness. Then, later, consciousness starts again, complete with all memories from before. As-far-as you're concerned, you could be a "disk image" of yourself that's been moved from one hard drive to another. You're not, but from an experiential point-of-view, what's the difference?

Maybe the me who stepped in the transporter would die in some sense, but presumably it would be completely painless and there'd be no sense of dying. My "death" would have no negative impact on loved ones or dependents, because the me that stepped out the other end would completely take over where the old me left off, and he'd feel in every way that he was me.

In a way, he'd be more me than the me after sleep, because he'd have complete continuity. Whereas there is a feeling of a break in consciousness after sleep.

Finally, I suspect that if transporters were developed, they'd gradually get features added (like most machines). Version 1.0 transporters would create exact copies of people. But then some company would start selling one that would make improved copies: "step into the transporter, ladies and gentleman, and not only will you get from New York to San Francisco in the blink of an eye, but when you get out, your body will be cleansed of disease! If you had cancer in New York, you'll be cancer-free in San Francisco! If you had AIDS in New York, you'll be AIDS-free in San Francisco. You can also dial in desired attributes before traveling? Want to be smarter? Select how many IQ points you want to add, and our transporter will spit you out the other end smarter than you were before you started."

I would have a hard to resisting. I don't think I would resist.
posted by grumblebee at 3:21 AM on June 25, 2007 [3 favorites]

now we've all got pee in our mouth.
posted by quonsar at 5:08 AM on June 25, 2007 [2 favorites]

Did that make the bathwater level go up, or down?
posted by flabdablet at 5:09 AM on June 25, 2007

The question is for questions, not answers.

So I guess it's somewhat like Jeopardy then?
posted by grouse at 5:35 AM on June 25, 2007

Not like that, grouse.

"What is somewhat like Jeopardy, Alex?"
posted by Meatbomb at 5:42 AM on June 25, 2007

How is that thread even okay? Is it the "I'm writing a play" ruse?
posted by dame at 5:47 AM on June 25, 2007 [1 favorite]

Has that 'any question's okay if you're writing a book' thing become too widespread and well-known?
posted by box at 6:02 AM on June 25, 2007

I was enjoying people's attempts to validate the various derails by weakly throwing in their own ponderable question -which only sparked further branches of sidetracked discussions.
posted by yeti at 6:14 AM on June 25, 2007

Dear AskMe: I'm writing The Book of Love. Wanna screw?
posted by It's Raining Florence Henderson at 6:38 AM on June 25, 2007

This reminds me of getting a crew cut at Fred the Barber's cubbyhole barbershop back in the day. He had mirrors on both walls. You could sit there and stare at the back of your head into infinity.

...bigger than twenty football fields stretched end-to-end, folded in space, twisted into a Möbius strip, and tattooed on Carl Sagan's left butt-cheek.

And that's one stinky butt cheek getting stinkier all the time at that.
posted by y2karl at 6:56 AM on June 25, 2007

Have we all read Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead?
posted by artifarce at 6:58 AM on June 25, 2007 [2 favorites]

SCDB: The idea that the universe is finite in volume is not always assumed to be true: We haven't a good way to check, really. The observeable universe is finite in volume and bounded: it's the hubble sphere, the sphere defined by how far light can have possibly travelled in the lifetime of the universe. Outside of that, we're dependent on the well established hypothesis that the universe everywhere is pretty much like the universe here, and it's generally assumed to be boundless, because we can't think of any rational way to bound the thing. So there's two possibilities: the universe is finite but boundless, or it's infinite and boundless.

The choice between these is pretty much speculation. Neither of them are ruled out, as far as I know.

----

As for the problem of identity, I'm firmly in the not worrying about transporters crowd. I used to think that sort of thing was problematic, but then I realized that I'm not sure I have that sort of continuity now, so the idea that I'd lose it in something like that seemed fairly silly. I'm a fan of the personal identity ideas that rely primarily on memory: I am the same person I was yesterday because I have the memory of being so and identify that memory as my own. The key is that there's no way to tell if your consciousness is actually continuous or if something like this happens: consciousness is 'run' by your brain, produces a result which is stored into memory, and then goes away. When next needed, consciousness is 'run' again, pulls out the memory of before, and assumes it's the same instance for lack of contradicting evidence. Repeat.

I say this because the idea of continuity of consciousness is dependent on the memory of such continuity, but where consciousness is the gatekeeper of such memory there can be no memories of the limits of consciousness. I think I'm the same mind that I was a moment ago, but I've no proof of this. The qualia of conscious existence is the most fleeting thing in the world, and trying to base personal identity upon it seems to me an entirely futile exercise.

Outside of what I can remember, I rely on bodily continuity, but not in a way that's bothered by a star trek style transporter.

It gets a bit funny with really advanced brain-computer interfaces, if you can shift memories around and share them between people, which is why I include the hedge about identifying a memory as my own. If such a future society decides to start identifying memories as self which were not recorded directly by the body someone is in, to have split histories and make personality a bit more fluid, I think this sort of definition will hold up. It'll get messy, but I think it'll work.
posted by Arturus at 7:12 AM on June 25, 2007

Gully Foyle is my name
And Terra is my nation
Deep space is my dwelling place
The stars my destination
posted by Divine_Wino at 7:15 AM on June 25, 2007

Wait, Divine_Wino is a Terra-ist?
posted by MrMoonPie at 8:03 AM on June 25, 2007

To all you "no problem with transporters" folks: if you were shown a clone of yourself and convinced that it had all your memories and was functionally indistinguishable from you, would you then happily enter a painless-suicide booth and allow the clone to take over your life? If not, how do you distinguish the situations? (If it's the transport thing, the clone can be moved to a destination of your choice before you're offed.)
posted by languagehat at 8:07 AM on June 25, 2007 [3 favorites]

Shut up, Hat! I was going to use the transporter to create my personal Brundle-clone army by hacking the disassembler. You're going to ruin everything!
posted by It's Raining Florence Henderson at 8:25 AM on June 25, 2007

It depends. If the memories are already identical and all that jazz, does it follow that I'm also controlling my clone or has myself merely been transfered to the clone for the purpose of this little thought experiment?
posted by jmd82 at 8:25 AM on June 25, 2007

The "and convinced that" phrasing there is pretty important, languagehat. If I'm convinced, I'm convinced, right? So yeah, clone dies or I die, and it's a wash. But that's the source of the problem, the convincing part. Assuming I'm convinced solves the problem, but how am I to be convinced?
posted by cgc373 at 8:27 AM on June 25, 2007

cgc373: take "and convinced that" as true, yes. You're staring at a perfect existential clone. You know for damn sure that you're thinking the same thing he's thinking, and both of you with a perfect sense of identity as cgc373.

But you're not seeing through his eyes, you're seeing through yours. You can't read his mind. If someone shot you in the head just then, your life ends. Your clone stands, blinking and horrified, over your corpse, but you don't know that—you're dead. Continuity ceases. Case closed. Conversations with your clone may seem wholly natural to the clone—who is you, right, with no break in continuity perceived—and to people who know him. But you're not in on that conversation, because you're dead. Gone. Caput.

Depending on your metaphysics, you might be watching this from somewhere else, but that's a whole other unanswerable question.

Unless you presume that there is some shared consciousness between clones/transportees, transportation is death.
posted by cortex (staff) at 8:49 AM on June 25, 2007 [1 favorite]

A: It's a shitty chatfilter question that should be axed.
posted by klangklangston at 8:59 AM on June 25, 2007 [3 favorites]

Q: What does Mr. Crankypants think?
posted by It's Raining Florence Henderson at 9:02 AM on June 25, 2007 [3 favorites]

If I were totally convinced the clone and I were the same, then I would say, "send the damn clone in the suicide booth." And you know what? If she went, she wouldn't be completely me, because I wouldn't go in the suicide booth.
posted by misha at 9:02 AM on June 25, 2007 [2 favorites]

Oh, and please don't axe the question, because I miss the Cliff Claven dialog from Cheers, and this is as close as we get these days.

Seriously, though, it's a really interesting thread.
posted by misha at 9:03 AM on June 25, 2007

But suppose Bobby goes through a teleporter. And Bobby's body is destroyed and a new body is created somewhere else. And the new body keeps saying "I'm Bobby!" And the new body acts exactly like Bobby and remembers all of Bobby's passwords (better than I can do, even) and even has the exact same DNA. If transportation is death, then this person who will argue until he's blue in the face that he's Bobby isn't actually Bobby. And while there may be plenty of reasons to want to avoid accepting that "Old" Bobby is the same person as "New" Bobby, he sure wouldn't want to.

I have the sneaking suspicion, unsupported by more than vague hand-wavings to Quine, that, if teleportation were a real possibility, we'd just find it extremely practical to accept that personal identity continued beyond physical annihilation and re-creation. And then it'd just be a case of creating the metaphysics necessary to support that desired conclusion.

Or, you know, maybe not.
posted by Ms. Saint at 9:08 AM on June 25, 2007 [2 favorites]

Oh sure, the transporter thing is all nice and rosy at first glance, but I think we all know what ends up happening.
posted by the other side at 9:09 AM on June 25, 2007

hat convinced me. No transporters. The only way around it would be for me to somehow be able to control the clone, which wouldn't be possible unless a) there is such thing as a soul (or something like it that conveys the me-ness of me) and b) the transporter could also transport that. I would have to be able to take control of the clone in order for it to be me. I really think that the mind is the product of the brain, though, so it would take some convincing to assure me that my control would pass into the clone at the time of transport/death.
posted by arcticwoman at 9:13 AM on June 25, 2007

All of you "I have a problem with transporters" people need to go read Douglas Hofstadter's latest book I Am A Strange Loop immediately. Then report back to this thread and explain it to me, patiently, using small words.
posted by Atom Eyes at 9:45 AM on June 25, 2007

To all you "no problem with transporters" folks: if you were shown a clone of yourself and convinced that it had all your memories and was functionally indistinguishable from you,

Of course its distinguishable from you. Its standing over there and I'm standing here. Our memories ceased being common a few minutes ago (or whenever the copy was made) So there are two distinct human beings - neither of which should be killed.

As I said in the thread, nobody knows how/if transporters will work. This problem may not even arise because you may need to *destroy* the original in order to create the clone in the first place. Yeah, some people may have a problem with that but I'm sure I wouldn't. I've been under general anaesthesia, a state in which arguably my consciousness ceased to exist. The persistence of identity is a complex illusion anyways.
posted by vacapinta at 9:47 AM on June 25, 2007

There's a sign stuck to the door of my local Caltex station that says "Seeing-Eye Dogs Welcome". Who is meant to read that?

The sign is made for the sighted who own dogs and want to bring them into the store.

"I'm sorry miss, you're not allowed to bring that dog in here."

"But she's a seeing eye dog, so she's allowed!"

"What makes you think seeing eye dogs are allowed in here?"

"I read it on the sign...er...."
posted by SassHat at 9:54 AM on June 25, 2007 [2 favorites]

I have the sneaking suspicion, unsupported by more than vague hand-wavings to Quine, that, if teleportation were a real possibility, we'd just find it extremely practical to accept that personal identity continued beyond physical annihilation and re-creation. And then it'd just be a case of creating the metaphysics necessary to support that desired conclusion.

Quine had views on teleportation and personal identity? Or Quine advocated "creating" metaphysics to support whatever conclusion we desired?

I think those hand wavings are pretty vague indeed.
posted by Kwine at 9:54 AM on June 25, 2007

Dear AxMe: I’m writing a play in which a bunch of people are chatting. Sort of like how people chat on a web forum. What chatty remarks would typify this kind of chat? –thxbye, d.mamet
posted by found missing at 9:58 AM on June 25, 2007 [1 favorite]

Everybody knows that Quine was a spaz.
posted by It's Raining Florence Henderson at 9:59 AM on June 25, 2007

languagehat, that's a great challenge. My answer is that, yes, I would be uncomfortable walking into the suicide booth, but not for reasons vacapinta brought up -- at least not if I slightly alter your scenario:

Someone shows me an exact clone of me that is "turned off" (maybe in suspended animation). It's not forming any new memories the moment. I'm assured (and, for the sake of this thought experiment, I believe) that any new memories I'm forming now will be transfered to my clone the second I step into the suicide booth -- and the moment I'm dead, he'll be awakened.

Under those conditions, which I think solve vacapinta's main concern, I probably still wouldn't do it, but my avoidance wouldn't be rational. I really can't think of a reasonable way to define "me" other than as "a being having my thought patterns."

I wouldn't step into the booth because I'm biologically "programmed" not to kill the body I'm currently in. It has nothing to do with rationality and it can't be over-ridden by rationality, at least not easily.

But despite my reluctance and hypocrisy, I still say the clone is as me as I am.

Ms. Saint, if future people consider "continuity of thought" to be all-important, what about my question, in the askme thread, concerning the past? If an event in the past is cut off from continuity -- no one alive remembers it happening, there are no surviving records of it having happened and there's no way to work backwards to it from current patterns. Did it happen?
posted by grumblebee at 10:08 AM on June 25, 2007 [1 favorite]

If transportation is death, then this person who will argue until he's blue in the face that he's Bobby isn't actually Bobby.

He's not Bobby1. He's Bobby2. Bobbys1 and 2 are functionally identically up to the point of creation of Bobby2, at which point their experiences diverge. Nothing that happens to Bobby1 affects Bobby2, or vice versa, to any degree further than what happens to one natural identical twin affects the other. That Bobby2 cannot be convinced he is not Bobby1 is little comfort to Bobby1.
posted by cortex (staff) at 10:12 AM on June 25, 2007 [1 favorite]

The problem with Quine is that he couldn't make up his mind but was convincing no matter what he said.

I suppose it'd be hand-waving to Early Quine, when he was still completely willing to tear down the pillars of the analytic/synthetic distinction. The Stanford Encyclopedia on that. I'll admit that I don't know too much about how much Later Quine was willing to accept.

What I would (if I'd have to be a bit less vague, which I don't wanna, because, man, am I lazy) reference is the whole "web of belief" thing (discussed beautifully in the book of the same name. No, Quine didn't talk about teleportation so far as I know, but he certainly talked about how even the most basic of beliefs can be revised. If my whole argument is that, if teleportation were to be possible, we'd probably revise our metaphysical beliefs relating to personal identity, then Quine's views on this would be pretty useful for me.
posted by Ms. Saint at 10:15 AM on June 25, 2007

Grumblebee, what I'd say is, there's a difference between personal identity and the existence of events. If I'm not mistaken, the situation you're suggesting is this: an event (presumably) occurs at time X, but, at time Y, no one remembers it.

Now, suppose it's this: Bobby once ate a piece of cake (mmm, cake). Then, two days later, he can't remember it. All the cake is gone, the plate is cleaned off, and no one else ever knew the cake was ever there. There are two different questions there: 1) was there ever a piece of cake and did it get eaten? and 2) is Bobby when he doesn't remember eating the cake the same person as Bobby who did eat the cake?

The first question could only be answered negatively (I think -- I don't really know what I'm talking about here) if the existence of the past events depends on anyone remembering it in the present.

The second question could could be answered negatively if a person's numerical identity over time depends on later stages of the person remembering earlier stages. In other words, if it is true that I am Ms. Saint because I have memories of the things Ms. Saint has done throughout her life -- going to school, eating cake, dancing jigs, etc.

And... I certainly have no clue what else to say about that.

Let me note: sometime, between last night and this morning, I grew grossly ill. Ugh. It could cause me to start spouting nonsense. Perhaps, even, retroactively.
posted by Ms. Saint at 10:30 AM on June 25, 2007

The first question could only be answered negatively (I think -- I don't really know what I'm talking about here) if the existence of the past events depends on anyone remembering it in the present.

I'm 95% sure I agree with this. Is there any useful sense in which we can posit that a past event happened if there's no record of it (in memory or clear causal link) in the present? I don't see how, but it's a weird thought.

It means, in effect, that I can do something now -- say drop a paperclip and pick it up -- agree to take the memory of my action with me to my death, and make the reasonable statement that, "one day, the paper-clip-drop will never have happened."
posted by grumblebee at 10:44 AM on June 25, 2007

Answers to questions given as answers in a thread about questions is pretty damn meta. And they certainly don't belong in the original question, since the OP is explicitly looking for questions as answers, not answers. So to speak.

Donald Rumsfeld:

"As we know,
There are known knowns.
There are things we know we know.
We also know
There are known unknowns.
That is to say
We know there are some things
We do not know.
But there are also unknown unknowns,
The ones we don't know
We don't know."

—Feb. 12, 2002, Department of Defense news briefing

posted by ericb at 10:49 AM on June 25, 2007 [1 favorite]

So, it isn't chatfilter if I say "I'm writing a play about a world where mankind is gone and the monkeys and bears fight over the world"
posted by Megafly at 1:05 PM on June 25, 2007

The second question could could be answered negatively if a person's numerical identity over time depends on later stages of the person remembering earlier stages.

Why this obsession with numerical identity? While being Turing complete is surely a fun property, it certainly isn't necessary for existence.

This obsession over identity is also silly. Though it is an interesting question, we as a society already have a very mature and nuanced relation with it. Why is there a statute of limitations, why are minors treated differently than adults?
posted by afu at 1:13 PM on June 25, 2007

why are minors treated differently than adults?

Minors can't afford good lawyers.
posted by It's Raining Florence Henderson at 1:17 PM on June 25, 2007

Under those conditions, which I think solve vacapinta's main concern, I probably still wouldn't do it, but my avoidance wouldn't be rational. I really can't think of a reasonable way to define "me" other than as "a being having my thought patterns."

The identity of an object is purely a function of space-time coordinates. The historical continuity of an object can be proved only by tracking the object through space-time and even this does now allow for any Platonic 'true identity' because the most one can ever say is 'this is the object that was previously observed at coordinates A, B, C, D, E...' The cloning debate is only a debate if you believe humans are a 'special' type of object that deserve to be defined by more than their coordinates. There's no rational reason to believe this so it's like arguing about God and other nonsense. As for the question of teleporters it would very much be a case of destroying one object and creating a new object (duh). Whether human society would accept such a technology is debatable, but it's doubtful that any moral objections could resist the economic advantages and people are actually very comfortable with impersonation (talking over the telephone etc). Knowledge that one's mother had been teleported couldn't do much against the intense feelings that exist for the idea of your mother.
posted by nixerman at 1:19 PM on June 25, 2007

What I would (if I'd have to be a bit less vague, which I don't wanna, because, man, am I lazy) reference is the whole "web of belief" thing (discussed beautifully in the book of the same name. No, Quine didn't talk about teleportation so far as I know, but he certainly talked about how even the most basic of beliefs can be revised.

The "whole 'web of belief' thing" is that all of our beliefs are interconnected and self-supporting, and is explicated most clearly, I think, in Chpt. 2+3 of Word and Object. It's true that any of our beliefs can be revised--even our belief in so-called "analytic" truths--assuming that we are willing to make drastic revisions in the remainder of the web, the costs of which can be very high. For example, we can believe that a=not a, assuming we're willing to not believe a bunch of other things, starting with classical logic with identity. What is unclear is how this is supposed to impact how we think about teleportation and personal identity. Maybe someone might think that there were some analytic truths regulating teleportation or personal identity, but I don't think that anyone thinks that.

If my whole argument is that, if teleportation were to be possible, we'd probably revise our metaphysical beliefs relating to personal identity, then Quine's views on this would be pretty useful for me.

That is, there's nothing distinctive about anything Quine says that seems to help here. Whether or not you buy anything Quine says about metaphysics or epistemology, you'd probably revise your beliefs about personal identity if teleportation were possible. Right?
posted by Kwine at 2:35 PM on June 25, 2007

Dame is right, the only reason that question remains is because the person knew the trick about saying you're writing a book. That used to be a joke based on a one off incident. Now it's just sad.
posted by shmegegge at 3:02 PM on June 25, 2007

I'm glad my thought experiment has gotten some people to rethink their position. I've never understood why so many people seem so comfortable with the idea of being destroyed, as long as an identical copy will continue to exist. Sure, it's fine for everybody else, but you personally are dead and gone. Not wanting to be dead and gone any sooner than need be, I ain't getting in the damn teleporter. Y'all have fun on Alpha Centauri without me.
posted by languagehat at 3:07 PM on June 25, 2007

Now what would be really great would be using the tech not for destructive but for duplicative teleportation: pop out a copy of yourself on the moon of Rigel 7, where he'll be immediately apprehended and mindstapled by Receiving; a half an hour after he comes across the pipe, he's reprogrammed to forget about the whole clonery business, and he makes his merry way on whatever task it is that you need doing and that you know only You can get done right.

Then he finishes up, reports in, and is summarily destroyed in a humane fashion without warning. And you don't even have to stand in line at the jetport.
posted by cortex (staff) at 3:15 PM on June 25, 2007 [2 favorites]

And by great I mean 'unspeakably evil', by which I mean 'really, really profitable'.
posted by cortex (staff) at 3:15 PM on June 25, 2007 [1 favorite]

languagehat, last night, while you were asleep I ran you through a machine which replaced all your cells with exact duplicates. There was a brief moment there in which you were actually dead but hopefully you're all better now.

I realize I shouldn't have messed with your identity like that. I'm sorry. It was wrong of me. If you like, tonight while you sleep I can reverse the process. What do you say?
posted by vacapinta at 3:36 PM on June 25, 2007

People seem to believe the following: if my body is destroyed, then I am destroyed.
People seem unwilling to believe the following: if my body is destroyed and an exact replica of my body is created a split second later, then I am still alive.
People, furthermore, seem to believe that the above are necessarily true for some reason or another.

So, suppose teleportation becomes possible. My point is that all the replicas of bodies going around saying "I am the original person! It's still me! I'm still me!" would end up altering our more basic beliefs about personal identity. What I'm using Quine here for is the basic framework about how so-called necessary truths are revisable depending on experience. You disagree with Quine and maintain that there are necessary truths that cannot be denied, and the argument I propose is in trouble.

It seems that all we disagree about, Kwine, is whether or not one's beliefs about the nature of teleportation rely on some so-called necessary truths. Your last sentence makes it sound as if revising one's beliefs about personal identity in light of teleportation would be more like revising one's beliefs about, say, whether or not there's a pizza joint on the corner and less like whether or not 2 + 2 = 4. (If you say that your last sentence doesn't imply this, then I believe you're begging the question that Quine is right and so-called a priori beliefs can be revised).

Now, I probably could also get what I need by vaguely waving towards Carnap or maybe even Peirce, as well as all those positivists I don't know too well because Ayer is too great a punching bag. But I don't remember enough of Peirce to talk about him comfortably, and I think both of them are more of a stretch than Quine. Besides, more people know Quine and I didn't want to sound too erudite. Furthermore, all I ever wanted was a vague hand-wave, and you certainly have to grant me a vague hand-wave.
posted by Ms. Saint at 3:46 PM on June 25, 2007

languagehat, are you just asking about the Ship of Theseus?
posted by dios at 4:02 PM on June 25, 2007

regarding languagehat's clone scenario: Only if the clone shared my memory up to and including the moment of painless-suicide. If the memory/history branches before my death, then we are meaningfully different entities. Where there is no such branching, I have no meaningful reason to consider us different entities.

It's very much like the identity ideas used in Cory Doctorow's Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom. There, people create backups of themselves at regular intervals so that when a particular body dies, they are recreated with all their memories up to the backup, and given information about what happened after the backup leading to their death, and they go on their merry way. There is a meaningful death involved here, that of the person defined by the memories and experiences accrued in the interim, but you remain mostly the same.

I'm okay with that.

For cortex's argument, I'm not assuming that there's a consciousness transfer so much as I think that what consciousness I perceive myself is mostly illusion anyway. It's fleeting, and I don't put my faith in it. Or, to think of it another way, consciousness is the arbiter of my self, but I don't think it is my self. It's much too fragile for that. I think that a perfect copy of myself has as much consciousness continuity with my present self as my present self does with any pervious version of myself, which is to say, not much at all.
posted by Arturus at 4:35 PM on June 25, 2007

languagehat, are you just asking about the Ship of Theseus?

No, that's an entirely different issue. I'm talking about the fact that my consciousness, my "me," inheres in this one particular body, and if the body's gone, it's gone. It doesn't matter to me whether everyone else thinks I've "continued" in another (identical) body; I'm just as dead. I feel that those who argue that it doesn't matter 1) carry what geeks think of as rationality way too far (like those people who deny the very existence of consciousness—sure, you can deny it for everyone else, they might all be robots or illusions, but how can you deny it for yourself?), and 2) wouldn't actually practice what they preach if they got the chance. It's easy to make cold-blooded hyperrational arguments when it's all theoretical, but I'll believe it when I see you step into the booth and get dematerialized.
posted by languagehat at 5:14 PM on June 25, 2007 [1 favorite]

I, for one, certainly wouldn't practice what I preach. Oh, goodness, what a nightmare that would be.
posted by Ms. Saint at 5:21 PM on June 25, 2007

my consciousness, my "me," inheres in this one particular body, and if the body's gone, it's gone.

Which raises the question, what is your body? Your body of today is largely not the same body you had, say, 20 years ago, or the one you were born with. The cells in most body tissues are continually replacing themselves. Brain cells are the exception, but even there, fluids are continually replaced so very little of the cell stays with "you" over time. That being the case, if "you" reside somewhere in a limited portion of the chemistry of your brain cells, we don't actually know whether "you" would also reside in an identical copy of your body (since that replication has never been accomplished). I wouldn't go into the booth either, unless I realized I was conscious of being both in my original body and the clone.
posted by beagle at 7:11 PM on June 25, 2007

I wouldn't go into the booth either, unless I realized I was conscious of being both in my original body and the clone.

Is everyone assuming you'd be the first one to try it? Then I wouldn't either. I fly on planes all the time but that doesn't mean I would have been a test pilot in the early 20th century.

But what if thousands of people are doing it and have done it. Your family, your friends. They're all hopping back and forth to parties in Sirius and Rigel but you stay earthbound convinced, as that Steven Wright joke goes, that they were all destroyed and replaced with exact duplicates.
posted by vacapinta at 7:17 PM on June 25, 2007

Which raises the question, what is your body?

A clever biological machine for keeping my brain running well enough to maintain my sense of self, at least as far as I know. Sleep is the real whammy here, but I keep waking up so that's something.
posted by cortex (staff) at 8:15 PM on June 25, 2007

I am very late to the party, but I've always been convinced of exactly what languagehat's been arguing, and I've attempted to explain this to various people in my life, to varying reactions.

Usually I am found using it to argue against mind uploading (or whatever you want to call it), though, which seems even more ridiculous to me.

Even were it demonstrably true that uploaded-you was as much like you as possible, normal-you would still be laying on the Uploading Room table, dead. Great for everyone else, bad for normal-you, who, unfortunately, you are.
posted by blacklite at 9:52 PM on June 25, 2007

And my rival has a twin.
posted by casarkos at 10:28 PM on June 25, 2007

One thing I like about this argument is how both sides present their side of it as obviously, intuitively true.

"I don't care who else gets up and walks up from a nearby table. I'm dead. End of story."

"If you were to interrogate this new person, they'd tell you they walked through some portal and now they are standing here. Their continuity of memory is as strong as you and I remembering going to bed last night. The same person. Obviously."
posted by vacapinta at 10:36 PM on June 25, 2007

I keep my brain in a big petri dish.
posted by The Deej at 10:40 PM on June 25, 2007

Without the sum total of my memories and experiences, I am not me. And what went into making me me includes my childhood, my marriage, my journey into parenthood, and the moments it took to write this post. Any clone of me that didn't have all of those elements would not be me. Which isn't to say it wouldn't be a person, or of less value, or worth less consideration in the suicide booth (which, if you read the other posts in here, should ideally be located on a bridge, facing a city).

IF you could put me through a transporter and I appeared on the other side with all of my memories intact except for the very brief transition period during the actual transportation process, I would transport.

All this talk makes me think of the old myths that creating an image (as in a photograph) of someone was akin to stealing a piece of his soul...
posted by misha at 10:42 PM on June 25, 2007

Even were it demonstrably true that uploaded-you was as much like you as possible, normal-you would still be laying on the Uploading Room table, dead. Great for everyone else, bad for normal-you, who, unfortunately, you are.

Come now, this doesn't make any sense at all. The people who decide who "you" are the people around you. If normal-you died suddenly and was replaced by an exact copy they would not perceive any discontinuity. And the copy-you would quickly accept this belief. Again, this is related to the general problem of impersonation. You would not perceive yourself as dying, you would perceive yourself as being copied and transferred and everybody else would agree with such an interpretation, reinforcing such a belief. The human tendency to accept such impostors is very, very, very strong. Everyday when your wife comes home from work you accept that she really is your wife, similarly when you talk to her on on the telephone, see her in a picture, or listen to others speak of her even though there is no rational basis for any of these beliefs. Victims of the teleporters would similarly believe in their continuity for the same reason we believe everybody in our life is really themselves: our intuition of the thinking self is so strong that we couldn't help but accept it even in the face of overwhelming evidence.


Without the sum total of my memories and experiences, I am not me.

Except for that what you think you are is nothing more than a collection of opinions. I'm sure that given the removal of certain memories -- that is say you were to forget certain events in your life that have been externally recorded, say on a video camera -- I could persuade you that you are in fact you even though you've forgotten said events. Nobody seriously believes that they are the sum of their memories because everybody understands that perfect recall is a myth. So what you are really is a kind of agreement where those that know you, including yourself, agree that you are in fact you. This basic truth is why people will accept a copy or impostor of you as the real thing. As long as you don't do anything too strange people are always willing to believe you are you because they believe they are themselves.

I'm talking about the fact that my consciousness, my "me," inheres in this one particular body, and if the body's gone, it's gone. It doesn't matter to me whether everyone else thinks I've "continued" in another (identical) body; I'm just as dead.

Again this is highly debatable. All the time people view recording of themselves -- either on video or audio -- and accept that the recording is actually a recording of them. So, no, nobody believes that their self inheres in their body because they behave in such a way that they can be safely impersonated. Every day you wake up and you deal with other people who you believe are people only because yesterday they were people.

If you imagine teleportation as projection where 'you' are being impersonated by something that looks like you then these questions about identity don't arise. It's only the fact that 'you' are being destroyed that puts people off. But again if the impersonation is just as good as the real thing -- that is, people accept recording of themselves as themselves -- then there is no real problem.
posted by nixerman at 11:29 PM on June 25, 2007 [1 favorite]

But, nixerman, you're getting hung up on the definition of 'you'. Yes, you're right, 'you' will continue. Everything will be fine in the world at large, 'you' will accept your own existence, you will be entirely comfortable with what happened. You will even volunteer to teleport all the time.

All of your arguments are about what is accepted and what is believed. That isn't the question here. Of course people can accept anything. If I somehow was turned into a small purple mouse, and could talk, people would accept that, eventually.

Just because there is a copy of you who continues does not mean that the original you continues. Just because there is a VHS tape (how retro of me) with me on it doesn't mean I will feel comfortable with my death.

It's lovely that perception is reality, but that only holds true in the world of perception. The state of my existence is an internal perception, or perhaps even something altogether separate from what we call 'perception': I have a consciousness. My consciousness is entirely separate from the fact that everyone thinks of me as a person.

Let's posit a world in which you are the only human being, and you are ageless. You're very clever, having invented every facet of human technology, and now you're about to transport yourself. All of the essential bits that make up you get disassembled and reassembled, somehow. NewYou acts like you, feels like you, thinks like you... but what happened to OldYou? Dissassembled bits. NewYou will never be able to find out, one way or another, if OldYou experienced death, or not. NewYou will never know if he is really OldYou or just a copy. The only one who will ever truly know is OldYou. What happens to his consciousness?

Without the sum total of my memories and experiences, I am not me. And what went into making me me includes my childhood, my marriage, my journey into parenthood, and the moments it took to write this post. Any clone of me that didn't have all of those elements would not be me.

Without both peanut butter, and jelly, you don't have a pb&j sandwich. Any sandwich without those two things is not a pb&j sandwich. However, importantly, a sandwich which happens to have peanut butter and jelly is not necessarily a pb&j sandwich.

I feel like everyone arguing for the embracing of teleportation is missing the essential indefinable enigma of human consciousness. Come at this from a self-preservation point of view. Let's say that teleportation only works when you enter a special Monitoring Cell and then you shoot yourself in the head with a gun. Totally ridiculous, I know, but let's say then you end up on Alpha Centauri. Perhaps the massive shock is an essential part of getting the mind into the right state to be properly and safely transported, and the transport is done a nanosecond before the bullet hits you.

Let's also say that it is a definite copy process, i.e., you can clearly see dead bodies being dragged out and disposed of, bullet holes and all.

Do you do it?
posted by blacklite at 12:02 AM on June 26, 2007

Consciousness is a standing wave, which is why surfing is so cool.
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 12:57 AM on June 26, 2007

One thing I like about this argument is how both sides present their side of it as obviously, intuitively true.

"I don't care who else gets up and walks up from a nearby table. I'm dead. End of story."

"If you were to interrogate this new person, they'd tell you they walked through some portal and now they are standing here. Their continuity of memory is as strong as you and I remembering going to bed last night. The same person. Obviously."

But those aren't contradictory positions, except where the latter implies that the original's end of continuity doesn't matter. The comments about hyperrationality above are dead on: it's as if people are satisfied that if no one else can tell that they died on account of a perfect clone, they won't notice either. (Well, of course they won't—not because their clone hosts their private consciousness, but because they're dead on the floor.)

Clone me via transporter technology—create a new me. That new me will experience normal continuity of consciousness—it will wake up and greet the day and remember making a trip to the transporter, and will speak with friends and family about it and all is well. This is obvious, and wonderful for him and anyone else who was counting on the continued existence of cortex-the-perceivable-Other. So the second proposition is an acceptable statement.

But cortex-the-original-self-conscious experience is dead. My experience of the world has come to an end, as surely as if someone had chopped me up with an axe and taken my place through careful imitation and plastic surgery. So the first proposition is acceptable.

It's not that my take is obviously, intuitively true and the other is not; it's that the other take is obviously, intuitively true except for the key point of fucking dying on the table that the pro-transporter argument kind of fails to address because it's so busy being intuitive and obvious.
posted by cortex (staff) at 6:28 AM on June 26, 2007 [1 favorite]

What cortex said.

But what if thousands of people are doing it and have done it. Your family, your friends. They're all hopping back and forth to parties in Sirius and Rigel but you stay earthbound convinced, as that Steven Wright joke goes, that they were all destroyed and replaced with exact duplicates.

Are you deliberately missing the point? It's not a joke; they were all destroyed and replaced with exact duplicates. That's what this discussion is about. And yes, to you it doesn't matter that everyone else has been replaced by identical duplicates, just as to them it wouldn't matter if you were so replaced. The only person it would matter to is you. If you don't matter to you, that's cool. I matter to me.
posted by languagehat at 6:38 AM on June 26, 2007

So it's the awareness of having been replaced that bothers you, languagehat? Being aware of others' having been replaced isn't as worrisome, but the knowledge that you yourself have been so replaced upsets you?

For myself, if I know everyone has been replaced piecemeal and still self-identifies without worry, I think I'd be fine in the knowledge that I'm a replacement, too. If I know, on the other hand, that I'm the only person who's been subject to this new process and I'm a weird copy of myself, and nobody else knows or believes me when I tell them, I guess that's a sort of existential horror, and probably a crisis. I think that would freak me the fuck out.
posted by cgc373 at 6:55 AM on June 26, 2007

In fact, it is kind of freaking me the fuck out right now. Thanks a lot, absurd questioners! You've freaked me the fuck out!
posted by cgc373 at 6:57 AM on June 26, 2007

Quick, start drinking. It is the universal solvent for existential panic attacks. I am your doctor and I am giving you medical advice.
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 7:01 AM on June 26, 2007

Being a replacement would be a worry for my replacement, not me. My worry is getting killt. My replacement's existential conundrum kind of humdrum by comparison.
posted by cortex (staff) at 7:04 AM on June 26, 2007

Any humdrum condundrum's best numbed with some rum, right, stav?
posted by cgc373 at 7:08 AM on June 26, 2007 [1 favorite]

Rewrite: Some rum'll numb a humdrum conundrum.
posted by cgc373 at 7:10 AM on June 26, 2007

So it's the awareness of having been replaced that bothers you, languagehat?

Sheesh, why is this so hard for people to get? It's being killed that bothers me. Just as it would bother me to have someone walk up to me right now with a gun, point it at my head, and pull the trigger, it would bother me to step into a "transporter booth" (aka suicide box) and be disintegrated. It's mildly interesting that in the latter case there would be a replica of me walking around, but really not that comforting.

Or, again, what cortex said.
posted by languagehat at 7:25 AM on June 26, 2007

cortex:it's that the other take is obviously, intuitively true except for the key point of fucking dying on the table that the pro-transporter argument kind of fails to address

languagehat:It's being killed that bothers me.

This is where we diverge and can never agree. Death is not something you experience. Yes, you can experience pain but you don't "experience" Death itself. Instead, one moment you're alive and conscious, the next moment: nonexistence. Except that that discontinuity has been bridged by having that consciousness appear somewhere else.

It's the realm of metaphysics I know. But I think for you guys there's distinctions between:

1) Being put to sleep (drugged) and put on a spaceship to be woken up years later. Same you?

2) Being frozen (suspended animation) and taken on a spaceship to be re-awoken later. Same you?

3) While in that frozen state, you're body is temporarily disassembled and then re-assembled exactly - down to the last atom! Same you?

4) Your body is re-assemebled, but using duplicate atoms. Shouldn't matter from 3) since an atom is an atom. Same you?

5) Instead of being re-assembled here, the instructions for re-assembling you are beamed to Alpha Centauri where you are re-assembled. Same you?

According to you guys, in one of those steps, consciousness has leaked out.
posted by vacapinta at 7:37 AM on June 26, 2007

Non-being is the most frightening thing in life.

My greatest fear is not to be. That is why Tillich's Courage to Be (the subject of this awesome post by one of Mefi's best posters) had such an impact on me, even though I haven't mastered the Courage Tillich suggests.
posted by dios at 7:52 AM on June 26, 2007

I don't have a problem getting the fear of death here. I used to be rather concerned by it myself. The key for me now is that I don't think I have the sort of continuity that is challenged by transportation in the first place, which is a point cortex addressed briefly above, but I haven't seen any good arguments against.

I agree with you that a transporter will disrupt what I'm going to call strong continuity. This is the idea that your consciousness is indwelt in your body, and is fully continuous for your life, excluding periods of unconsciousness, sleep, etc. You have some abstract self, which you identify through the present experience of qualia and internal monologue. You make the assumption that this abstract self is the same abstract self that you had a year ago, that over that period of time this abstract self has not ceased to exist, that it has had continuous awareness and existence.

Thing is, I don't see any evidence whatsoever to make this assumption. When I deny consciousness, I don't deny the experience of the abstract self as I've described above. This is very real, very important. What I am disputing is the assumption that this self is anything but trapped in a particular moment of time. I see no reason to not assume the counter of the strong continuity hypothesis, that every moment I am consciously aware of in fact possesses a distinct and unique abstract self, which is constantly 'dying' and being replaced. What continuity there is, is an illusion provided by the persistence of memory. This is weak continuity.

If strong continuity is correct, you're absolutely right. Transporters kill you. Hands down.

On the other hand, if weak continuity is correct, there's no meaningful sense in which a disintegration and reintegration somewhere else is any more of a death than what I experience all the time in everyday life.

That said, these are both unproved and possibly unprovable hypotheses. I prefer weak continuity because it strikes me as metaphysically more consistent with my materialism. I'm deprivileging my consciousness deliberately, because doing so makes intuitive sense to me.

Can I prove it? No. But no one's given me a reason to prefer the strong continuity hypothesis, other than existential squeamishness.
posted by Arturus at 7:57 AM on June 26, 2007 [1 favorite]

I suspect, vacapinta, that the anti-transporter folks will see an essential difference between (2) and (3). It's the disassembly that upsets them.

It all comes down to what "death" means. From where I sit, it means cessation of consciousness with no possibility of its return; so, irreversible brain death is death. OTOH, from my point of view, "dying" on the operating table and being "brought back to life" by skilled surgeons is manifestly not death.

I therefore can't see any essential difference between your five scenarios.

If I stepped into a transporter and the instructions for my reassembly were duplicated and beamed to two transporter receivers, or if there were a way to do the instruction-generation part nondestructively, ISTM that there would then exist two separate but equally genuine flabdablets who share a certain amount of common history. This would be cool for a while, but because each would be having his own life afterward, they would probably have to come to some arrangement about naming rights and property distribution.

If we decided to get a room and have sex, that would probably be incest, but it wouldn't be masturbation. Well, not all of it anyway.

This seems to me no weirder to contemplate than the ordinary process by which identical twins come into being; the difference is one of degree, not of kind.

On preview: dios, ISTM that non-being is no big deal; subjectively, it's essentially indistinguishable from deep sleep. I don't understand why it scares so many people so badly. What scares me is the idea of the various nasty ways to achieve non-being.
posted by flabdablet at 8:03 AM on June 26, 2007

vacapinta: I see what you're saying, and agree that it may just be a fundamental metaphysical sticking point in our otherwise mutually understand positions. Let me give this one more shot, regarding the above list:

In any of those states, it's arguable that instead of the cortex that went in there is a cortex' that came out; and it'd be the case that the self-conscious cortex' would have no reason to consider himself anything but cortex.

Add a bullet point to the list:

6) Falling asleep at night, and waking up in the morning.

If I go to sleep tonight, I have no way of knowing that I will not be killed painlessly while a-slumber and replaced with cortex'. If that were to happen, cortex' would get up, yawn, come to Metafilter, and comment, none the wiser, and all would proceed as normal. I, cortex, would never even know anything happened, because I was killed while unconscious. As you say:

Instead, one moment you're alive and conscious, the next moment: nonexistence.

In this case, as in all your cases above, death from the experiential perspective of cortex could be said to have been propositioned at the time I fell asleep (or was drugged, or frozen), and in the case of murder-in-my-sleep was actually made good on.

I discount out of personal belief the idea that my, cortex's, consciousness will transfer anywhere, so I call this death without qualification. Obviously, disagreement on this point changes the whole ballgame, but run with me for a short while longer on this:

The difference between sleep and stepping into a teleporter is that I have no choice but to sleep. Because I know I will sleep each night, I take comfort in my belief that the me waking up will be the me going to sleep; that when cortex falls into slumber, it is cortex and not cortex' who is waking up and remembering having gone to bed the night before. The proposition of whether to enter the teleportation chamber that we call sleep has been decided for me by nature, and there is no compelling evidence that cortex' is more likely the one to wake than cortex and nothing I could do about it anyway.

So there is the difference: if you were to ask me to step into a teleporter, you'd be asking me to confront an optional confrontation with continuity in a context where I have every reason to suspect that cortex will end and cortex' will begin. It is the opposite of sleep, depsite both containing the same proposition of transformation. To step into the teleporter is madness; to worry about sleep is madness of a different kind. Options 1-5 in your list above all fall on a continuum between the two, and whether and how I'd entertain a foray into any of those would depend an awful lot on the circumstances.
posted by cortex (staff) at 8:08 AM on June 26, 2007

It's being killed that bothers me. Just as it would bother me to have someone walk up to me right now with a gun, point it at my head, and pull the trigger, it would bother me to step into a "transporter booth" (aka suicide box) and be disintegrated.

This does come across as a simplistic model of what's going on. Given that you cannot in any way distinguish between being copied and actually being physically transported this belief that you're dying and a copy is being created is just a belief. It reeks of the primitive belief that cameras steal one's and the various religious objections against recording the human form.


Let's also say that it is a definite copy process, i.e., you can clearly see dead bodies being dragged out and disposed of, bullet holes and all.

You're playing perception games to distort what's really going on. What about the opposite extreme, what if you went to sleep and simply woke up in another place? What if I told you that OldYou is actually being transported and it's the copy, NewYou, that must be created in the old place and then destroyed to balance various equations. If we are working with a perfect transporter then by definition you can never prove one way or the other what actually happened in the suicide box and neither can anybody else and so your belief that you are dying is conjecture.

Just to be clear here the notion that there really an actual "thing" that called consciousness that inheres in a body is a very debatable notion. There is no empirical justification for such a belief -- nobody has ever photographed or captured a consciousness or 'self' -- and the only evidence that people ever offer for it is purely anecdotal. When you throw in phenomena like sleep and alcohol and various psychological phenomena then this notion becomes even more and more suspect. People who take the transporter to be a suicide box can do so, but they will have a hard slog convincing anybody -- including themselves -- that they've died and are now somebody 'else' and not their old 'self'. All the evidence on hand, lacking though it may be, will indicate otherwise. And frankly I don't see how anybody can rationally entertain the ghost in the machine model of consciousness. As far as I can see consciousness and the 'self' -- if one is willing to believe in such a thing -- cannot in any way be just a property of the body.
posted by nixerman at 8:09 AM on June 26, 2007

flbdablet: the fear is facing non-being that we know will be there. Of course non-being itself is painless, fearless, consciousness-less, everything-less.


Being -----------------XDeathX------------>>Non-being

Obviously everything to the right of X is cake. It isn't to be feared because it will be miserable or anything. The fear comes into play to the left of X, facing it, as we approach. We have to live life and face non-being, all the while knowing it is inevitable. At some point I will not be. That scares me because I like being. I don't want to lose it, but I will and it will be gone. Obviously at the point of X this fear ends. But leading up to it, there is great fear and trembling.
posted by dios at 8:11 AM on June 26, 2007

As long as what leads up to it isn't in and of itself unpleasant, I can't see a need for fear and trembling. I plan to pay as much attention as I possibly can to my last moments of consciousness and enjoy them as much as possible. ISTM that fear and trembling would be a complete waste of incomparably precious time.

I've had enough experiences with assorted useful chemicals to have formed a reasonable belief that, if I truly knew that death was imminent and inevitable, the moments leading up to it might well be the most mindblowing high it's possible for a human brain to achieve. In quite a few of these experiences, the only slightly sour note has been caused by the deep knowledge that at some point I'm going to have to stop surfing this particular experiential wave or I will die.

If you've never had similar experiences, I respectfully suggest to you that you introduce yourself to nitrous oxide, for starters. I have friends who tell me that ketamine is also very useful in this regard, though I've not had an opportunity to experiment with it myself. Don't do heroin, though, even though there are many stories of junkies who end up cursing out the paramedics who Narcan them back to life for spoiling their high :-)

I really do think that knowing that the final curtain was in fact where I was headed within the next few minutes, and that there was nothing at all I could or should do to change that, could actually be quite liberating.

In fact, it seems to me at least somewhat plausible that the religious notion of eternal paradise may in fact be an artefact of the dying brain's final loss of the feeling of time passing; the necessary precondition being that the occupant of said brain is having a good time right up to the end ("peace with God").

Dying is a trick I can only do once; that much is true. But that doesn't mean it needs to be a bad trick. It simply means I really ought to do all my other tricks first.
posted by flabdablet at 8:35 AM on June 26, 2007 [1 favorite]

There are a lot of words in this thread. Words I have no intention of reading. But I'm curious: has anyone pointed out the obvious flaw in this system, yet? Since we're going to be beaming the information required to recreate ourselves willy nilly around the universe, some smart-ass hacker is going to figure out how to intercept and decode us all, and before you know it the damn kids these days are downloading pirated versions of Paris Hilton and whoever is "in" that day, and everything goes to Hell.
posted by It's Raining Florence Henderson at 9:32 AM on June 26, 2007

I think what languagehat is getting at isn't whether or not it's the same you in some cute little identity crisis way. It's whether the him that is currently saying to you right this very moment "I'm not going into the transporter" would ever exist again. Sure, maybe some copy of him will emerge on the other side with perfect recollection of having refused to go into the transporter as if he had really experienced it himself, but he won't have. he will be another person, albeit identical, who only has reconstructed memories of the event he never lived. The one who lived it? Yeah, he's dead. He no longer thinks, and he will not experience whatever the new languagehat is experiencing. We like to pretend that there is no way to recognize this difference if languagehat is right, but that's not really true. We know as much about the experience or lack thereof after what we perceive as death as we do about the weather on a planet in alpha centauri 4 billion years ago.

If there is a soul that goes to either heaven or hell upon death, for instance, then the soul of the languagehat who is currently discussing this with you on this website will likely be in heaven looking at the duplicate him and going "I fucking said it was a rip off!"

But here's another way to look at it. If the transporter could take the information of "languagehat" and create him in another place WITHOUT disintregating him where he started, then there's significant reason to expect that it's not the same dude waking up on the other side.

But the major point is this: the idea that we cannot experience having given up our life to an identical duplicate relies entirely on the premise that a)there is no afterlife and b)there is no ability for consciousness to exist outside of the body.

The second of these premises actually can't be true if transporting were to actually exist without simply killing the original person and cloning him in another place. If we are to transport consciousness from one place to another it cannot be distributed among the disintegrated atoms of our body. We know enough about our own cognition to know that it is not divisible and reunitable in that way. A labotomized person can't have the original tissue put back and be fine again as if nothing had happened. so if we discover, through some unknowable form of super science, a way to transport consciousness from one place to another, and also to transport the body, then we will have invented or discovered a way for consciousness to exist outside of the body, and if that's the case then we are perfectly capable of being SEVERELY DISAPPOINTED when we step into one end of the machine and find that the other end doesn't hold what we knew as us any more.

of course, that's all speculation, but so is this entire conversation, so good fun wot?
posted by shmegegge at 9:35 AM on June 26, 2007

before you know it the damn kids these days are downloading pirated versions of Paris Hilton and whoever is "in" that day, and everything goes to Hell awesome.

You see what I did for you right there? I fixed that thing you had there that needed fixing.
posted by shmegegge at 9:43 AM on June 26, 2007

You see what I did for you right there? I fixed that thing you had there that needed fixing.

The exact sentence I would expect to hear from the person operating the receiving pod.
posted by It's Raining Florence Henderson at 11:30 AM on June 26, 2007

It's whether the him that is currently saying to you right this very moment "I'm not going into the transporter" would ever exist again. Sure, maybe some copy of him will emerge on the other side with perfect recollection of having refused to go into the transporter as if he had really experienced it himself, but he won't have. he will be another person, albeit identical, who only has reconstructed memories of the event he never lived.

Here's a thought experiment for you.

You're standing next to a large green box, about the size of a phone booth. One side is completely open; the interior is completely dark. Twelve feet away, at the other end of the room, is a similar box in red.

You poke a screwdriver into the open side of the green box. As the tip of the screwdriver enters the opening, it begins to look fuzzy and indistinct; you push it in a little deeper and the tip disappears from view altogether, as if you'd pushed it into muddy water.

You look over at the red box, and you notice the tip of a screwdriver sticking out of it. Waggle your screwdriver, and the tip poking out of the red box waggles too.

You push the screwdriver all the way into the green box, and you see an identical screwdriver emerging from the red one. You're looking at the red box, so it's only when you notice that there's a hand gripping the screwdriver handle that you panic and whip your hand back out of the green box.

Realizing that your hand is still perfectly fine, you stick it back in the green box, and wave. A hand, recognizably yours, is now sticking out of the red box and waving at you. You waggle your fingers. The hand waggles its fingers. You stick your arm in, up to the shoulder, and an arm emerges from the red box. You raise and lower your stuck-in arm, and see the red-box arm raising and lowering accordingly.

You withdraw your arm from the green box, and go and have a stiff drink.

When you return, you lob the screwdriver into the green box. It drops out of the red box and falls on the floor. You crouch down, reach into the green box and feel around for the screwdriver. Over on the other side of the room, you see your own arm feeling around on the floor. You feel fingertips meeting the screwdriver, and you grab it, pick it up, and step away from the green box. You're holding a screwdriver.

You push the green box over to the door of the room, so that the open side covers the doorway, and call to your faithful assistant: "Mr. Watson -- come here -- I want to see you."

Watching the red box, you see a door swinging open out of its side, then Mr. Watson's head pokes out and says "That's odd. As I was opening the door, I could have sworn the lights were off in here. What did you want?"

"Nothing," you say, and he leaves, shutting the door behind him.

You wheel the green box back away from the door, and stick your head through the open side. You don't feel anything strange, but you see yourself on the other side of the room, facing away, with your head and shoulders disappearing into the gloomy interior of a large green box.

So: do you pull your head back out of the green box, or do you walk straight on in and walk out of the red box, before going for your second stiff drink?

If we are to transport consciousness from one place to another it cannot be distributed among the disintegrated atoms of our body. We know enough about our own cognition to know that it is not divisible and reunitable in that way.

We know no such thing.

If consciousness is, as I and many others believe, something that sentient creatures do rather than something they are, it's quite reasonable to expect that it would, in principle, survive any disintegration/transport/reintegration process that's good enough to leave other bodily processes functional.

ISTM that the existence of the phenomenon of deep sleep is enough to refute the idea that consciousness is a necessary component of identity. Consciousness is regularly stopped and started in the course of ordinary living.

"I think, therefore I am" is fine, as far as it goes; but "somebody I trust reports having observed me deeply asleep at four o'clock this morning, therefore I was" is fine too.

People who currently have a severe fear of death, and who do not already subscribe to this point of view, would do well to consider it carefully.
posted by flabdablet at 5:02 PM on June 26, 2007

One aside, following on the sleep vs. transporter dichotomy—the argument that languagehat and I have both made against the idea of stepping into a transporter pretty much requires that transporters be nascent rather than established human-transport technology anyway:

We're taking the liberty of saying, "presented with the opportunity of stepping into a transporter, I would balk". But surely, if transport tech were to work well an inexpensively and the vanguard of transportees all came out the other side healthy and happy if existentially jumpy, it'd be come a moot point—indeed, they might all be Joe Blow' instead of Joe Blow, but none of them can know it, and Joe Blow isn't around to complain, and so things seem to have worked well. And so the question of countless deaths is elided as a matter of convenience, much as the question of sleep-as-death is now one solely for philosophers and loonies. (Imagine living in constant, mortal fear of sleep, convinced each day that you are the leftovers of yesterday's dead man, your nightmare repeating itself wearily every day! Yikes!)

The idea of using the tech duplicatively—which, really, seems like pretty much a given once you're willing to grant functioning transporter tech—would probably remain wildly unsettling and non-kosher in society, though. Whatever assurances may come from remembering your successful trips through a transporter pod would be likely be shaken by the existential clusterfuck of staring yourself in the face and arguing about who is really you. So that'd probably be regulated with an iron goddam fist, clones considered the highest form of contraband except where convenient to obfuscated military/industrial needs.

And in a completely non-snarky, not-a-big-deal way, using ISTM instead of just typing the damned thing out or some variation thereof is just plain driving me nuts. It's not a very long phrase in the first place!
posted by cortex (staff) at 5:20 PM on June 26, 2007

We know no such thing.

If consciousness is, as I and many others believe, something that sentient creatures do rather than something they are, it's quite reasonable to expect that it would, in principle, survive any disintegration/transport/reintegration process that's good enough to leave other bodily processes functional.

I suppose I used consciousness the wrong way. To put it another way: If we are talking about a disintegration of a body such that it's atoms can be shuttled about at mind-blinkering speeds and reassembled whole and unmangled elsewhere, then it seems to me that we are not talking about a box as you describe. A box as you describe would be more of a dune-esque "folding of space" type dealie or just straight up completely impossible magic. Now, the reason I say this is as follows: In order to maintain control of the hand coming out of the box there must be some maintained neural connection between said hand and one's brain. For that to happen, it must be space itself which is manipulated and not the one passing through it.

So yeah, in that example I'd have me a stiff drink or 10 and then do cartwheels through the box screaming "Eureka!" But if we're talking about an all or nothing you're-either-in-the-box-when-the-switch-is-flipped-or-you're-not disintegration with resulting reintegration on the other side, then I completely see reason to balk. For myself, if I saw someone else do it and come out the other side happy as a pig in shit and none the worse for wear, I'd step into any teleporter you'd throw at me. BUT, I'd wonder like hell if I was still the me that hadn't gone in yet. Further, if someone were to say they didn't trust it, even the me that came out of the box would say "Yeah, I can't blame you. For all I know I'm not even the original me." The very worst thing I can imagine would be the scenario where capital M E ME (or rather, let's say the bit of my thought that allows me to think of myself in the third person and is capable of perceiving my own thoughts outside of thinking them) that you'll sometimes hear people referring to as one's third eye or soul or what have you, is somehow not transferred but duplicated and that for some spiritual or metaphysical or whatever reason is well aware of the fact after it goes down. If you've ever seen The Prestige, you could see how that might be upsetting, if Hugh Jackman's plight were rather less corporeal and rather more Ethereal. They say there are no atheists in fox holes, and I'll go you one further and say there are no Spiritualists in Teleporters, and probably precious few agnostics to boot.
posted by shmegegge at 6:14 PM on June 26, 2007

A box as you describe would be more of a dune-esque "folding of space" type dealie or just straight up completely impossible magic.

Since any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic, you should assume the latter. But if you want some kind of crude clue about what might be going on, look here.

In order to maintain control of the hand coming out of the box there must be some maintained neural connection between said hand and one's brain. For that to happen, it must be space itself which is manipulated and not the one passing through it.

In fact, that's the conclusion you'd come to, which is why you were willing to stick your head in there in the first place - but it's not what's going on. Too late, you realize that if it were, the box interiors would not be dark - you'd be able to see the view out of the red box by looking into the green one, and vice versa, and Watson wouldn't have noticed anything odd about the lighting. Apparently these boxes are specifically designed not to attempt transport of non-virtual photons.

Also: careful measurements would reveal that the mass of each box increases by precisely the mass of any object that enters it, and decreases by precisely the mass of any object that leaves.

So you realize that in the fuzzy-looking region inside the openings of the red and green boxes there is a tremendous amount of disassembly, signaling and reassembly going on, and it's done so well that all atoms behave as if all their neighbors remain adjacent, even though it may be that for at least some of the time they're actually being simulated by the teleporters.

This has gross effects - the head sticking out of the red box doesn't fall to the floor, because the red box is accurately simulating all the bonding forces that would normally be attaching it to the neck entering the green box - and subtle effects: all the intra-body signaling keeps working, too. But the physical connection between head and torso is all merely simulated.

So it now occurs to you that your entire head has already been disassembled and reconstructed. If you pull it out, it will be disassembled and reconstructed again and reattached to your original neck. If you walk straight into the green box, the rest of your body will get disassembled and reconstructed and reattached to your reassembled head. What are you going to do?

Personally, I would amuse myself for a while by standing sideways-on to the openings, with my left half at the green and my right half at the red, enjoying the bizarre double-vision effects while contemplating the nature of my present location and hoping the UPS was in good nick.
posted by flabdablet at 9:33 PM on June 26, 2007

Okay yes, in the perfect world where your box works however you want it to and is perfect and safe with no question whatsoever, sure. If the point of this exercise is seriously going to be for you to whittle away at your invention until it cannot possibly be questioned for any reason, then I don't have a whole lot of choice, do I?

Or we can just accept what I said before, that the door you can walk through seems spiffy as hell, and the box that zaps your entire self to parts uncertain is sketchy and leave it at that.

And I'm familiar with Bradbury, thanks.
posted by shmegegge at 8:29 AM on June 27, 2007

The only person it would matter to is you. If you don't matter to you, that's cool. I matter to me.

It occurs to me that the transporter thing is a red herring. I agree with languagehat and co. that a real person -- the person I feel myself to be -- would be destroyed. And that fact isn't changed by the fact that a new person would emerge who felt in his gut that he was me.

I think the real issue is -- is it a problem if a real person is destroyed?

Before continuing, let's dispense with a few issues: first, yes it's a problem if a real person is destroyed AGAINST HIS WILL. That's murder, and my guess is that most of us have a problem with that. But that's not what we're talking about here.

And yes, it is a problem for the survivors, if they miss the person, but that also isn't a problem here. As-far-as the survivors are concerned, the copy would be the same as the original. Even languagehat agrees with that.

So the only potential problem -- if there is a problem -- is to the original. He will cease to be.

I'll put this on a personal footing now, because I can only speak for myself: there's something odd about saying, "I don't want to be destroyed", because what does it mean to not want something?

It's a little hard to think about, but for me I'm pretty sure that it means, "I don't want something to happen now that I'll regret later."

That's not always the case. For instance, if I had a kid, I might not want certain things to happen to him after my death, even though I'll be dead and won't be able to regret them. But in this case, I'm just talking about me. When I say, "I don't want X to happen to me," I mean "I don't want X to hurt me later (or now)."

The thing is, I can't possibly regret my decision to walk into the transporter, because there won't be a me to walk feel regret. (The copy won't feel regret, because to him, it will feel as if he stepped in and stepped out somewhere else, feeling just fine.)

I guess I can be sad that, post transporter, I won't ever be able to kiss someone again or see a movie or listen to a Beethoven symphony. But I think even this is irrational thinking.

Because I've never experienced non-consciousness (I've been unconscious, but of course it didn't give me an experience), I can't imagine it. So when I try to imagine being dead, the best I can sum up is a vague feeling of being conscious "somewhere else".

So I imagine myself in this murky darkness, regretting the fact that I made the decision to walk into that transporter; regretting the fact that I'll never feel sand between my toes again while that son-of-a-bitch copy gets to ride the Cyclone at Coney Island!

But it won't happen that way. Being dead won't be a sea of regret. It won't be anything. Feeling sorry for the dead me is like feeling sorry of an unconceivable fetus. It's so sad that those two kids never had sex. Think of the poor baby that didn't get a chance to get born!

So the real issue here, for me, is whether or not it's rational to fear death. Obviously, I'm coming to this from the point-of-view of an atheist who has no belief in an afterlife. And I can't come up with any rational reason to fear death, especially when there's no pain associated and there's no detrimental effect to my loved ones.

I can still see languagehat over in the corner, smirking and saying, "Okay, then. Go ahead and step into the transporter. I dare you." And he has good reason to smirk, because given all I've said, I probably still wouldn't do it."

I can't shake off the tremendous need to keep this body alive. That makes sense. I'm "programmed" to keep it alive, whether that's rational or not. I would have a really hard time bunjee jumping, even if you could prove to me that it was 100% safe. Rationally, I'd have not problem with it, but I'd still feel a powerful urge not to do it. I'd also feel a powerful urge not to eat a chocolate candy made to look like a cockroach. Even if I saw it being made and knew it wasn't a cockroach.

I also find it nearly impossible NOT to imagine myself regretting the suicide, even though I know that rationally, it makes no sense.

So here's where I'm left: with a schism between my head and my gut. And some people (languagehat?) are going to say, "If it looks like a duck..." If I'm scared to a walk into the transporter, then that's that. Anything else is navel gazing and sophistry.

I can't exactly argue with that. But to me, the rational argument is important. Even if I don't -- or can't -- act on it. I feel the same way about free will. I don't believe it exists, but I FEEL like it exists and I can't see how I'll ever shake the feeling. Depending on how "nuts-and-bolts" you are, you'll either say, "well, if you have an unshakable feeling, you might as well call it real." Or, if you're like me, you'll live in a less cut-and-dried world in which head and gut never quite align.
posted by grumblebee at 9:05 AM on June 27, 2007

grumblebee, it sounds like you just must made Freud's point for him vis-a-vis the pleasure principle and eros. That which sustains and promotes life is instinctually pleasurable; that which threatens life is instinctually painful and avoided. Of course, Freud had to go and tack on Thanatos and the death instinct to confuse the issues, but I don't have that instinct as far as I can tell.
posted by dios at 9:36 AM on June 27, 2007

grumblebee, I can't help but feel like you're needlessly complicating the matter. the question doesn't have to be, "well, since I won't be around to perceive the consequences, why do I care?" it can be as simple as "why on earth would I kill myself rather than go on living?" I mean, if you believe that the transporter would kill you, you'd have to be AWFULLY committed to the idea of giving a clone of yourself a life on mars or wherever to not just say "no thanks, I've got a life full of sex and booze and friends to lead right here, but I appreciate the offer."
posted by shmegegge at 10:39 AM on June 27, 2007

shmegegge, I'm making the assumption that you WANT to get to Mars or whatever. (Or that you want some version of you to get to Mars). Sure, if you're happy where you are, you should stay there.

Say your boss, who loves transporters, has told you that he needs you on Mars by 3pm today. If you're in my shoes, and you don't feel like you have rational grounds to be scared of the transporter (but you're scared anyway), you have something to wrestle with.
posted by grumblebee at 10:54 AM on June 27, 2007

It does in a sense, but fear doesn't necessarily have to come into it, I think. Your boss would effectively have said "I want you to kill yourself so that a duplicate of you would live the rest of its life on mars until I want it to die and have a duplicate of IT back here."

a response of "no thanks, I'd rather live" doesn't seem irrational to me because dying hasn't got a whole lot to recommend it, especially not for someone else's sake (in this instance. I'm ignoring the idea that someone puts a gun to your child's head and says "get in the teleporter or the kid gets it.")
posted by shmegegge at 10:59 AM on June 27, 2007

See I still think you're thinking irrationally (in the same way that I do and most people do, so I'm not mocking you). What you're saying sounds to me like, "I like cake, so why on Earth would I want to stop eating it."

To which I'd answer, "You wouldn't want to stop eating it because if you stopped, you'd miss it. Even if I zapped the memory of cake from your mind, you'd be having a worse time than you would be if your were eating cake." But in the transporter case, you wouldn't miss living, because you wouldn't exist to miss anything. And there aren't two kinds of dead people, happy and unhappy ones.
posted by grumblebee at 11:14 AM on June 27, 2007

No, but there are two kinds of people: dead people and not-dead people. As a not-dead person, I'd feel considerable distress over being asked to take a direct action that'd cause me to switch camps, and I have so far not heard any argument that convinces me that I wouldn't be doing so.
posted by cortex (staff) at 11:18 AM on June 27, 2007

(So while I grant that, as an atheist, I can't worry about being an unhappy non-being, I can sure experience varying degrees of happiness or unhappiness with my current situation vis-a-vis becoming a non-being in the short term.)
posted by cortex (staff) at 11:19 AM on June 27, 2007

cortex is saying what I'd say. It has nothing to do, necessarily, with how you'll feel afterward, it's just that there isn't any reason to kill yourself. Instead of your cake analogy, let's modify it a little.

You can eat cake or you can get a bullet in the head.

Well, if I got a bullet in the head, I certainly wouldn't miss the cake anymore, but why on earth would I ask for a bullet in the head when the alternative is to eat cake?
posted by shmegegge at 11:26 AM on June 27, 2007

oh man, and then I go and think up an even more ridiculous analogy. I'm gonna share it just because it made me laugh a little in my mouth:

You can eat cake or you can get a bullet in the head, at which point this guy who looks just like you and thinks he is you will get the cake. And if you eat the cake, then we don't create that guy.
posted by shmegegge at 11:32 AM on June 27, 2007

Metafilter may not be the place for this sort of depth, but I'd say you and cortex aren't explaining why one should want to live. If the answer is, "because one does!" then I agree. That's what I was saying about my biological programming prodding me to save my body.

My question is -- is there any RATIONAL reason to want to continue living, aside from programmed impulse. (I'm not belittling impulse. I'm just curious.)

I'm tempted to answer, "Because life is fun!" And I'm cool with assuming that's true (obviously it's not if you're in a concentration camp or have some sort of horrible personal or medical problem, but I think for the sake of this argument, we should ignore those cases and agree that life is enjoyable).

So why do we want something enjoyable to continue? Is there a way to answer that other than, "because we do?"

It still seems to me that we want it to continue because we imagine two possible futures: one in which we're happy because we get to go on eating cake, having sex, taking hot showers, etc. And other where we're unhappy because we can't do any of those things.

I'm basing this on myself, because I only have access to my own psychology. When I think really hard about why I want to go on living, I think it's because I don't want to go without all the wonderful things in my life. And THERE'S the irrationality.

A non-existent person can't "go without" or "miss stuff" or "feel cheated."

That is NOT an argument for suicide. There's nothing there that says, "therefor you should kill yourself." But there's also nothing there that says, "therefor you should keep living" or "therefor it's better to be alive than dead." To me -- even though it's commonplace to do so -- you can't rationally compare life to death. You can compare one kind of life with another, like the life of a convict vs. the life of a movie star. But you can't compare life and death on an experiential scale. You can't ask what's it like being alive vs. being dead, because it's not like anything being dead.

If I'm right about this, there's no non-impulse reason to stay alive or kill yourself. There's no way to explain rationally why one is better off being alive (once we've eliminated pain caused to loved ones if you die).

So all things being equal, why NOT step into the transporter if it will cause some good? If it will make the company more money or whatever.

Note that I STILL don't think I'd do it. I'd resist, because that impulse is so strong. And, again, I'm not belittling the impulse. I don't think rationality trumps instinct. (I also don't think instinct trumps rationality. Why rank them?)

But when push comes to shove, I think I wouldn't get into the transporter for the same reason an insect tried to get away from your descending boot. The insect barely has a brain. It doesn't want anything. But it's programmed to protect it's body. Which if you understand Darwinism, makes total sense.
posted by grumblebee at 5:10 PM on June 27, 2007

By the way, I can think of some interesting thought-experiments to spice up our conundrum even more. Let's say someone used transporter technology to create a clinic. You'd step on the transporter and emerge, not on Mars, but ten feet across the room. But it would take, say, an hour after you stepping in for you to emerge.

During that hour, computers would be scanning all your data and making subtle changes to it. The you that was re-constructed on the other end would be subtly different from the you that stepped into the transporter in the first place.

Let's rule out Frankenstein scenarios. Let's say the technology was advanced enough to essentially keep the new you just like the old you, only without some problems fixed.

Now I know that the languagehat camp would not go for this. They'd say, "What's the point of having my hernia cured when it wouldn't be ME who had it cured? I'd be a dead person who had a hernia." I get that and, as I've stated earlier, I agree with it if only for instinctual reasons.

But what if there was some aspect of yourself that regularly caused pain to those around you. Let's say you have a mean temper. The transporter can cure that for you (while still keeping your personality intact. You'd be like a nicer you). Would you step into the transporter. Yes, you'd die. On the other hand, your loved ones would get to live with a new, improved you. They wouldn't miss you. To them, you'd still be there, but you'd no longer yell at them all the time.

What about if you're an alcoholic? Or a quadroplegic who can't make love to his wife?
posted by grumblebee at 5:19 PM on June 27, 2007

A non-existent person can't "go without" or "miss stuff" or "feel cheated."

Yes, but an existent person can enjoy existing and wish for it to continue. There is nothing irrational about wanting to continue experiencing your life.
posted by cortex (staff) at 5:41 PM on June 27, 2007

My point is.... WHY does a living person wish his life to continue? "Because he enjoys living" doesn't answer the question. WHY does enjoying something make you wish it will continue?
posted by grumblebee at 5:53 PM on June 27, 2007

WHY does enjoying something make you wish it will continue?

That itself is circular though; how would you describe "enjoyment" absent of any notion of preferring to experience that state over another over time?
posted by cortex (staff) at 6:01 PM on June 27, 2007

Really? You can't enjoy something in-the-moment? While I'm eating cake, I'm not looking forward to that time in the future when I'll get to eat cake again. I'm enjoying the cake I'm eating now.

What if I put you into a transporter while you're asleep? Do you have a problem with that? If so, what is it?

You'd have no prior knowledge of it, so you would be able to enjoy the prospect of eating cake in the future. That future would never arrive for you (though it would for your clone), but you'd have no way of knowing that it wouldn't -- or didn't -- arrive for you.
posted by grumblebee at 6:19 PM on June 27, 2007

Really? You can't enjoy something in-the-moment? While I'm eating cake, I'm not looking forward to that time in the future when I'll get to eat cake again. I'm enjoying the cake I'm eating now.

How granular are you willing to get for in-the-moment? If I'm enjoying a bit of cake right this second, I sure as hell hope to still be enjoying the cake eating process five seconds from now, and to have happy afterglow memories of it a minute or five minutes later. I'd be miserable if the cake turned out in the next bite to have a razor buried in it, and devastated to learn that the whole slice contained a deadly poison for which no antidote was available.

Life is a long, long moment. It'll end some day, and while I hope that I will either make my peace with my mortality before it roughly confronts me or die suddenly without warning, I would much prefer not to die to either of those.

What if I put you into a transporter while you're asleep? Do you have a problem with that? If so, what is it?

Are you asking if I would, while sleeping, have a problem with you putting me in the transporter? Or are you asking if I would, when told by you that you intended to put me in a transporter while I was sleeping, have a problem with the proposition?

No the former, naturally—I'm asleep until the moment you kill me by shoving me into the box. Emphatically yes to the latter—I have no desire to be murdered in my sleep.

What my clone would think the next morning is of little interest to me in either case.
posted by cortex (staff) at 6:34 PM on June 27, 2007

I feel a bit pedantic doing this, but I'd like to re-raise the way I put the issue up thread a ways, which no one's addressed. For me, the reason I don't have a problem with the transporter because I have no reason to believe that I am not 'dying' an incredible number of times for every moment that I am aware of. It really, really doesn't seem obvious to me that consciousness is continuous in the way that makes a transporter problematic. It goes along with what flabdablet said about consciousness being something we do rather than something we are.

Does anyone have an argument why this shouldn't be?

Or, failing that, where in Warnock's Dilemma have I fallen?
posted by Arturus at 7:44 PM on June 27, 2007

Arturus, I agree with you. I was just approaching it from another angle. There are degrees of continuity, I guess. What we experience during the day is different from what we experience during a day-night-day cycle when we're unconscious at night. And then there's what we'd experience if we were put in suspended animation, "2001" or "Aliens" style. Then there's the leap from stopping consciousness in one body and resuming it -- or starting it anew, depending on your take on it -- in another body. The question here is where you draw the line or if you draw the line. I'm not sure what makes one form of discontinuity better than other forms, other than the fact that we're used to the forms that we encounter in our normal lives.

cortex, my question is about putting someone in the transporter while he slept had to do with how you'd judge my actions morally. Would you call me an evil murderer? Remember, I'm not giving him foreknowledge, so he can happily believe he'll be eating cake tomorrow (even though that won't actually happen). And his family will not notice a thing either, because to them, the clone will be identical to the original.

Here's another angle: what if I hooked you up to a machine that disassembled your brain neuron-by-neuron, but you were conscious the whole time? As each neuron was destroyed, my machine would create a working replica inside a computer, and it would hook your remaining brain up to it so that your brain and the computer would share the load of your mental processing.

Slowly, the computer would do more and more work and your brain would do less and less, until finally you'd be totally run by a computer simulation. But you'd be conscious the whole time and feel no discontinuity.

Then, in a reversal of the process, you'd be uploaded into another body -- one that was a duplicate of your own body. Again, you'd be conscious the whole time as the upload took place and as mental processing flowed from the PC to the new body.

Does this scenario present any problems?

What if halfway through the process, when you were completely a simulation, the computer operator decided to go get lunch, so he stored you on a hard drive and turned the machine off? Then, after lunch, he booted it up and resumed the process as before.
posted by grumblebee at 8:01 PM on June 27, 2007

The yearning for immortality is strong in this thread. Epicharmus of Syracuse once said, Mortals should think mortal and not immortal thoughts.
posted by y2karl at 10:01 PM on June 27, 2007

Alas, Epicharmus, most mortals can't control their thoughts.
posted by grumblebee at 3:11 AM on June 28, 2007

Epicharmus of Syracuse once said, Mortals should think mortal and not immortal thoughts.

Yeah, but Epimarchus was full of shit.
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 4:38 AM on June 28, 2007

Epicharmus, on the other hand, that brother was tight.
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 5:15 AM on June 28, 2007

For me, the reason I don't have a problem with the transporter because I have no reason to believe that I am not 'dying' an incredible number of times for every moment that I am aware of.

Do you have a problem putting a gun to your head and pulling the trigger? You are dying every moment anyway; you would be killing only a moment's Arturus, a paltry addition to the trail of dead left out behind you.

Or would that give you pause?

I hear the argument toward the idea that consciousness may be an action, not a state; that continuity may well be a happy myth of perception and we are truly discrete and discontinuous creatures who get by solely on a really good memory storage/retrieval device and some persistence-of-vision effects. But that doesn't change the idea that I, and not some army of clones, am experience that discrete existence—that even if at every moment I die and am born again in the sense of discontinuous consciousness, that experience inhabits my skull and will end in a much more final manner at some point.

Whether it's a bullet to the brain or a trip to the transporter makes no difference—the only distinction in the latter case is that there'll be a cortex' wandering around having his own discontinuous and wholly separate consciousness after. Fuck that guy, he never did anything for me.

cortex, my question is about putting someone in the transporter while he slept had to do with how you'd judge my actions morally. Would you call me an evil murderer? Remember, I'm not giving him foreknowledge, so he can happily believe he'll be eating cake tomorrow (even though that won't actually happen).

Evil murderer indeed. Do not kill me in my sleep, whether by gun or by transporter.

What if halfway through the process, when you were completely a simulation, the computer operator decided to go get lunch, so he stored you on a hard drive and turned the machine off? Then, after lunch, he booted it up and resumed the process as before.

Counterquery, since the whole mind-uploading scenario has a lot of ifs to it:

Would it be possible to upload my mind into more than one body? Would each of those uploads be aware of one another's internal thoughts after the deed was done? If not, is there any fundamental difference between the transfer of the first and the transfer of the rest? If not that, how do you satisfy me that what gets uploaded will be perceivable by me, not just by itself, as being cortex?
posted by cortex (staff) at 7:08 AM on June 28, 2007

PLATE OF BEANS
posted by grouse at 7:14 AM on June 28, 2007

delicious.
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 7:31 AM on June 28, 2007

If not that, how do you satisfy me that what gets uploaded will be perceivable by me, not just by itself, as being cortex?

I think the crux of the issue is that the anti-transporter folks believe in the soul, even though they are not using that word. That is, that there is only one "me" which must also get, not copied but *transferred* if I am to remain me.

If I go to the house of cortex' the next day and tell him what I did, he might be really angry. But then I tell him, as an even crueler joke, that I might be kidding. I might be fucking with him. And so cortex' spends his days wondering: Am I cortex or cortex'? Am I a copy or the original? Did I die?

If I've hidden all evidence of what I did or didn't do to you, how will you ever answer this question?
posted by vacapinta at 7:41 AM on June 28, 2007

How, indeed. You see why I'm not hot on the idea of riding that tech.

I think the crux of the issue is that the anti-transporter folks believe in the soul, even though they are not using that word. That is, that there is only one "me" which must also get, not copied but *transferred* if I am to remain me.

That does seem to be the center of it. And it's a dicey thing, trying to come with a satisfying theory of this element of identity. I don't believe in the the religious soul, and the argument here doesn't motivate me to change that position, so it's left to something either organic or illusory—either some scientific theory of consciousness can one day locate and lay bare the nature of the workings of the conscious identity, or these objections to death are shadowboxing, the foolish machine wrestling to keep itself in good commission out of hardwired instinct and nothing more.

I could argue that consciousness as a holistic experience is not discontinuous across sleep, that what is discontinuous is mere perception while the engine that is identity runs quietly in idle; that coma and ER-death-and-resurrection are periods of potential disruption in a crisis state of the body, engendering danger of decay and possible critical failure of the support system, and no more. That consciousness abides all the while so long as the pieces work well enough to keep it working.

That argument doesn't necessarily solve many problems here, but it does put forward a position that is somewhere between the metaphysical soul and the discontinuous consciousness-as-isolated-moments-of-computation points.

Largely unrelated, discussing this with a friend yesterday reminded him of the Jewish notion of the soul leaving the body during sleep, to be returned by God at waking. Now that's a hell of a transporter.
posted by cortex (staff) at 7:59 AM on June 28, 2007

well, I did use the word soul. But I'm an agnostic. The fear that I might one day face damnation by an unforgiving god simply for not being devout enough is rather perpetually with me.

But to be honest, I don't think it needs to be at the center of the matter. It certainly is for me in part, but it doesn't have to be for everyone. As I and cortex have said already, I just don't think that death has much to recommend it in favor of not-death. As for why I'd care that much, I don't know what to tell you. You either have the desire to continue living or you don't, and the why and wherefores of it are matters for individual personal attention, or maybe not if that's not your thing.
posted by shmegegge at 8:08 AM on June 28, 2007

Do you have a problem putting a gun to your head and pulling the trigger? You are dying every moment anyway; you would be killing only a moment's Arturus, a paltry addition to the trail of dead left out behind you.

Or would that give you pause?

Yes, because that's a distinct stop. I see value in continued existence, I have no reason to change this. The difference between this and the transporter is that by killing myself I am killing the possibility of all future selves. With the transporter, I am not doing so.
posted by Arturus at 11:22 AM on June 28, 2007

I just don't think that death has much to recommend it in favor of not-death.

This is where I get stuck. I know it's a meaningful statement to you and cortex (and maybe many other's here), and if I don't think about it too hard, I get an illusory feeling that it makes sense to me. But when I really think about it, I get confused.

I understand (and agree that) it's better to be living than dyING. (Dying, especially if the process is protracted and painful, is not something I look forward to.) But you can only be dying if you're still alive. Paradoxical as it sounds, dying is something only the living can experience.

And I understand that it's better to have $60 in my wallet than to not have $60 dollars in my pocket. "To not have $60", used in this sense, doesn't just mean I don't have the money. It means I'm aware of the fact that I don't have it, and I wish I did have it. When I posit that it's better to have the money, I'm imagining myself standing on a steet corner, pulling my pockets inside out, and realizing that I can't buy those DVDs.

Which is why I wondered whether "I'd rather be alive than dead," means I'd rather be experiencing living than experiencing death. As if you could look down on yourself and say, "I'm dead. That sucks." Or as if "death" was some sort of blackness that you're trapped in as a fully-conscious being.

The truth is, this is how I think about death. I can't imagine not experiencing. (Probably because I've never experienced and never can experience) not experiencing, so when I think about death, I'm forced to come up with metaphors. But that's all they are.

You can't compare life with death, because life is about experiencing stuff. Death isn't. Death doesn't suck, because fore something to suck, it has to be an experience.
posted by grumblebee at 11:31 AM on June 28, 2007

That does seem to be the center of it. And it's a dicey thing, trying to come with a satisfying theory of this element of identity.

The funny thing about metaphysics, especially the metaphysics of strong Idealism, is that the deeper you go into it the more absurd it becomes. It quickly becomes very, very clear that the human mind has evolved as a survival machine and not a truth finding machine and that most, if not all, of our everyday understanding of the world doesn't really make any sense at all. I am always reminded of a dear girlfriend who, when I pointed out why debating metaphysics is so frustrating because people have, for their entire lives, built up these sophisticated illusions that contravene reason, pointed out 'well, maybe reason is way overrated and you should just leave people alone!' I think it's actually perfectly okay for people to hold irrational beliefs so long as they acknowledge that their beliefs are, in fact, completely irrational. As Nietzsche pointed out so many times superstition is often a sign of independence and virility in a population. As for the soul/subject/ego superstition people who believe they are "dying" in the transporter are welcome to entertain this superstition so long as it's clear the reality is a lot more complex and they are not 100% sold on their belief.
posted by nixerman at 11:33 AM on June 28, 2007

I think it's actually perfectly okay for people to hold irrational beliefs so long as they acknowledge that their beliefs are, in fact, completely irrational.

I've thought that way before, but now I wonder this: if people need to cling to certain beliefs in order to survive (or be happy), what if admitting that their beliefs are irrational endangers their beliefs?

I doubt it's some sort of physical law. I don't think it's the case that admissions of irrationality necessarily destroys belief. But in a culture that at least partly values rationality, science and logic, there is that danger. Not to mention people (erroneously, I think) link irrationality to stupidity. Who wants to choose between feeling stupid and losing core beliefs?

I've met a few people who say things like, "Maybe it's irrational, but I believe in God (or whatever)," but I haven't met very many of them. And even with the few who say this, I get the feeling that they don't hold it in their mind for long. They don't continually (or even often) think, "My strongly held, deeply needed belief is irrational." They only think this when they're forced into arguments.

As a lifelong skeptic (atheist, etc.), I totally understand the desire to just get people to admit they're being irrational, dammit! But I think that's more about winning an argument than getting people to see the truth. What's the point of getting someone to fleeting feel that their ideas are irrational? How will that change anything?

Unless the idea is that when faced with the realization that they're being irrational, their beliefs will crumble. If that's the goal, then we're not being honest when we say, "I think it's actually perfectly okay for people to hold irrational beliefs so long as they acknowledge that their beliefs are, in fact, completely irrational."
posted by grumblebee at 11:42 AM on June 28, 2007

That argument doesn't necessarily solve many problems here, but it does put forward a position that is somewhere between the metaphysical soul and the discontinuous consciousness-as-isolated-moments-of-computation points.

The real question, of course, is whether the desire to embrace impersonation is an evolutionary defect (as I believe) or if it's inherent to intelligence itself. I can imagine a world of intelligent beings where, say, talking over the phone is impossible because the beings refuse to accept that the voice on the phone really "is" the person talking. (And, in fact, people do behave so differently on the phone that even in our world this isn't a simple truism.) Similarly, when these beings go to sleep and wake up they wouldn't imagine that they are the same person so much as they are the same "kind" of person. The desire to elevate consciousness beyond "isolated moments of perception" is fine, it may even be valid if you believe in such things as the subconscious for which there are very good reasons to believe in, and like "cause-and-effect" it may be something totally inescapable. (In fact, the ego superstition is probably directly a consequence of cause-and-effect thus the transporter that destroys the body also, magically, destroys the soul.) It's just a question of knowing the appropriate limits.
posted by nixerman at 11:44 AM on June 28, 2007

it may even be valid if you believe in such things as the subconscious for which there are very good reasons to believe in

Like what? I've always wondered this. I would never deny that there are all sorts of UNcouscious process in the brain. That's been proven over and over. But a subconscious mind? Like a secondary consciousness that my main consciousness can't directly talk to? Where's the evidence for this?
posted by grumblebee at 11:48 AM on June 28, 2007

I don't think it's the case that admissions of irrationality necessarily destroys belief.

Well I'd never presume as much. In fact I'd suggest that any belief that doesn't hold it's own in the face of reason isn't really a belief at all. And when somebody says 'I believe in democracy' I don't see this as a rational proposition at all. It lies outside the domain of reason and mathematics in the very important domain of human communications.


Unless the idea is that when faced with the realization that they're being irrational, their beliefs will crumble.

No, the desire is never to destroy beliefs, the desire is always to get the victim to consider the possibility of other beliefs. It's the willingness to doubt one's beliefs, to, for just a moment, allow for the possibility that perhaps something else is going on, that provides the essence of freedom. The value of reason is not so much in that it allows one to rank beliefs from 'true' to 'false' but that it makes space for criticism and other possibilities. When I say I think it's okay for people to be unreasonable I very much mean that it's okay so long as they acknowledge these alternatives provided by reason.
posted by nixerman at 11:51 AM on June 28, 2007

But a subconscious mind? Like a secondary consciousness that my main consciousness can't directly talk to? Where's the evidence for this?

Well the strongest argument for the subconsciousness is that people really never obey their consciousness mind. They lie, cheat, steal, and wake up later in the day, even though their conscious mind understands that this is 'wrong' and and they don't 'want' to do these things. So allowing for the possibility of drives and forces that operate below the consciousness and take consciousness as a target to be manipulated is really the only way to make sense of most of the observable human behavior.
posted by nixerman at 11:54 AM on June 28, 2007

Here, before this becomes a conversation I need to bake pot brownies for in order to appreciate, this is my point as clearly as I can state it, and I sincerely hope I'm being clear this time because I'm going to give up on this discussion at this point:

The reason a person may not want to die is that they don't have a reason TO die. I keep saying "why die?" and you don't answer that. You just keep asking "why not die?" and I keep saying "because there isn't any reason to." and you keep saying "but what reason do you have NOT to?" and that has, quite simply, gotten ridiculous. You do not have to miss something later in order to do it now, and I doubt you would ever be able to prove that you do. Regret is not our sole motivator. Good night.
posted by shmegegge at 12:15 PM on June 28, 2007

nixerman, I'm not exactly sure what you mean by "it's okay." I guess you're making a moral judgment. People are bad if they don't admit to their irrationality. Maybe you wouldn't use the word bad, but something like that.

I too wish people would admit to their irrationality, but where does that leave us? They won't. Many of them won't. So we label them "not okay." Fine.

Similarly, you talk about "the value of reason." Yes, reason is valuable.

None of that changes the fact that many people have STRONG irrational beliefs that help them survive and keep them happy. You can say these beliefs are worthless if people aren't willing to consider alternatives, but that's not going to stop them believing in them.

I've met person-after-person who gets defensive when you start pummeling their irrational beliefs with logic. This defensiveness makes me suspect that they're desperate to protect these beliefs at all costs. In my experience, people who do this can be extremely intelligent. In fact, it's more dangerous for a smart person to find his cherished belief facing a wall of counter-logic than it is for someone less intelligent.

Back in my youth, when I used to debate people in public, I found that less sophisticated people would not get defensive. They would just calmly counter my logic with their (probably ill-thought-out logic). But smart people would get red in the face and angry. Makes sense. To many of them, admitting to being irrational would destroy part of their self-image. But more importantly, these smart people know that they can be swayed by logic, and they can't take that risk. It's too painful.

Nixerman, I don't know you, but I suggest you do some soul-searching and ask yourself if you've ever BRAVELY given up a cherished belief. It's easy for me to listen to arguments and counter-arguments to whether-or-not God exists, because I'm not deeply, emotionally invested in God. I have friends who are atheists because they were raised in horrible, repressive, religious environments. They are invested in God, but in a negative way, so it's also easy for them to listen to logic. (Although if there was some pro-God logic -- which I don't think there is -- I bet many of them would be as close-minded to it as fundamentalists are to atheist logic.)

But ask yourself if you've ever been forced to give up a key belief due to logic? I mean a belief that you depend on to survive or to be a happy? Until you've gone through that, it's not fair for you to judge other who work to protect their beliefs. And if you have gone through that, you should have compassion for others who are in the same boat.

Re: the subconscious. I agree with all the evidence you supply. I think that suggests that, as you say, "forces" operate below the level of consciousness. But that's not the same as The Subconscious. The Subconscious -- as it's usually imagined -- is a "little guy" who lives in your head and is, somehow, conscious. (If he exists, does HE have a subconscious mind?)
posted by grumblebee at 12:23 PM on June 28, 2007

The reason a person may not want to die is that they don't have a reason TO die. I keep saying "why die?" and you don't answer that. You just keep asking "why not die?" and I keep saying "because there isn't any reason to."

If you're addressing me, than you didn't read my posts clearly or (more likely), I didn't explain myself well. "Why die?" I agree. I'm not saying that if you can't come up with a good reason to live, you should go ahead and kill yourself.

But I did come up with a reason to step into the transporter: your boss needs you (someone you is you-enough for him) on Mars in ten minutes. Or if that's too mundane, your child/wife/dog is dying on Mars and wants you to be with her. She's got an hour left to live.

But beyond this, I DO think there's a valid reason for me to prod people into being more specific about their reasons for living than "why die?" But I don't know if I can convince you of that. All my reasons are "navel gazing" reasons. I think questioning things (and refusing to ever settle for "why not?" or "just because" is a deeply important part of life.

Some people have no time for this sort of philosophizing. Some people have SOME time for it, after a while their head hurts and they want to discuss something REAL. I understand this.

But my interest here is what, for people, constitutes continuity and why people don't want to be dead. I'm still unconvinced that desires to stay alive are anything besides instinct. "Why die?" doesn't help me understand anything.
posted by grumblebee at 12:36 PM on June 28, 2007

But ask yourself if you've ever been forced to give up a key belief due to logic? I mean a belief that you depend on to survive or to be a happy? Until you've gone through that, it's not fair for you to judge other who work to protect their beliefs. And if you have gone through that, you should have compassion for others who are in the same boat.

Yes, I've given up cherished belief, to the point of succumbing to depression and all that boring stuff. I am, in the end, very much a pluralist and I can't imagine a situation where there are "too many" beliefs. I'm happy to leave people to their beliefs no matter how kooky so long as the overall environment allows for many beliefs to flourish. All that is required is a respect for the truth which is almost always more complicated than any given belief. Beliefs are only necessary, after all, because we fail to see the whole truth. I don't have much interest in 'correcting' people's beliefs or getting them to all adopt a single, company line. Even the kookiest Flat Earthers are, I feel, valuable in their own way. As a real optimist I can't quite bring myself to condemn anything humans do, no matter how terrible or unreasonable.

In this case, in the question of whether the transporter is really a suicide-box or not, it's not so much a question of right/wrong since nobody can prove what is really going on in the transporter -- you can imagine trying to convince a judge that when you were transported the old you was murdered and how well that would go over (though there are dangers to adopting a legalistic interpretation). But though we have a kind of instinctive, simplistic idea that one object is being created as a copy and the original object is being destroyed -- but this doesn't really work with the actual reality. And so doubts arise whether information really ever can be copied and whether maybe Plato was right and there really is an important distinction between the 'Form' and its manifestation. But again what's important is carving this space around the question, to make it clear that, as far as what's really going on inside the transporter, it's something very strange and self-righteous declarations or certainties aren't needed. In the end I wouldn't expect any strict materialist to say anything but that the transporter is a suicide-box but I would expect, on the basis of reason alone, him to admit that if self-murder is occurring it's a very kind of strange self-murder and that the illusion of the ego isn't perhaps so clear cut.
posted by nixerman at 12:54 PM on June 28, 2007

Beliefs are only necessary, after all, because we fail to see the whole truth.

Sometimes people need beliefs because they see the whole truth and it's too painful.

I guarantee you that if you could prove to everyone in the world (in ways that each person could understand) that God didn't exist, there would be many people who would go on believing in God. And I'm talking about people who totally get the proof and agree that it's valid. They might stop believing for a while. But they'd slide back into belief, because the truth would be too painful to them.
posted by grumblebee at 1:27 PM on June 28, 2007

I know exactly how the transporter works, because it's a made-up device and I'm making the rules. Our interest is philosophical, psychological and ethical, so we don't care about the science behind the machine (if there even could be such science).

In terms of this discussion, there's no difference between a transporter and a magic spell that allows me make a living copy of you appear over there after I shoot you in the head over here.
posted by grumblebee at 1:31 PM on June 28, 2007

And so doubts arise whether information really ever can be copied and whether maybe Plato was right and there really is an important distinction between the 'Form' and its manifestation.

Well, I'm not sure why we should listen to Plato, but I'm pretty sure that if we'd did, he'd tell us that neither the person who stepped into the transporter or the person who stepped out is the Form. They are both crude copies of some sort of Ideal Person.
posted by grumblebee at 1:32 PM on June 28, 2007

I just want to chime and say that I love the question that was asked, in case anyone cares. (They don't).
posted by !Jim at 3:52 PM on June 28, 2007

(Some do.) I love it to.
posted by grumblebee at 4:18 PM on June 28, 2007

Or even "too".
posted by grumblebee at 4:18 PM on June 28, 2007

What if the red box and green box did exist?
What if you could clone yourself multiple times?

Obviously, there would be some interesting new porn out there.
posted by yohko at 4:53 PM on June 28, 2007

In the end I wouldn't expect any strict materialist to say anything but that the transporter is a suicide-box

Er, I'm saying that the transporter is fine because of my interpretation of strict materialism.

As for the question of 'why not die', for me, the answer is curiosity. I want to know what happens next. If I cease to be entirely, I (or any particular instance of myself, the distinction is moot as far as I'm concerned) will never know.

Now, I suppose the challenge is why this should matter to me, given that I am arguing against the strong continuity between my current self and the future selves who will posses this knowledge. The problem here is the problem with any sort of expectation/resolution or tension/release. If the present entity of my self will never have access to the results of the payoff, why should it care? My answer is because the positive effects of such are both heightened by my present expectation of them, as well as cumulative.

I desire certain knowledge, and may at some point in the future gain it. Barring any real use for the data at that point, the acquisition of such is worthless without the prior expectation of it. Furthermore, positive effects are cumulative. I have many positive memories which are accessible to my mind only because of the efforts of myself in the past, a self which could not access these, but anticipated them nonetheless.

So, why not die? Because I am an optimist, and because I believe I will thank myself for it later, even if my current awareness is doomed to flicker out and not notice this. I choose not to die because I believe in the value of advancing the agendas I believe in, and not dying is the best way I know of to ensure that the future contains an entity which will try to do so. I choose not to die because I believe in the merit of future utility, which will be recorded as memory of qualia and passed on to even further future versions of myself. Lastly, I choose not to die for the pain it saves my family and friends, the creation of negative utility being a moral wrong.

None of which causes me to consider the transporter a death in any meaningful sense of the word, but all of which causes me to want to stick around in some sense or another.
posted by Arturus at 5:12 PM on June 28, 2007