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1. I don't know how consciousness works or what is is made of. What I know is my feelings are linked to my consciousness. So when I get hurt I(= my consciousness) feel it. Now if I make a copy a person on the other side of the universe : a) It has the same consciousness - So if he gets burned by fire I on the other side of the universe feel it too. Should also mean that what he sees now I see too aswell, so if I have 10 clones I should be having 10 visions. b) The consciousness does not transfer - If my other self gets hurt I don't feel it, if I die he won't notice a thing.
2. You are in the cinema in the middle of a good movie. Suddenly the film stops - and in a distant cinema the movie starts to unfold from the same moment it stopped in your cinema.
3. Teleportation is socially acceptable. Whether or not does the consciousness transfer is of no relevance to social means. If you teleport yourself from school to home, your wife or children.. nobody won't give a damn. They'll perceive you as the same person as before. Your teleported self will be the only one aware of the fact.
4. For software developers(c++) : class Person{ ... public string Name; ... }
...
Person You("John"); Person Cloned_You(You); if(&You != &Cloned_You){ cout << "it's not you!" << endl; }
// Common problem of reference equality and value equality.
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On August 05 2010 18:36 UniversalSnip wrote:This is a common thing in science fiction where you are 'teleported' by a machine that kills you, then reconstructs an exact copy of your body and mind at another point. The question is Would you use it? (the copy really believes it is you and acts like and is indistinguishable from you. assume it's failsafe. the question is emotional rather than practical) EDIT: This is not from the prestige. Show nested quote +On August 06 2010 11:37 UniversalSnip wrote:On August 06 2010 11:10 SilentCrono wrote: what is this from anyway? The concept of teleporting, or becoming immortal by replicating yourself and killing the original is an old science fiction convention. The philosophical problem underlying it goes all the way back to greek philosophy, where it took the form of the ship of theseus. I find this version more interesting because the emotional resonance of evading death (or not) makes it hard to take the lazy way out by dismissing the whole issue as a matter of semantics. haha I already asked myself that question, would consienceness survive thrue teleportation or would it be replaced by an exact copy ?
What would be fun if you loose your soul in the process, is that nobody would be able to notice. And if telportation become widely used, billions of people would be suiciding every day without anyone noticing.
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On August 05 2010 18:49 deisel wrote: common philosophical question...and if you believe that only the mind makes up who you really are then you would do it. but if you believe that both your body and mind makes you who you really are, then you wouldn't do it.
Most people, whether a part of these forums or not, would add a soul to that list, which would make your 2 options a little more complicated.
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I was talking with my gf about the death teleportation question. I was curious about her opinion as a philosophy student, and she lightened me up about Swampman, almost the same as we were talking about in this thread. You may want to read this: Swampman
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This is not from the prestige.
This is most definitely from the prestige.
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I wouldnt do it, our bodies are prisons for our souls, no point in delaying your freedom
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United States41982 Posts
On August 09 2010 11:33 HavePairImAllin wrote:Show nested quote +On August 09 2010 06:25 KhaosKreator wrote:On August 08 2010 21:09 Daimon wrote: yeah, i'm not saying that there isn't a difference between them. for all practical purposes we can consider them the same person. i'm taking for granted that if someone steps into a teleporter, his consciousness is destroyed and a copy of him is created at the output end of the teleporter. so there's only one person that there is a difference for, and that person is destroyed, and with him, his consciousness. i'm not debating whether or not his consciousness is in fact destroyed; in actuality, i'm not debating at all. again, i'm taking for granted that it is possible for a man's consciousness to be destroyed using this machine, albeit taken over--like a baton-- by another copy of him--and if that's the case, then there's nothing wrong with what i've said, as all i've suggested is a possible practical use for such a machine, and that use happens to be in the service of suicidal people. my idea wasn't meant to be taken seriously; more as a macabre kind of humor; something you'd find in a sci-fi novel. again, i wasn't debating whether or not a person would retain consciousness or not. personally, i just don't see a benefit for debating something like that. Again you've missed the point. "all i've suggested is a possible practical use for such a machine, and that use happens to be in the service of suicidal people" This machine isn't practical for a suicidal person to use because it provides them no service. Besides teleporting themselves. I don't understand. It kills the suicidal person and creates an exact copy of him in his place. He no longer has to suffer because he's dead, it's his copy that will be miserable. How is this not the case? The guy who walked in is dead. But the guy who walks out is alive and as far as he's concerned that suicide attempt failed. He remembers walking in and then walking out. So he'd not do it again. He'd off himself some other way.
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Or he is so certain that it should work and the fact that all the memories etc should be exactly the same as the copy before that he does it anyway. I think you don't believe enough in this guys capability of using logic
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I've read something similar to this before. "Think Like a Dinosaur" by James Patrick Kelly. Very nice short story. Probably why I wasn't as impressed when I saw "The Prestige".
http://www.infinityplus.co.uk/nonfiction/dinosaur.htm
Review: + Show Spoiler + "Think Like a Dinosaur" by James Patrick Kelly (Golden Gryphon Press, $22.95, 275 pages). August 1997.
The most traditionally science-fictional story in the book, "Think Like a Dinosaur", uses two props of the genre, aliens and matter transmitters, to set up the narrator's moral dilemma. Michael Burr works for the hanen, an alien race resembling dinosaurs: he guides infrequent human star-travellers through the 'migration' process. In the course of the transfer, the humans are copied, one of the copies travelling on to their stellar destination, while the other is exterminated before regaining consciousness - the hanen way of thinking (hence the story's title) allows no sentimentality over the eradication of the copy left behind. When Burr releases a traveller from a malfunctioning device, only to discover that transfer has actually been effected, he must end the life of the copy he can only view as human...
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I was just perusing some of EVE Online's lore, and their 'cloning' concept is very similar to this, except that the assumption is that there IS technology that transfers the consciousness to the new destination..huh
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this is probably the easiest way to commit suicide.you can die without feeling a bit of guilt. because to everyone else, the replacement will be the exactly same as you, but you'll be dead.
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On August 12 2010 02:25 Laerties wrote:This is most definitely from the prestige.
Well Prestige used a similar concept, but didn't invent it. Also the original wasn't killed in the machine from prestige, it was a more of a pure cloning device, killing the original was a mechanism added by the magician afterwards by adding the trap door.
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On April 14 2012 12:58 .Sic. wrote: this is probably the easiest way to commit suicide.you can die without feeling a bit of guilt. because to everyone else, the replacement will be the exactly same as you, but you'll be dead. The you that popped out the other side a moment later wouldn't feel this way though. He'd just be you again and have the same feelings of worthlessness, etc...
In a sense, the "death" that happens in this sort of teleportation is virtually indistinguishable from the type of death that happens to us each time we blink. The continuity of consciousness is just an illusion constructed from memory. The person you were 5 seconds ago is now dead. You just remember being alive 5 seconds ago...
The question of continuity is decided only by the "receiver."
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If my conscience is transfered then I would do it. Although I'm still trying to wrap my mind around the issue: If my mind and body was destroyed and then rebuild the exact same way it was destroyed, would I still have the same self awareness I do now? This stuff is really deep...
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For those interested see Derek Parfit's book Reasons and Persons or his article "Personal Identity"--he's the go to contemporary philosophical voice on this. In his opinion, there is a sense in which we are identical with the person who leaves the teleporter afterwards, and a sense in which we are not (this is slight inaccuracy, since he considers slightly more complicated cases.) Because we don't obviously exist or cease to exist, he thinks it can't possibly be as bad as normal, ordinary death. For that reason, he recommends that we care not about our identities, but those futures which contain people continuous with us (psychologically continuous, mostly). This continuity he calls "survival" (his technical term).
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On April 14 2012 13:13 GreenFaction wrote: For those interested see Derek Parfit's book Reasons and Persons or his article "Personal Identity"--he's the go to contemporary philosophical voice on this. In his opinion, there is a sense in which we are identical with the person who leaves the teleporter afterwards, and a sense in which we are not (this is slight inaccuracy, since he considers slightly more complicated cases.) Because we don't obviously exist or cease to exist, he thinks it can't possibly be as bad as normal, ordinary death. For that reason, he recommends that we care not about our identities, but those futures which contain people continuous with us (psychologically continuous, mostly). This continuity he calls "survival" (his technical term). This is very reasonable. I like it!
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On April 14 2012 12:58 FliedLice wrote:Show nested quote +On August 12 2010 02:25 Laerties wrote: This is not from the prestige.
This is most definitely from the prestige. Well Prestige used a similar concept, but didn't invent it. Also the original wasn't killed in the machine from prestige, it was a more of a pure cloning device, killing the original was a mechanism added by the magician afterwards by adding the trap door.
The original died in the Prestige? I thought it was the original killing off his clones repeatedly. It's been a while since I saw it.
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On April 14 2012 13:25 Demonhunter04 wrote:Show nested quote +On April 14 2012 12:58 FliedLice wrote:On August 12 2010 02:25 Laerties wrote: This is not from the prestige.
This is most definitely from the prestige. Well Prestige used a similar concept, but didn't invent it. Also the original wasn't killed in the machine from prestige, it was a more of a pure cloning device, killing the original was a mechanism added by the magician afterwards by adding the trap door. The original died in the Prestige? I thought it was the original killing off his clones repeatedly. It's been a while since I saw it. No the original died each time. That was so terrible about it! Hugh Jackman had to die each time he did the trick. So much suffering for his art.
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Only if you appear in the same area/era with the technology AND have the resources necessary to persue the technology, right?
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