I've already done this thought experiment on RDF but since I've read a lot on this topic since then and can say more on it I'd like to present it here again. So for the purpose of this thread let's assume we've already managed the technology to teleport a living human being (e.g. "beaming" in Star Trek). Let's also assume that all there is that makes up a person is matter and/or energy (so no immortal soul, no unknown stuff whatsoever).

Picture this scenario:
There's a teleporter with two slots. You go into the first slot. Someone pushed a button and an exact copy of you appears in the second slot. The only discrepancies between the copy and you are time and location (for clarification location because he's appearing next to you and time because the teleportation process takes time).
Since that person has the same memories and experiences like the original it will think it is you and wonder why he's switched slots. The second he senses (and it conscious) though he'll be a different person from there on because he bases his thoughts, his experiences on the fact that he's experiencing it from a different location (I'm unsure about the time factor so let's leave this one out as it'll possibly turn out to be irrelevant anyways).

So far so good. We can conclude: Different person because of a different time and location. Stay with me here and don't think too much about this scenario because the issue I'm having I will describe below:

Let's say the teleporter consists only of one slot. You place yourself in that slot. Someone pushes a button and kills you. However, a nanosecond before you were killed, the complex structure of your data gets saved digitally, so no information (that is you) gets lost. Now, someone pushes another button and based on this saved data recreates you, molecule after molecule, exactly like you were on the very same location within the teleporter before being killed and your molecular structure destroyed. We can still conclude: Different person because of a different time (but does it matter?).

So the only difference between the original and the copy is the time the copy has been created, everything else is exactly the same.

The subjective experience -or self-consciousness- we live is dependant on the impressions we have from our surroundings and our past memories/experiences. So time, location and memories/experiences are the variables to take into account.

So if you can be killed and destroyed and be put back exactly to where you were physically a nanosecond before you have been killed...aren't you technically immortal then? Someone could switch you on and off as he pleases, irrelevant of how much time is passing between such two "death/alive" switches, since no information gets lost or is different (except the timestamp, if you will...)

And furthermore, an outside observer could tell who is the original (the first you) and the copy (the second you) but is it relevant to "your" consciousness, to "your" subjective experience?

I propose -based on these assumptions- that we could be immortal once we've mastered the technology to store our molecular structure in all its complex entirety and make copies of ourselves with teleporters.

Hit me

I agree with your proposition. But we'll in all likelihood NEVER be able to scan ourselves to the detail necessary.

rEvolutionist wrote:I agree with your proposition. But we'll in all likelihood NEVER be able to scan ourselves to the detail necessary.

You think? We've already teleported photons on a quantum level...I'd say it's only a matter of time though I'm sure we won't see it during our lifetime...

I think in the first scenerio that the duplicate will know why s/he is there since there will be the memory of the person who went up to the machine and it will probably just dawn on them that they must be the duplicate.

The most interesting thing about this thought experiment is that EVERY time the individual is facing their death for the first time with no comfort of any past experience.

dylan wrote:I think in the first scenerio that the duplicate will know why s/he is there since there will be the memory of the person who went up to the machine and it will probably just dawn on them that they must be the duplicate.

And if there is no duplicate?

LIFE wrote:

dylan wrote:I think in the first scenerio that the duplicate will know why s/he is there since there will be the memory of the person who went up to the machine and it will probably just dawn on them that they must be the duplicate.

And if there is no duplicate?

I mis-read it. I was thinking that a person goes up and decides to clone himself while seeing the #1 or whatever. The clone appears looking at #2. Since the second copy remembers going up to 1 but is looking at 2 he understands he must be the clone as he can't remember walking up to 2.

This thought experiment kind of matches this thread:
http://philosophersrant.blogspot.com/20 ... nnett.html

The point I was trying to make: There is no unique "you" (put time and location aside). You let yourself be cloned a million times and all those million will be "you". So "your" consciousness is existent a million times as well. There's no choice or random factor here. It is all "you". And every clone will think "Hey, it's me", independant from each other.
That is so fucking weird...

LIFE wrote:The point I was trying to make: There is no unique "you" (put time and location aside). You let yourself be cloned a million times and all those million will be "you". So "your" consciousness is existent a million times as well. There's no choice or random factor here. It is all "you".

I got ya! It is a very weird thought.
In what ways are the copies not "you" though? I've struggles with this. It would be murder to kill the other "you" for as soon as they are copied they are not "you"? And in what way are they no longer "you"?

I cannot grasp the fact that the moment you kill a person and recreate it 2 seconds later it has been dead but is alive again. No information is lost. It's like deleting a file, remembering you have a copy on another drive and restore that file to its original location. It doesn't matter if it was deleted or not and the person that got killed was just temporarily dead.

And I'm butchering the language of philosophy here with my half-assed knowledge of it

Ya, and even if you copy the person first before killing the original you are still killing someone. Perhaps then what constitutes a "person" is not necessarily the memories and mind but an INSTANCE of consciousness no matter how similar to others. By eliminating an instance you are killing a conscious being... So, it wouldn't matter what the person thought or what memories they had as long as they were conscious it would be a different person no matter how similar they were to others they would still differ in location.

Here's a question. Let's imagine that following the death/reincarnation scenario the subject say's something like, 'Whoah, that was freaky!' and performs a series of actions - maybe scratches itself, adjusts its clothing and so on - before leaving the room. The person in control of the machinery, out of sheer curiosity, decides to rerun the program; recreating the subject a second time in the same place.

Will the second reincarnated subject perform the same actions as the first? If so, how long will it continue to do so before diverging significantly from the path of its earlier twin?

What I would be particularly interested in in regards to this question would be the degree to which we believe that divergence would be a result of small changes in the starting parameters - chaos theory - as opposed to the will of the subject, who must ultimate conclude that the things they are setting out to do have already been done by their earlier selves, moments before.

Jef wrote:Will the second reincarnated subject perform the same actions as the first?

No, he won't. Different time, different impact of outside factors, like temperature, daylight, smell...The consciousness is a product of the brain and the brain uses its senses to make sense of the world. The second reincarnated subject will sense differently because that which he bases his senses on has changed over time, even if only a few seconds...

dylan wrote:By eliminating an instance you are killing a conscious being...

Non sequitur. You are eliminating the instance but not the being. Or define "being" for that matter...

LIFE wrote:

Jef wrote:Will the second reincarnated subject perform the same actions as the first?

No, he won't. Different time, different impact of outside factors, like temperature, daylight, smell...The consciousness is a product of the brain and the brain uses its senses to make sense of the world. The second reincarnated subject will sense differently because that which he bases his senses on has changed over time, even if only a few seconds...

I don't doubt that ultimately the change in the starting parameters would tend towards an unpredictable result which diverged from the original, but I'd question just how much different the room would need to be before this would have so immediate an effect. Rather, I think that, initially, the subject would have a kind of 'inertia' which it would need to overcome before diverging. This is because, taking into consideration what I would think would be practical necessities for the process to work, it would be necessary that the components of the subject would need to be imparted with the same degree and direction of motion upon reincarnation as was existent at the time of copying. If they were reproduced in a completely static form they'd just die immediately, I think.

Let's say you make 5 copies of an original "you". All 5 have the same memories and history up to the point the original was copied. You kill the original. You teleport one copy to America, one to Europe, one to Asia, one to Australia and one to Africa. Obviously "your" subjective experience can't be all those 5 persons. Can it be none of those? But why? No information got lost, you just moved it to a different place, it's still the same information. Are "you" dead, one of those copies or all of those copies?

LIFE wrote:

dylan wrote:By eliminating an instance you are killing a conscious being...

Non sequitur. You are eliminating the instance but not the being. Or define "being" for that matter...

I was trying to say that "you" would be that original particular instance. Any copies would not be "you" as they are different instances but pretty damn close to "you". In essence they would be almost identical but a different instance so not "you". So I figure by having yourself transported where the original is destoryed you are really sacrificing your life for another that is pretty much an exact copy of yourself.

dylan wrote:
I was trying to say that "you" would be that original particular instance. Any copies would not be "you" as they are different instances but pretty damn close to "you". In essence they would be almost identical but a different instance so not "you". So I figure by having yourself transported where the original is destoryed you are really sacrificing your life for another that is pretty much an exact copy of yourself.

I see but that "instance" has no content? Or am I missing something here
Can you replace the word instance with something more descriptive?

Which of those do you mean: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Instantiation?

I'm guessing this one: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Instance_(computer_science)?