From: John Clark [mailto:jonkc@worldnet.att.net]
Dickey, Michael F <michael_f_dickey@groton.pfizer.com> Wrote:
> Getting copied in a destructive manner is different from getting
whacked on
> the head and waking up a few minutes later in a few key areas 1)
getting
> whacked on the head does not destroy you
"But that's what we're arguing about, I would maintain that getting copied
in a
destructive manner and then being rebuilt would not destroy "you" either."
--------------------
I am sure you would maintain that, but can you back it up with a logical
line of reasoning? I will outline my argument supporting my opinion...
Assertion: Sentience and subjective continuity is reliant on both the
pattern of atoms and the atoms themselves.
1 - Sentience and perceptual continuity is reliant on the pattern of atoms.
If someone took that atoms that made up your mind, and mushed them up, it
would not pass the Turing test let alone pass as a reasonable representation
of you in conversation. Same atoms, different pattern. Therefore the
pattern of atoms is important.
2 - Sentience and perceptual continuity is reliant on the atoms themselves
that make up the pattern.
- non-Destructive copying example -
I lay on a table, a passive scanner determines the precise location of every
atom in my body, its type, and what neighboring atoms it is bonded to, and
proceeds to construct a atomic level duplicate of me. We are both awakened
and escorted to separate rooms, the 'copy' is asked if he is able to see
what the 'original' (me) sees, the 'copy' reports that he can not.
Therefore the copy is not me, as he does not experience, subjectively, what
I experience.
- non-destructive scanning with delayed destruction -
I lay on a table, a passive scanner determines the precise location of every
atom in my body, its type, and what neighboring atoms it is bonded to, and
proceeds to construct a atomic level duplicate of me. We are both awakened
and escorted to separate rooms, the 'copy' is asked if he is able to see
what the 'original' (me) sees, the 'copy' reports that he can not.
Therefore the copy is not me, as he does not experience, subjectively, what
I experience. The 'original' (me) is then killed.
Is the 'copy' me?
- Destructive copying example -
I lay on a table, a destructive scanning machine determines the precise
location of every atom in my body while disrupting the information of the
previous atom it scanned. Using the collected information, an atomic level
duplicate is made of me. This duplicate is then asked if he is the
original, as far as he can tell, he is. Did he experience subjectivity
continuity of consciousness? Given the information provided in the previous
two scenarios, it is reasonable and logical to assume he did not. 'I' the
original 'me' therefore did not experience continuity of consciousness.
Therefore sentience and continuity of consciousness relies on the material
making up the pattern as well, otherwise it is a copy experiencing its own
things.
Since this logical excursion demonstrates that...
1) Sentience and continuity of perception is reliant upon the pattern of
atoms
2) Sentience and continuity of perception is reliant upon the atoms that
make up the pattern
Then is it reasonable, logical, and scientific to assume that a 'copy' is
subjectively not me, but in fact a unique individual of its own.
--------------------
>2) and the mechanism that houses your consciousness never changes.
"That is certainly untrue, getting hit in the head so hard you black out
must
make big (temporarily it is to be wished) changes in your brain."
Concussions are caused by the brain slamming against the interior wall of
the skull and an associated massive firing of nuerons (or something to that
effect) While it is likely that some damage occurs to the brain, no
macroscopic large scale damage is usually reported. If it is, it is
associated with a decrease in nueral functionality. This argument is the
same as the 'You are not the same person you were years before / some of
your nuerons die and get replaced' one I outlined before. The rebuttal to
that is that not 'ALL' of your nuerons are destroyed and replaced, as in a
destructive copying system, in fact, only a small number of them are ever
afffected compared to the overall number of nuerons.
>Living through a session of complete neural cessation also does not
involve
>the changing of the physical mechanism housing the consciousness.
"Not so, expect huge chemical changes, probably physical ones too."
By 'changing the physical mecahnism housing the concioussness' I was
referring to the fact that a destructive scanning / copying systems destroys
and replaces each and every one of the molecules comprising your nueral
structure in a short period of time. This is a far cry from a few hormones
being released.
> I can be reasonable sure that when I go to sleep at night I don't die
for a
> few reasons 1) Hooking me up to any kind of machine that measures
brain
> activity would never measure any absolute cessation in activity
"Not in normal sleep but it would under deep anesthesia. When you go to the
hospital to have your tonsils removed are you the same man when you walk
out?"
Are you saying that nueral activity completes ceases under deep anesthesia?
I am highly skeptical of that claim. You are still breathing? You brain is
still regulating metabolic functions, hormone releases, etc. etc. I
seriously doubt there is a complete ceasation of nueral activity, as that
would mean you are brain dead, and need a machine to keep you breathing and
alive.
>The molecules and atoms that make up my mind and house my
>consciousness are never observed to change form or shape during the
>course of the evening.
"I don't understand this obsession with atoms, there are no scratches on a
hydrogen atom to tell one from another, they are far from unique, if they
can't even give this interesting property to themselves they can't confer
it to us."
The 'obsession' with atoms corresponds to this obsession that 'how do you
know when you sleep you arent copied' that is unscientific, irrational, and
illogical. I say this because it is unscientific, irrational, and illogical
to assume something happened becuase no evidence exists to suggest it did
not happen. Scientists do not roam around assuming that there are invisible
dragons floating in thier garages, alien clones in place of the president,
or evil gnomes stealing thier care keys merely because these things exist in
the realm of the possible and have no evidence proving they are *not*
occuring.
> I can also be reasonably sure that I was not murdered last night
"Yes, you can be reasonably sure you were not murdered last night,
of course you can't be absolutely sure of anything. I think.
Anyway a more interesting question is if you were murdered last night
and replaced by a "copy" is there any rational reason to be upset about
it this morning? I can't think of any."
In the sense that a sentient being was lost to the universe, yes there is a
reason to be upset. Of course, that question would be like asking the
'copy' "Are you upset we made you?" The copy, who isnt aware that he is a
copy, would probably respond with a resounding 'No'. That does not relate
to the validity of subjectivity continuity in question though.
But, as I have outlined multiple times, simple because you could have been
murdered and couldnt tell that you were *doesnt* mean that you *were*
murdered. Should I awake to fine blood and brains splattered over the wall
and some large elaborate scanning and molecular assembly device next to my
bed with a sticker that says 'Copies R Us' I may have reason to suspect I
may have been murdered and copied. But since I have yet to awaken to either
of these things, I find it just as likely and reasonable to assume that I
have been murdered and copied as it is reasonable to assume faeries, gnomes,
demons, elves and witches are roaming the lands.
>As I pointed out in my original response to this, replacing one atom at
a
>time is far different from replacing all atoms at once. [...] The RATE
of
>the replacement is the key difference.
"So there must be a fastest permissible rate, if the copy is made 50% too
fast
does it make it 50% you? Or perhaps it works like a switch and if the copy
is made
.00000001% too fast it's not you at all."
Indeed, there probably would be, as replacing one nueron at a time (every
second for instance) would not be something I would consider a loss of
contunity of concioussness any more than I would consider replacing all
*but* one nuerone a continuity of subjective experience. Of course,
replaceing one nueron at a time would take 100 trillion seconds, or ~31
million years, a little to long for my taste. But even replacing 1/1000 of
your nuerons per second would equate to a replacement time of only 1,000
seconds. To err on the side of caution and hopefully make sure that I would
have subjective continuity of conscioussness then if you spread out the
replacement over the course of a year, there are 3.15 x 10^7 seconds in a
year, so replacing 3.17 x 10^7 nuerons per second would take about a year.
At any given second, fewer than 1/31 millionth of your neurons were being
replaced, or 3.1 x10^-7 %, if my calculations are correct. That is
certainly a number I would feel comfortable with. But if not, take 10
years, thats just about 1/300 millionth of your nuerons.
" And then there is the problem that Einstein
tells us that there is no one true objective rate of change, it depends on
the
observer."
Perhaps you could elaborate on the relevance of that statement, A little
confused as to how that relates to the question at hand.
"Perhaps you could say it's you if at any one time you don't change
much, but if I make the "any one time" a nanosecond and then blow you up
with
dynamite you won't change much."
>From Kurzwiels 'Age of Spiritual machines' "The reset time on neural firing
is about 5 milliseconds, permitting only about 200 calculations per second
in each neural connection," Therefore, if you change or alter the state of
an individual nueron (or copy it) in a period of time shorter than its
quickest firing time, your brain would never know the difference. So copy
it (or change it to a silicon based nueron) in less than 1/200 of a second
(or, 1/1,000 of a second to be safe). If you could imagine a large cog that
is spinning and hitting a cam, if it hits the came once every 10 seconds,
then taking one second to replace that cam will make no difference, as long
as you are not doing it at the instant it is being hit. This, of course,
relates back to the argument of copying 'all' your nuerons at once faster
than 1/1000 of a second, but the same argument about how many nuerons are
replaced applies to that question.
>if a copy is made with a passive scanning system and we are both
revived,
>do we perceive the same thing?
"You could be perceiving the same thing, it depends on how the experiment is
set up."
Yeah, if you are in the same room looking at the same thing you are
experiencing the same thing. But turn the 'copy' around or bring him into
another room that is a different color, and then ask yourself if they are
experiencing the same thing.
"If you are not seeing the same thing then the memories of the two of you
will be
different and you will no longer be copies. You'll each go your separate
ways."
That is indeed the case, you are two seperate individuals. It can certainly
be argued that you are two seperate individuals from the very moment the
copy is created, since you do not subjectively experience the same thing.
As I outlined in my 'non-destructive copying' example above.
Regards,
Michael
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