It’s just a more complicated example of the ship of Theseus, and honestly it comes down to if you believe in the concept of a soul.
To illustrate mechanically is a computer with the same model of hard drive with a copy of the data the same?
Comment on Am I? Who knows
cheery_coffee@lemmy.ca 11 months ago
I’ve always wondered if your consciousness would transfer over.
There’d be a consciousness, it would have your memories and be indistinguishable to you, but I can’t understand where the chemical/physical parts of the brain turn into me perceiving and experiencing stuff.
franklin@lemmy.world 11 months ago
pixeltree@lemmy.world 11 months ago
If you take the drive apart, ship its parts somewhere, and reassemble it, is it the same drive?
candybrie@lemmy.world 11 months ago
Yes. But that’s not what’s happening in teleportation. It doesn’t use the same parts, but different ones arranged in the exact same way.
pixeltree@lemmy.world 11 months ago
Depends on the teleportation system. In star trek you are comprised of the same physical material, just converted to energy and back. I could be wrong though, I’m no expert. I think a more interesting question is, would you be more ok being killed in one place, having your body be transported mundanely and being revived at your destination, or being cloned perfectly and then having the original killed? Theoretically the same to you either way
superb@lemmy.blahaj.zone 11 months ago
I believe there have been numerous times where it’s confirmed that you are conscious and perceiving things while in the transport stream
NOPper@lemmy.world 11 months ago
Barclay got sweet tentacle hugs a few times during transport.
quams69@lemmy.world 11 months ago
Play the game SOMA
Diplomjodler@feddit.de 11 months ago
We don’t understand just how this works just yet. But I’m confident that some day we will.
mindbleach@sh.itjust.works 11 months ago
Daniel Dennet: “Only a theory that explained conscious events in terms of unconscious events, could explain consciousness at all.”
Stamets@startrek.website 11 months ago
Well consciousness is just chemical and electrical impulses. If you manage to re-create everything down to the molecule in the right area then you could completely rebuild the consciousness. Also means you’d be able to completely manipulate memories, experiences, basically anything held in the brain. Provided you had an intense enough neural mapping and deep enough understanding of the human brain to accomplish that. Luckily in the Trek universe, at least at the time of the 24th/25th century, that isn’t possible.
4am@lemm.ee 11 months ago
Your current consciousness, the one you are thinking with right now, would end.
A clone of you would go on at the transport site, fully believing that it is you, and that everything was fine.
Reconstructive teleportation is just remote replicators with mind control.
DragonTypeWyvern@literature.cafe 11 months ago
Feel free to prove the discontinuation of consciousness scientifically while satisfying all philosophic schools of thought on the matter.
School_Lunch@lemmy.world 11 months ago
If you make a perfectly exact replica of yourself do you suddenly perceive the universe from two perspectives?
nymwit@lemm.ee 11 months ago
I mean, is there a scientific consensus on what constitutes consciousness? I thought that was a stumbling point on trying to pin down the various parts of the study of it. I wouldn’t say brain activity ceases while sleeping like that other comment but I’m in the camp that thinks the break in consciousness/awareness-of-being in a ST transporter is not really different than the break when sleeping.
Sordid@beehaw.org 11 months ago
Easy, build the clone without destroying the original, then test if they share perceptions and memories. Show one a playing card and ask the other what card it was or something. Showing that two people don’t have the same consciousness is pretty trivial, and I don’t know of any philosophical schools that would dispute that.
nexguy@lemmy.world 11 months ago
Same as sleeping. You could have been replaced by a clone every night while sleeping and never know it.
School_Lunch@lemmy.world 11 months ago
That sounds like a form of last Thursdayism. The entire universe could’ve been created last Thursday with everything made to seem older, including everyone’s memories. These philosophies are usually shot down by occam’s razor.
4am@lemm.ee 11 months ago
True. This could be the first and only day of your life so far!
FfaerieOxide@kbin.social 11 months ago
Same thing happens every time you go to sleep. If your consciousness exists you exist, right down to you worrying about continuity of consciousness.
kherge@beehaw.org 11 months ago
Brain activity does not cease when you sleep.
be_excellent_to_each_other@kbin.social 11 months ago
I'd buy this argument if brain death happened every time you went to sleep. Being in maintenance mode doesn't count.
CarbonIceDragon@pawb.social 11 months ago
The thing is, we don’t actually know that continuity is required for it to be the same consciousness. It might work that way, or it might be that sufficiently recreating the right brain patterns restarts the same consciousness in a new location, or something else entirely
4am@lemm.ee 11 months ago
Occam’s razor would dictate that I would not chance it.
Olgratin_Magmatoe@startrek.website 11 months ago
That’s assuming you know which exact parts do exactly what. Kinda like an encrypted zip file versus an unencrypted one.
You edit whatever set of bits/bytes you want in both, but only in one of them will you actually know whats going on.
cheery_coffee@lemmy.ca 11 months ago
But we do know there’s quantum weirdness to the universe, so I personally think you would need more than just a molecular copy.
It’s really the question of why am I the brain in this body? Why do I perceive existence, and why isn’t it just a sequence of reactions in a brain which can adapt to highly complex phenomenon.
MrPoopyButthole@lemmy.world 11 months ago
en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laplace's_demon