Comment on Am I? Who knows

• Sordid@beehaw.org ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  If a consciousness thinks it’s continuous that consciousness is continuous.

  No, it’s simply mistaken.

  The substrate your consciousness dances on also changes all the time. Molecules arranged around the galaxy or cells dying and being replaced pose the exact same quandary, and the solution to both would seem to be “who cares”?

  The difference is that molecules and cells don’t all disappear at once. Consciousness is brain activity, and the brain has redundancy that allows that activity to continue uninterrupted even when small parts are swapped out. When you destroy the whole thing, though, the activity stops.

  The arrangement of cells and neurons known as “You” goes in, the arrangement of cells and neurons known as “You” comes out.

  Would you be okay with your child (or some other loved one) being forcibly taken away and replaced with a perfect clone? If what you’re saying is true, you should be, since according to you they’re not just a copy, they’re literally the same person.

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  • FfaerieOxide@kbin.social ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    The difference is that molecules and cells don’t all disappear at once. Consciousness is brain activity, and the brain has redundancy that allows that activity to continue uninterrupted even when small parts are swapped out. When you destroy the whole thing, though, the activity stops.

    The pattern buffer serves the same function of redundancy.

    If you're ok with the ATP that makes your brain ebbing and flowing while asserting a continuation of self, you shouldn't theoretically mind if that change over happens all at once.
    If it's still "you" happening all at once, then it doesn't matter either when that once is.
    The pattern of synapse connections firing is what thinks it's "you" and the transport duly preserves that pattern.

    Would you be okay with your child (or some other loved one) being forcibly taken away and replaced with a perfect clone? If what you’re saying is true, you should be, since according to you they’re not just a copy, they’re literally the same person.

    Thinking "Any 'you' 'll do" doesn't mean I want loved ones forced to do anything. People don't tend to be forced onto transporter pads.

    No, I wouldn't want a loved one forcibly taken anywhere. If a loved one took a transporter trip I'd love them just the same when they got back though.

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    • Sordid@beehaw.org ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      The pattern buffer serves the same function of redundancy.

      No, because people are not conscious in the pattern buffer.

      The pattern of synapse connections firing is what thinks it’s “you” and the transport duly preserves that pattern.

      Yes, but consciousness is not a pattern, it’s an activity, and that activity gets interrupted. Saying that the consciousness continues is like saying that an aircraft that made a flight, landed, and then made another flight really only made one flight. It’s the activity that we’re talking about, and the interruption divides that activity into two distinct instances, even though it’s the same object performing them.

      If a loved one took a transporter trip I’d love them just the same when they got back though.

      That’s not what I asked. The transporter destroys the original person, which makes it easy to pretend that the clone is the same person. The point of my question is that you know that the original is still around somewhere out there. So I ask again: Would you be okay with your loved one being replaced by a perfect clone that looks and acts exactly the same, identical down to the last atom, while the original remains at large elsewhere?

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      • FfaerieOxide@kbin.social ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

        No, because people are not conscious in the pattern buffer.

        I could dispute that, but I won't as I don't feel that even matters to my position that my consciousness is my consciousness no matter where or how it's arranged.

        Yes, but consciousness is not a pattern, it’s an activity, and that activity gets interrupted.

        And then starts up again, indistinguishable from before and with every right to call itself "me".

        Would you be okay with your loved one being replaced by a perfect clone that looks and acts exactly the same, identical down to the last atom, while the original remains at large elsewhere? Or would you consider that new version to be an impostor?

        I would love my child if they went on an away mission and came back via transport. I would love my children if they suddenly were twins.

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    • Palerider@feddit.uk ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      If a loved one took a transporter trip I’d love them just the same when they got back though.

      No, you’d love a copy of them just the same…

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      • FfaerieOxide@kbin.social ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

        You could say the same of a 7 year old in relation the the baby you previously loved.

        With all the cell-division this creature before you is just a modified copy.

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  • nymwit@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    That last one isn’t really fair, we’re animals and have attachments that can’t be logically reasoned away. Our brains aren’t entirely controlled by our conscious thoughts. You can believe 100% that the patterns of matter, not the matter itself, make the person but still not “feel” good about it.

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• Neato@kbin.social ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  Not quite. You're describing our brains as a ship of Theseus, which is fairly accurate. But our consciousness is always on while alive. Even asleep and in near-death or temporarily dead our brains don't fully stop or die. Though our brains don't actually replace neurons quite like they replace all other cells. When neurons are damaged, those pathways are lost. Our brain is redundant enough that rarely manifests as a total loss of ability. And when it does, our brains can eventually route new pathways. If enough of these are damaged at once, it can totally change a person's personality.

  But transporters turn matter into energy, those patterns are transmitted elsewhere, and energy (or different energy if stored in a pattern buffer) is reassembled very much like replicators. In this case the entire brain and body is stopped, destroyed and re-created. This is, for all intents and purposes, death and cloning. People have trouble with this because to anyone NOT transported, it looks identical. But the person absolutely stopped being alive and a new one was borne that thinks it has always existed.

  And Star Trek backs it up. The classic transporter accident that makes a clone of someone? If the transported person is still the same consciousness, what is the clone? Clearly that person isn't controlling 2 bodies with 1 consciousness. Which is the "real" McCoy? The answer is whichever wasn't disintegrated, or neither if they both were as part of the transporter process.

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  • FfaerieOxide@kbin.social ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    When neurons are damaged, those pathways are lost.

    But we aren't our neurons. We are the pathways which get dutifully recreated by the transporter. Even if the electron bounce that thinks it's you briefly pauses pulsing, if that same pattern starts up again that's still you

    And Star Trek backs it up. The classic transporter accident that makes a clone of someone? If the transported person is still the same consciousness, what is the clone?

    Both "clones" are equally valid iterations of the same person with equal claim on the identity, although they would functionally from that point be like twins as they would begin developing distinct memories as soon as they each open their eyes.

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  • FaceDeer@kbin.social ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    But our consciousness is always on while alive.

    Not all the time. Sleeping is the obvious exception. You may quibble about whether REM sleep counts as "consciousness", but there are a couple of deeper types of sleep you cycle through that go way down into inactivity.

    There's also total anaesthesia, which (depending on the particular type) can shut your brain right down deeper than sleep does.

    Then there's people who have clinically died and then recovered, including some record-holders with Lazarus syndrome and who drowned in cold water - the record there is a 2-year-old who was submerged for 66 minutes and had a core body temperature of 19 degrees C when she was pulled out.

    Within Star Trek itself there's also Cryogenics (Khan and company were frozen while traveling in the Botany Bay) and Cryonics (the frozen people who were revived in TNG's "The Neutral Zone"). Were those people still the same people as they were when they were frozen?

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  • nymwit@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    Is there a clear cut distinction between consciousness and self awareness? I think based on common usage, most folks wouldn’t say you were conscious when sleeping, as usually it’s said when sleeping you are unconscious. Sure your brain is still doing stuff and it’s not just “keep the heart beating” stuff, but you’re not aware of it.

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    • Neato@kbin.social ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      We don't really understand consciousness well. Current theory is that it's the weird self-awareness that comes from a human brain. Even sleeping our brains don't really stop. It just stops conscious thought. Which is a confusion of terms, really. So we don't really know.

      Here's a more terrifying question: every time you lose and regain consciousness, is it you coming back? Or is it a new version of you with the same memories? What if every time you went to sleep, you effectively died but you'd never know it because the only version of you that you can actually be certain exists is the one right now?

      To put the lie to the transporter-consciousness debate: a clone in the transporter either works one of two ways: 1. it creates a new consciousness with the exact same memories and there is no way to tell the 2 apart from the outside but they are clearly different consciousnesses i.e. different people, or 2. transporters kill and remake people constantly birthing new consciousnesses every time and a clone is not that remarkable as it's just creating 2 instead of 1 this time.

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