...and we are all together

[andrewducker]

[Poll #1740207]

Context.

Comments

[ciphergoth.livejournal.com]

It's very likely that for any N, there are N successive such encodings somewhere in the digits of pi. However, writing down the index at which they can be found is almost certainly longer than writing down the states themselves. See also the Follow-The-Improbability game.

[andrewducker]

Oh, absolutely. It's just a nice idea (and I enjoyed the Egan story it appeared in).

pi

[wolfieboy.livejournal.com]

I don't know that I would think of myself as #6 but it's a cool idea.

Re: pi

[ciphergoth.livejournal.com]

Did you mean to tick 6 but not 5? If so, could you explain further?

[desperance.livejournal.com]

Ah, the myth of continuing consciousness. You missed out "myself 20/30/40 years ago", which is equally problematic.

Also, your footnote on the binary digits of pi only exists in the context, which seems hardly fair.

[andrewducker]

Oops. I meant to delete the footnote.

Aah well.

And yes, anything which applies to you 20 years in one direction applies equally in the other.

[cosmolinguist]

UNLESS myself in 20 years is dead, of course.

[cosmolinguist]

Well, that goes for five seconds from now, too.

[meaningrequired.livejournal.com]

Yes to all of the above, unless my consciousness isn't linked in some way to new variants, then it won't feel like "me".

[andrewducker]

Depends what you mean by "consciousness" :->

[nancylebov.livejournal.com]

And "linked".

[cheekbones3.livejournal.com]

And "Yes".

[andrewhickey.livejournal.com]

Yes to all of the above except four, which is actually meaningless (there's no way to distinguish between one atom and another - if you take a pattern of atoms apart and then create the same pattern again in 'different' atoms, what you have at the end is the same object. There are no 'different' atoms of, say, hydrogen to make you out of.)

[pete stevens (from livejournal.com)]

#4, you probably can't.

If there's one atom in your body that isn't in a quantum eigenstate of the measurement you're about to make (seems likely!) the act of measuring it will change it's state to be a quantum eigenstate. Whilst you can reassemble your body as you measured it, this will be a different body to the one you had before the measurement process started. (imagine you're given a box which unbeknownst to you contains Schroedingers cat and hasn't yet been opened. How do you reassemble that in the superposition of states it starts in).

Of course what's interesting is if you can do a simultaneous measurement of your body resulting in a version of you with everything being in an eigenstate without killing you. I don't believe anyone has a definitive answer but if you can it would suggest that teleportation would be possible.

As with many good questions, Chris Lightfoot thought of it all first...

http://www.ex-parrot.com/~chris/wwwitter/20040515-and_one_of_the_fingers_on_the_button_will_be.html

[spacelem.livejournal.com]

I take my views on teleportation from Barclay. I believe that teleportation destroys you and creates an identical clone that believes with utter certainty that it is you, and when questioned will say "the teleportation was a complete success, I haven't changed at all", while your own consciousness stream has ended.

At best you might have a reincarnation experience, where you wouldn't be able to tell the difference between yourself and your previous life, but it's not a risk I'd ever be willing to take.

[ciphergoth.livejournal.com]

Which Barclay, sorry? There are rather a lot of them. Thanks!

[andrewducker]

I'm going to go with Lieutenant Reginald Endicott "Broccoli" Barclay III.

[spacelem.livejournal.com]

That's the one! The one who had a phobia of transporting because he believed... well pretty much what I said.

[drjon.livejournal.com]

Have you read Hofstadter's "I am a Strange Loop"?

[andrewducker]

Nope, but taking a look I am familliar with a fair chunk of the concepts. Looks interesting though.

[zz]

i'd need to be convinced of the accuracy of #4, and with #5 it'd be changing the nature of my existence, which is a separate decision from "will i still be me".

unlike stock scifi characters, i don't mind the thought of multiple mes, as long as we were all aware of each other's existence. being telepathically linked would be useful too, for being in multiple places at once purposes.

[anton-p-nym.livejournal.com]

The Federation is guilty of mass homicide, and only covers its tracks by releasing an exact duplicate of everyone killed by their euphemistically-named "transporters".

-- Steve's definition of continuity of consciousness is a bit stricter than some others'.

[andrewducker]

You're assuming there that self-identity requires continuity of consciousness.

(Also, the Federation explicitly exists in a universe where souls exist, so if you assume that souls travel to the new copy of the body instantly then they're killing them and then bringing them back to life!)

[drdoug.livejournal.com]

I say it's only me if it's dynamic.

So, for instance, if you've uploaded me in to a simulation, that's still me, but a backup saved-state of the simulation isn't me unless and until you start running it again.

A representation of me that exists somewhere in the digits of pi isn't me - but you could (theoretically) turn it in to me by transposing it in to some system capable of updating it in the light of various inputs. That could even be something that worked by finding a different offset in pi - but as ciphergoth points out, that's likely to be even harder, and will take more active hardware, than just doing the simulation on its own.

Of course, the time taken to update needn't be the current value - you could implement me a lot faster in a future computer, and you could implement me a lot slower in even clumsier hardware than I'm using now. But I'd notice and probably take a while to adjust. At extremes I'd find it very hard to cope.

[recycled-sales.livejournal.com]

I think about this sort of thing when dealing with quantum teleportation. If the original is destroyed, then surely I die and a replacement me is created.

Of course then you have to question, what is 'me',

[andrewducker]

Of course then you have to question, what is 'me'

That was rather the point :->

[tysolna]

As Uhura once said, "Sorry, neither".

Even five seconds from now, I am a different person. Just because the body stays the same (and even that is not true) does not mean that the "me" inside is the same. I would not want to be uploaded into a simulation - well it'd be interesting to see myself from the outside, but I would not consider that simulation to be "me"; the word "simulation" says it all really. I would not want to be transported; as spacelem above, I share Barclay's and Doctor McCoy's view.

What I consider to be "me" is made up of so many different facets, internal voices, internet aliases and avatars, different reactions to the same things depending on context, mood, level of health etc. I am in a constant state of flux. The person who hits "Post Comment" is not the same one writing this right now.

Very rarely, all those facets come together, and that is quite a Zen experience.

[eatsoylentgreen.livejournal.com]

I like to tell people "you're a different person every day." And the other ones would result in an identical twin. And #6 I didn't understand.

[crm.livejournal.com]

me: If when handed a fork, i return a non zero, defined value.

[ciphergoth.livejournal.com]

I think there's a very good chance that we will end up in a future where scanning and emulation a la option 5 is really possible, and I genuinely worry that the troublesome philosophical beliefs of some contributors to this thread will actually kill them.

[andrewducker]

It won't kill them*. But it might prevent a virtual version of them from being created.

*For some version of "them".