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Epiphany comments on Open Thread, October 1-15, 2012 - Less Wrong
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We need to focus on the word "I" to see my point. I'm going to switch that out with something else to highlight this difference. For the original, I will use the word "Dave". As tempting as it is to use "TheOtherDave" for the copy, I am going to use something completely different. I'll use "Bob". And for our control, I will use myself, Epiphany.
Epiphany takes a nap. Her brain is still active but it's not conscious.
Dave decides to use a teleporter. He stands inside and presses the button.
The teleporter scans him and constructs a copy of him on a space ship a mile away.
The copy of Dave is called Bob.
The teleporter checks the copy of Bob before deleting Dave to make sure he was copied successfully.
Dave still exists, for a fraction of a second, just after Bob is created.
Both of them COULD go on existing, if the teleporter does not delete Dave. However, Dave is under the impression that he will become Bob once Bob exists. This isn't true - Bob is having a separate set of experiences. Dave doesn't get a chance to notice this because in only fractions of a second, the teleporter deletes Dave by disassembling his particles.
Dave's experience goes black. That's it. Dave doesn't even know he's dead because he has stopped experiencing. Dave will never experience again. Bob will experience, but he is not Dave.
Epiphany wakes up from her nap. She is still Epiphany. Her consciousness did not stop permanently like Dave's. She was not erased like Dave.
Epiphany still exists. Bob still exists. Dave does not.
The problem here is that Dave stopped experiencing permanently. Unlike Epiphany who can pick up where Epiphany left off after her nap because she is still Epiphany and was never disassembled, Bob cannot pick up where Dave left off because Bob never was Dave. Bob is a copy of Dave. Now that Dave is gone, Dave is gone. Dave stopped experiencing. He is dead.
Ah! So when you say "If I were to be disassembled by a Star Trek transporter, I'd stop experiencing" you mean "I'd [permanently] stop experiencing." I understand you now, thanks.
So, OK.
Suppose Dave decides to go to sleep. He gets into bed, closes his eyes, etc.
The next morning, someone opens their eyes.
How would I go about figuring out whether the person who opens their eyes is Dave or Bob?
Well, first, is there a human copier nearby? If not, you're probably Dave.
How about this: If you had stepped into a teleporter and pressed the button, how would you know that it killed you?
This is exactly backwards.
I recognize a copier because it makes copies. That's how I know something is a copier.
If I need to know whether something is a copier before I can decide whether what it creates is a copy or not, there's something wrong with my thinking.
I wouldn't, naturally.
Of course, if Dave steps into an incinerator and presses the button, Dave also doesn't know that the incinerator killed Dave.
Dave is just dead, and knows nothing.
OTOH, if Dave steps into a non-incinerator and presses the button, Dave knows it didn't kill Dave.
And the way that Dave knows this is that something is standing there, not-dead, after pressing the button, and that something identifies as Dave, and resembles Dave closely enough.
This happens all the time... I have pressed many buttons in my life, and I know they haven't killed me, because here I am, still alive.
And I expect this is exactly what happens with a properly functioning teleporter. I press the button, and in the next moment something is aware of being Dave, and therefore not dead. It just happens to be in a different location.
Okay, so would you recommend I check under my bed tonight for anything that might make a copy of me and disassemble the original? I need something more to go on. I'm having a hard time not equating this with worrying about boogeymen.
Actually, for at least a few seconds, possibly a few minutes, Dave would be screaming in agony and he would most certainly notice that he is experiencing death by incineration.
Unless the non-incinerator happens to be a human copier, and Dave did not recognize it at first.
Yes, exactly. The original Dave has died in such a way that he didn't even notice. Dave2 definitely doesn't want to think that an exact copy of himself died just a moment ago, and really definitely doesn't want to have to worry that he will need to cease experiencing in order to "go back" to where he came from, so due to normalcy bias, Dave2 declares that the fact that Dave2 exists means that Dave1 never died, and enjoys the confirmation bias that this non-sequitur gives him until he ceases to experience when "loaded" back onto his space ship.
That's one insidious death.
Two, actually. :p
Indeed! And you should equate it with worrying about boogeymen. It's a silly thing to worry about.
The question is why it's silly.
I would say it's silly, not because I haven't noticed any boxes marked "human copier" under my bed, because every time in the past that I've woken up I've resembled the person who went to bed so closely that it's been ridiculous to worry that I might not be the same person.
Nope.
Dave would notice that he's experiencing being incinerated, certainly, if the incinerator were as slow as you describe. But he would not experience death by incineration. He wouldn't experience death at all. Here's how I know: as long as Dave is experiencing anything, Dave isn't yet dead. And if he's not dead, he certainly can't be experiencing death.
(nods) Just like his predecessor did the night before when he went to bed, and Dave woke up in his place.
But of course, as above, that was too silly to worry about, just like boogiemen.
So is this.
Okay, I guess you were trying to say that my concern about being disassembled after being copied as a method of "transportation" is the equivalent of worrying about boogeymen?
"OH GOD I'M DYING AHHH!" < I call this experiencing death. Different definitions, I guess. If you want to get technical about it, and talk about death in a solely tangible way, sure Dave isn't dead when he's thinking about that. But Dave is experiencing death emotionally and intellectually. He knows he's in the process of dying, that death is inevitable. He also feels emotional (and, well, physical) pain that amount to an experience worthy of symbolizing death. Maybe it would be more grammatically correct though if I said he is experiencing dying. In any case, I meant to differentiate this from transporter death because with transporter death, Dave believes that he is going to survive the "transportation" and doesn't feel any emotional or physical pain, so there's no knowledge of or suffering about his death.
If I offered you the free use of a device that could make a copy of you and put it anywhere you want and cause the current you to be disassembled and dispersed in the surrounding environment, (2-way trip) would you use it?
(shrug) OK, sure. Incidentally, by your definition, many many people walking around today have experienced death. Hell, I've experienced death myself.
Anyway, using your definition, if I stepped into what I thought was a molecular disassembler that would kill me, and it disassembled me slowly enough that I experienced the process of being disassembled, I would "experience death" by your definition, and I would know I'd experienced it the same way I know I experience the taste of cheese when I experience the taste of cheese. Later, I would look around the teleport receiver booth and say "Huh. I'm not dead? Cool" and go on with my life.
That is, I would have "experienced death" but not actually died, just as many many people do in real life when they wake up after heart attacks, accidents, etc.
Assuming that it reliably creates that copy? Absolutely. Far more convenient than airplanes.
(By "reliably" here I just mean that I trust it to actually create a close-enough copy, and not to instead create some imperfect copy that does not resemble me closely enough to satisfy my preferences regarding consistency over time.)
Yes.
I already know what your bumper sticker in the future is going to say:
I break (down) for transporters!
Now, say the transporter has a malfunction at the exact fraction of a second between the time when Dave2 has been verified as a complete copy and the time when Dave1 is going to be disassembled.
The technician says it's going to take three hours to fix. You go out and catch a movie. After the movie, you go outside and stretch, and you see that it's a beautiful day. You have two options:
What do you choose?
I choose #2, of course.
More than that... if I arrive at the transporter complex and am told that this is an option, that I can duplicate myself and send one copy to my destination while the other one stays here, I absolutely prefer to be duplicated... no reason for a conveniently timed technical failure.
Indeed, I might postpone the trip altogether and spend the next week right here hanging out with myself and having threesomes with our husband and meeting with lawyers to figure out what we do with our funds and material goods.
Relatedly, given a button that I know creates two perfect copies and then picks one of the resulting three Daves at random to destroy an hour later, I press it.
At the time of pressing the button, I'm indifferent as to which of the three copies gets selected for destruction... they are all me.
After pressing the button, one of me goes "Crap! I'm going to die in an hour!" and is unhappy about it, and the other two of me go "Whew! Dodged that bullet!" but feel bad for the third of me.
On my account it does not matter in the least which one of the three "was the original me," assuming there's even any way to tell, which there may not be.
Now, a question for you.
I enter a spaceship traveling to Alpha Centauri in suspended animation, along with all my friends and loved ones. We could have teleported instead, but we've been convinced by your account that this would be suicidal, so we opted for the slower but safer route.
While we lie in frozen sleep, the spaceship has a technical failure in mid-flight which reduces the ship and everything in it to constituent atoms. The ship's captain has the option of using the ship's transporter to beam us from the doomed ship to the surface of Alpha Centauri.
As far as I can tell, on your account, there's no particular reason why she should do so... either way, we're all going to die. Sure, if she does so some complete strangers will pop into existence on Alpha Centauri, but what has that got to do with her? The birthrate on Alpha Centauri is more than high enough already, creating more new people isn't particularly valuable.
Is that right?
Suppose she does so, though, for whatever reason.
So someone identical to me (but who on your account is not me, since I died on the ship) wakes up in a thawing chamber on Alpha Centauri, alongside a bunch of thawed people who are identical to my friends and loved ones, and all of us are under the (on your account deluded) belief that we are the same people who entered coldsleep. We throw a big party to celebrate our safe arrival on a new world.
During that party, we turn on the news and learn for the first time about the ship's actual fate.
We are presumably horrified at the sudden discovery that we're not who we thought we were.
The person with my memories looks at the man whom, a moment earlier, he'd thought was his husband, and becomes convinced it's actually a complete stranger... that they never actually got married. Indeed, they just met a few minutes ago, at the beginning of this party. He's been making out for the last five minutes with a complete stranger!
All around the room, similar realizations are being made, as what had previously been a celebration of safe arrival becomes a wake for me and my friends, who are on your account irretrievably and tragically dead.
Yes? Is this how you envision the situation?
Note to self: "I break (down) / break down / breakdown / brake down / brakedown for transporters!" all get zero Google results. Yay.