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buybuydandavis comments on [link] Scott Aaronson on free will - Less Wrong
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You are not a COPY (perfect or otherwise) of yourself from one moment to the next. Not by any meaningful definition of the word copy.
The whole copying language kind of begs the question.
Compare Dan(t=n) and Dan(t=n+1). Not identical. That's as true now as it will be in a teleporting and replicating future. Calling it "the same" Dan or a "different" Dan is a choice.
"Copy" implies having more than 1 object : The Copy and the Original at the same point of time, but not space. Dan(t=n) and Dan(t=n+1) are not copies. Dan(Time=n, Location=a) and Dan(Time=n, Location=b) are copies.
I don't think so, and I don't think the original author assumes as much. If your digital copy is created through a process that destroys you, is it not a copy?
Hmmm...
I suppose it is. But are you saying you are being constantly destroyed and remade from one moment to the next? I know Pratchett used the idea in " The Thief of Time", but that's a fantasy author...
But even if we assume that what happening to the atoms of your body from one moment to the other can be described as destruction and recreation (I'm not even sure those words have meaning when we talk about atoms), you will still have the burden of proving that the process is analogous to the whatever way you are going to teleport yourself to Mars.
There's not much analogy required, as he argued from "not a perfect copy", i.e., the existence of difference.
No, but that intertemporal solidarity is my choice, just as someone's intertemporal solidarity with their teleported copy would be their choice.
You can choose to think whatever you like, but I don't think it changes the laws of the universe. You either have a continuous existence in time or you don't. You may decide that your Copy on Mars is you, but it is not. Your mind won't continue to operate on Mars if you shoot yourself on Earth.
(shrug) The laws of the universe, in the sense you mean the term here, are silent on many things.
Is Sam my friend, or not? Basically, I choose. If I decide Sam is, then Sam is (although I might not be Sam's). If I decide Sam's not, then Sam's not. There's no fact of the matter beside that. The laws of the universe are silent.*
Is my copy on Mars me, or isn't it? Perhaps the laws of the universe are equally silent.
* - of course, at another level of description this is false, since the laws of the universe also constrain what choice I make, but at that level "you can choose to think whatever you like" is false, so I assume that's not the level you are referencing.
So, if you decide that your brain after being shot is still you and then shoot yourself, you will not die?
Can I decide I'm Bill Gates? Like, for a couple of days?
Yes. In fact, this isn't hypothetical; lots of people on this site in fact do believe that their brains after they've been shot, if adequately cryopreserved, are still them and that they haven't necessarily died.
I don't know, can you? Have you tried? (Of course, that won't alter what the legal system does.)
Why preference space over time? Time is just another dimension after all. buybuydandavis's definition of "copy" seems to avoiding preference for a particular dimension, and so seems more general.
You may want to read up on the no-cloning theorem in quantum mechanics.
The simple answer to your question is that time interacts differently with causality from space.
The point is that teleported Dan may be different from non-teleported Dan in ways that are very different (meta-different?) from the differences between Dan(t=n) and Dan(t=n+1).
This is certainly how quantum systems work.
Maybe. But the teleported differences aren't necessarily worse.
They won't necessarily exist either. I'm describing a way the world might turn out to be, I never said this is the only way.