You're looking at Less Wrong's discussion board. This includes all posts, including those that haven't been promoted to the front page yet. For more information, see About Less Wrong.

TheOtherDave comments on Copying and Subjective Experience - Less Wrong Discussion

5 Post author: lucidfox 20 December 2010 12:14PM

You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.

Comments (49)

You are viewing a single comment's thread. Show more comments above.

Comment author: TheOtherDave 20 December 2010 08:09:38PM 1 point [-]

Actually, now that I think about it, I'm not at all sure I'd experience a jump. That is, it's entirely possible that both of me would experience a smooth continuation of the stream of consciousness.

After all, my current experience of such a smooth continuity is the output of cognitive algorithms biased towards producing such a coherent experience out of gappy, noisy inputs; it seems plausible that those algorithms would just continue to do the same thing over the branching point without ever constructing an experience of transition.

Comment author: atucker 21 December 2010 02:55:33AM 2 points [-]

I think it depends on how obvious you make the difference between their two locations.

Say the copy takes place in a room where I/we/he/I/(the pre-split me) can watch the copy be created standing in the same relative position, etc. as pre-split-unambiguous-me. Then its entirely possible that both of me would experience a smooth continuation of stream of consciousness.

Now lets say the copy is created in a green room on the other side of a pane of one-way glass, while pre-split me stands watching in a red room. Then I would really hope that one of me would continue a smooth stream of consciousness, while the other one would realize that he "jumped" into a green room.

Comment author: TheOtherDave 21 December 2010 03:11:59AM 1 point [-]

(nods) I'd really hope so too. I'd even expect it, I think. That said, brains do some astonishingly broken things along these lines.

Comment author: lucidfox 21 December 2010 03:19:01AM 1 point [-]

If the copy cannot see the original at the time of copying, would it feel any different than just being teleported to the destination? Which is impossible because it violates special relativity, but we can still, I think, argue what the subjective experience would be if it was.

Comment author: TheOtherDave 21 December 2010 03:26:57AM 1 point [-]

Well, in mundane cases where awareness of the transition from point A to B is lost -- blackouts, amnesia, failures of attention, etc. -- the experience is sometimes of a sudden translation, and sometimes of nothing in particular (that is, you're just at B now, and the fact that you don't remember getting there isn't particularly called to your attention), and sometimes of not realizing that anything in particular has happened, and sometimes other things.

I imagine you'd get a similar range in these more speculative cases.