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[Cecilff2]

It does however, give an effective method to freeze yourself for time travel into the future...

Until hard drive failure.

Hope you RAIDed yourself.

[Loud Whispers]

Is the caterpillar dead when it metamorphoses into a butterfly? No. Support cloning, for mutant butterfly !!SCIENCE!!

[GlyphGryph]

Well... uh.... actually, isn't it? I mean, there's definitely alive stuff IN there, but doesn't it's brain essentially get melted and turned into goo?

[Loud Whispers]

Clinically the caterpillar is never dead, but we don't call it the caterpillar anymore do we though?

How would the general populace react to clone people?

[DeKaFu]

I wanna reiterate that the whole teleportation thing can be a bad idea even without believing in a soul.

It's really simple to me:
Your consciousness is physically/biochemically based in your brain. In the process of teleportation...
1. A perfect copy of your brain (and body) is made on the other side. You now have two identical brains, and two identical but separate consciousnesses. They are each complete entities that percieve the world separately.
2. The original brain/consciousness is destroyed. The second one continues on.

If 1 happened and 2 didn't happen, it'd be like one person going to sleep and two identical people waking up (with the same memory of going to sleep). When both happen, it's like one person going to sleep and never waking up, and another person waking up (with the memory of going to sleep). Going to sleep and never waking up = death. That's you, the original.

Even if 1 and 2 are simultanious, or 2 happens before 1, the outcome is exactly the same. As far as I can tell, any other arguments only matter from an outside point of perception, like a third person observing and going "well, they seem the same to me!".


That said, if it turned out that teleporting myself would let me do something amazing I could never otherwise do, like study biological life on an alien planet, I'd probably go through with it. But I'd treat the decision as sacrificing myself to give a person with my dreams the opportunity to fulfill them.

[GlyphGryph]

But when you go to sleep, it IS another person that wakes up, with a memory of going to sleep. One could argue even moreso than with teleportation.

With teleportation, once could at least argue that the person is definitely you by virtue of being identical. I really don't think the word "original" is really appropriate here, any moreso than arguing that the "original" you of seven years ago is dead because no part of him remains in you. But even if we use the loaded language of calling one the original, they are both "you". There are, at that point, quite literally two "you"s, functionally and effectively identical in every way but location.

When you go to sleep and wake up, though? Those two people AREN'T identical. Why is the spatial gap so much worse than a time based gap, especially when the time based gap of sleep alters "you" in the process?

[DeKaFu]

It boils down to perception. One brain, one point of perception and continuous consciousness. Two brains, two different points of perception and continuous consciousness. If that was not the case, we'd both be percieving the world through both bodies at the same time. I'm pretty confident that's impossible.

So with that, for the survivor in posession of brain #2, nothing appears to change. For me, with brain #1, permanent oblivion. Whether the brain changes over time of its own accord doesn't really play into it (it does change, and would continue to do so separately and divergently for each of the two, that's brains).

[Tarran]

But when you go to sleep, it IS another person that wakes up, with a memory of going to sleep.

In my opinion, after going to sleep, you're still the same person, just after shutting down partially.

One could argue even moreso than with teleportation.

I disagree.

Sleep: Body and mind partially 'shut down'.
Teleportation: Disassemble and destroy body and mind and copy it across a distance.

Or, in computer terms:

Sleep: Standby mode.
Teleportation: Take apart computer, copy all components, destroy the original, and put it back together with copy components.

[Skyrunner]

Personally, I think if we are disassembled and reassembled, the world as 'we' know it disappears. Gone. Our clone, who has all of our memories, gains consciousness and starts living like us.

We're gone. I'm gone.

[3]

As I think was touched on earlier in the thread, this whole business would certainly be an interesting experiment given the implications of, well, whatever the results are. If an individual "survived" the deconstruction/reconstruction process we'd have to deal with the implication that our conciousness is defined by something other than neurobiology.

The obvious problem is that we don't have any way of defining the difference between the "original" and the "copy" through anything other than ontological argument... maybe it'd work if we networked a load of brains together and looked for effects while teleporting one, or something.

[Max White]

We're gone. I'm gone.

Everything that makes you who you are remains. You remain.

[Skyrunner]

I believe it to be like RAM. The computer completely is intact, but the RAM is wiped. That RAM is what you perceive the world as.

[Max White]

Nope, your thoughts, memories and feelings are all preserved. It makes an exact copy, nothing that is wiped is not recreated exactly the same as it was.

[Tarran]

We're gone. I'm gone.

Everything that makes you who you are remains. You remain.

Correction: A perfect copy remains.

[DeKaFu]

Except that it's a copy, so it's physically distinct and has a physically distinct mind.

It's no different from if you made an exact copy and then put a bullet through your own head. Your mind wouldn't jump to the other one. It'd be splattered all over the wall.

You'd only still exist from an outside point of view. You wouldn't have a point of view anymore.