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[hops]

If I cut you in half vertically and grafted a robot body to both half of you, both will be a different person from you.

[TempAcc]

You don't even need fusion to solve all our energy woes. All you need is cheap solar arrays and decent batteries, something everyone can already have, and will be able to have for actualy cheap prices in about a decade or less. The sun already dumps a shitton of energy on earth on a daily based and more then 99,9% of it isn't used by humans.

Fusion is a nifty thing though, once we actualy get it, we'll basically solve all our energy needs till the time stuff like dyson swarms become needed (and feasible), and thats a looooooooooooooooooooooooooooooong way away.

[hops]

Tell that to split-brain patients.

I mean if you got a massive brain injury or Alzheimer's I'd classify that as dying too.

Sometimes you even physically die and gets revived when that happens.

[miauw62]

You don't even need fusion to solve all our energy woes. All you need is cheap solar arrays and decent batteries, something everyone can already have, and will be able to have for actualy cheap prices in about a decade or less. The sun already dumps a shitton of energy on earth on a daily based and more then 99,9% of it isn't used by humans.

Fusion is a nifty thing though, once we actualy get it, we'll basically solve all our energy needs till the time stuff like dyson swarms become needed (and feasible), and thats a looooooooooooooooooooooooooooooong way away.

decent, cheap batteries literally don't exist tho, especially not at that scale

and it's not always sunny everywhere. solar panels become a lot less effective in temperate climates, and transporting all that energy from the equator isn't reasonable.

[Descan]

well that is the whole point of Musk's Gigafactory, so...

[Max™]

You don't even need fusion to solve all our energy woes. All you need is cheap solar arrays and decent batteries, something everyone can already have, and will be able to have for actualy cheap prices in about a decade or less. The sun already dumps a shitton of energy on earth on a daily based and more then 99,9% of it isn't used by humans.

Fusion is a nifty thing though, once we actualy get it, we'll basically solve all our energy needs till the time stuff like dyson swarms become needed (and feasible), and thats a looooooooooooooooooooooooooooooong way away.

decent, cheap batteries literally don't exist tho, especially not at that scale

and it's not always sunny everywhere. solar panels become a lot less effective in temperate climates, and transporting all that energy from the equator isn't reasonable.

>thinking like a grounder
It is literally sunny everywhere except the little patches of shade behind the various bits of debris floating around doing nothing but generating gravity wells and hosting silly little spatiotemporal structures like us.

If I cut you in half vertically and grafted a robot body to both half of you, both will be a different person from you.

Are the arms of the letter Y different from the stem? Sure, are they not part of the letter? Well, by definition, no, that is what that symbol is agreed to represent after all.

[Dozebôm Lolumzalìs]

The real problem is that the terms have no definition. What is rich? What is poor?

What is me? At what point between the spectrum me and you do I become you, if some effect were slowly transforming me into you?

It's almost meaningless, because we don't even know exactly what we are. Almost certainly we are simply an emergent property of the brain processing information, but since we cannot define 'me-ness' we cannot say at what point the 'me-ness' stops. I'm not even convinced that the distinction is meaningful. What, really, is the difference between a biological computer and an electronic one if they give the same response to stimuli? If you receive the same output to all input, they are functionally identical so the only argument over the difference would be a spiritual one, which is an argument nobody can win because there is no proof such a thing even exists.

It is my opinion that the thing which makes you 'you' is the unique interactions only you are capable of. Only you will react a certain way to a certain thing. A computer simulating your brain perfectly would react the same way to the same thing, and thus is also 'you'. A simulation running independent of your brain will eventually diverge from 'you' and become a different 'you' if it receives different stimulus and input, just the way two identical twins diverge if raised in different settings.

Heap problem, that's what it is.

[Dozebôm Lolumzalìs]

What's really amusing is that some of those transient structures have anxiety over the strands of protein filament on their heads and hope other structures will find the arrangement of said strands pleasing.

And that is a superb example of the stepping-away that sociologists and anthropologists do. (I don't remember the real term. My curse: knowing so many things, and yet having no way of referencing many of them. It's like that thing where you no longer have a connection to a datum in a computer because you de-assigned its memory space, or something. See? Meta. If I knew that term, I'd be able to say it.)

(Edit: It's dereferencing.)

[scrdest]

What's really amusing is that some of those transient structures have anxiety over the strands of protein filament on their heads and hope other structures will find the arrangement of said strands pleasing.

And that is a superb example of the stepping-away that sociologists and anthropologists do. (I don't remember the real term. My curse: knowing so many things, and yet having no way of referencing many of them. It's like that thing where you no longer have a connection to a datum in a computer because you de-assigned its memory space, or something. See? Meta. If I knew that term, I'd be able to say it.)

(Edit: It's dereferencing.)

Or garbage collection, if you want to be sardonic.

[miauw62]

well that is the whole point of Musk's Gigafactory, so...

which is an absolutely fucking massive factory just for producing car batteries that let a car drive 335 miles. (a car that isnt exactly cheap)

you want to use those to smooth out the power needs of the entire world?

[Max™]

What's really amusing is that some of those transient structures have anxiety over the strands of protein filament on their heads and hope other structures will find the arrangement of said strands pleasing.

And that is a superb example of the stepping-away that sociologists and anthropologists do. (I don't remember the real term. My curse: knowing so many things, and yet having no way of referencing many of them. It's like that thing where you no longer have a connection to a datum in a computer because you de-assigned its memory space, or something. See? Meta. If I knew that term, I'd be able to say it.)

(Edit: It's dereferencing.)

Well, I've only got a theoretical degree in physics, but that's where my comments on our 4-D extents containing numerous slices, each of which observe the current moment to be "now", yet all exist. If part of your 4-D structure extends into a computer and there is continuity between the memory of earlier slices and the boundary slices, it is obviously the same person, even if that structure splits into multiple sections, though their mindstates would begin to diverge immediately relative to each other from the point of branching, they are all a continuation of the same structure, as the branches of the letter Y would be continuations of the stem.

[Dozebôm Lolumzalìs]

I was referring to things like Nacirema, btw.

That is a really good point. Would an alternate-universe me be the same me as me?

[Frumple]

Depends on the alternate universe. It's not strictly impossible what you're experiencing is an arbitrary number of functionally identical simultaneous realities that are seamlessly cross-communicating. There would be many yous, in that case, all interchangeable, indistinguishable, and sharing the same experiences.

[Sergarr]

What's really amusing is that some of those transient structures have anxiety over the strands of protein filament on their heads and hope other structures will find the arrangement of said strands pleasing.

And that is a superb example of the stepping-away that sociologists and anthropologists do. (I don't remember the real term. My curse: knowing so many things, and yet having no way of referencing many of them. It's like that thing where you no longer have a connection to a datum in a computer because you de-assigned its memory space, or something. See? Meta. If I knew that term, I'd be able to say it.)

(Edit: It's dereferencing.)

Well, I've only got a theoretical degree in physics, but that's where my comments on our 4-D extents containing numerous slices, each of which observe the current moment to be "now", yet all exist. If part of your 4-D structure extends into a computer and there is continuity between the memory of earlier slices and the boundary slices, it is obviously the same person, even if that structure splits into multiple sections, though their mindstates would begin to diverge immediately relative to each other from the point of branching, they are all a continuation of the same structure, as the branches of the letter Y would be continuations of the stem.

It is obvious that the main problem people have with "multiple me being all equal" interpretation is that "branching" thing. If we could make a reversal of that process and sort of resynchronise those mindstates after branching while keeping all or almost all pre-merge memories intact, we wouldn't have that many people objecting to that stuff.

At least I think it would help.

[forsaken1111]

The Pen & Paper role-playing game Eclipse Phase deals heavily with these sorts of things. In that setting its quite common to spawn low level copies of your own mind to perform various tasks and then reintegrate them later on. The acceptability of this varies depending on where you are. Some societies see it as normal and accepted, while some think its queer and even obscene.

Generally a low-fidelity copy, one smart enough to perform basic things like managing your appointments, is fine but high-resolution copies capable of independent action and thought are restricted or even illegal.

You might spin off a copy of your mind to attend a work meeting and then integrate those memories later, while another copy of yourself gets the shopping done via online catalog, all while the 'real' you is sitting on the train off to visit your friend.

Under this fictional setting those copies are never granted independent rights but a copy of your mind is respected as if it were wholly you, and you are responsible for any actions taken.

And yes, out-of-control copies are a common plot point. In some societies, such copies are fitted with the software equivalent of a kill switch to remotely deactivate them in case they start causing trouble. As you can imagine, the morality of all this causes a lot of problems in the game and several factions have banned the practice outright.

This is also a game where you can simply download your mind into a comms network and transmit it to another space station where you're loaded into a loaner body, rather than travel there the slow way.