You know those sci-fi teleporters like in Star Trek where you disappear from one location then instantaneously reappear in another location? Do you trust that they are safe to use?
To fully understand my question, you need to understand the safety concerns regarding teleporters as explained in this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nQHBAdShgYI
spoiler
I wouldn’t, because the person that reappears aint me, its a fucking clone. Teleporters are murder machines. Star Trek is a silent massacre!
That’s not the issue.
Your body is copied as a file.
Your mind is a process running in a body created from that file.
When the process stops, you are effectively dead. Another copy of your body runs another process with an identical content. He has your body, but he’s not you.
That’s absolutely the issue.
This presumes that there is something special in this model that doesn’t resume when your mind resumes running in it’s new location. Or, in other terms, “a soul”. The idea that an identical consciousness in an identical body is “not you” is based wholly on the assumption that “you” is something other than the consciousness.
And your mind, or my mind, are both “processes” that stop regularly already - are you claiming that old you dies each night and a completely new but otherwise identical person lives each morning?
That is ridiculous.
When you kill a process and you re-run a program, even if you saved the full state of the memory elsewhere, you don’t say that it’s the same process. Is another process with identical content. There’s no need of a metaphysical entity. It’s another instance.
You’re deeply, sorely mistaken. Even in a deep, unconscious state, the mind keeps working, even if the degree of consciousness is different. That we’re not 100% certain of what the brain does in those moments doesn’t mean that it stops working.
So you do see my point.
People aren’t computers, so getting all worked up about how software models instances still isn’t a valid modelling for human consciousness.
But this is so hair-splittingly pedantic it’s almost doubled back to be incorrect. If you ask 99.999% of the world, they’ll be like “yeah I closed outlook and then I opened outlook” - to them, it’s still the same program. They’re launching the same software again. No one is like “oh well once you quit Skyrim it’s all over because even if you reopen it later, it’s a new instance and the old one is dead” … no. That’s ridiculous. It’s the same program, the same save file, resumed from save at a later date.
Your focus on “Process” instead of “Program” is making the soul argument. The “process” you’re arguing for is a soul. Something intangible and irrelevant to the end user, that does get terminated on shutdown, that cannot be restored from save. Consciousness is the software, not the process itself. Memories are the save file. There is nothing in OP’s model of teleporting that suggests “process” itself is the sacred portion - when the hardware & software of “Dave” gets paused and resumed flawlessly.
Not at all. Consciousness is interrupted. Unless we’re assuming that the “process” itself is sacred - what happens to consciousness is all that matters in either case. If your ability to perceive yourself as a conscious being stops - it doesn’t matter to your experience of your own consciousness if the ‘process’ stopped or went to sleep during the gap.
Sorry, no. But trying to make you understand. You are deeply mistaken, but I’m not interesting in departing with you any longer.
Yeah, there’s your problem. You’re trying to make me understand it your way and criticizing me for not doing so, instead of trying to persuasively state your own viewpoints standing on their own.
It’s an approach that I can imagine would feel frustrating when I already understand your views and am talking about them.
I’m never going to sleep again!
The mind doesn’t stop during sleep. We’re not fully aware, that’s all.
Mine stops. If I were to fall asleep (which I now won’t), and someone were to transport my body away, and the mind resumed running at it’s new location, the future copy of me would be very confused.
Ah, I guess you know more about how the brain works that neuroscientists do.
I’m done.
No really, when I woke up this morning, I had absolutely NO IDEA what happened in the previous 8 hours. It’s like my entire mind just blanked for that time. Wtf?