To make this clearer, what I'm saying is that if you're wanting to give me a "0-0.1-0.2-0.3...1" spectrum, then you need to say at what exact point survival obtains. It cannot be part here, more there. Either the person survives at point A or not. I do not see there is another way for this to run. You simply cannot survive and not survive. — AmadeusD

☝ This guy gets it
This is absolutely key to what I am saying with the imperfect transporter.

I have given you ample reasons why you can partially survive, in the psychological sense. — hypericin

Partial survival is survival. So, going back to the idea of a continuum, the implication of what you're saying is that 0.0000001 = "partial survive", which is a form of "survive". It implies that if the person walking out of the transporter has a single atom the same as the person at source, then the person at source has survived.
...It's a consistent position I guess, but I don't think most people would bite the bullet and claim that if Obama walks into the transporter, and Reagan walks out, then Obama has survived.

You think the you that's waking up tomorrow morning isn't really you? That if you go on a bender, you won't have to suffer the hangover? Someone else will? That's so obviously wrong. — RogueAI

Again, I don't claim to know, but it's the strongest position to take right now.
Both "bodily continuity" and "psychological continuity" have serious counter-arguments, which "no continuity" does not.

What's your argument against "no continuity"? Upthread, I begged someone, anyone to come up with a counter-argument to it. I don't want it to be true. But before this thread, I never heard an argument against it and that continues to be the case.

Assume psychological continuity is correct. If on your terms, if any degree of survival counts as survival, then if Napoleon came out of the teleporter, and he had the faintest, most fleeting and occasional memory of the teleportee, well then for you that is full survival. — hypericin

Not at all. I make no claim about how persistence works under psychological continuity, the whole argument is against it working as an explanation.
So, if you're asking me under "my terms" of whether Napoleon has survived, my answer is f-knows, it depends on what determines the difference between surviving in any form versus not surviving at all, and we have no idea what does, or could, determine that.

Nothing in your source seems to indicate what you are saying. It is silent on the rates at which trans individuals are perpetrators of violent crime. In general, groups that are more likely to be the victims of violent crime are also more likely to be perpetrators. — Count Timothy von Icarus

You're right that we need to separate out these two concepts.

So firstly, I guess you are accepting that trans are more likely to be victims of crime, as there's no counter-cite or rebuttal?

Secondly, in terms of frequency of committing crimes, I could only find this swedish study, that suggested that people who engaged in sex reassignment in the 1980s had a slightly higher incidence of crime than cisgender, but no difference among those who transitioned in the later (2003) group.
I couldn't find great data TBH -- police forces dont seem to keep this data -- so I'm happy to take back that part, as long as you also acknowledge that those alledging that transgender are more likely to be criminals also need to back that up.

Yes, The person stepping into the transporter will be 0.0 alive after the process. Their atoms were dispersed. There is no way to disperse someone's items without them dying. — Patterner

I am putting the point to hypericin, because it's an argument against psychological continuity. Perhaps put your point to him?

Apart from that, it seems again you're just asserting bodily continuity. What would take things further is an explanation or further elaboration. A couple of posts ago you suggested that freezing time would not end the self, but even a nanosecond of separation would. Why's that? What's lost in that nanosecond?

False. I have given you the reasons people are made uncomfortable. This occurs when anyone does it. [...]Anyone who approaches me as overbearing, childish and intrusive will get the same response. — AmadeusD

You are just trying to rationalize why you feel uncomfortable. Firstly, who cares, but secondly, this concedes the point.
I don't like the mannerisms or dress of lots of people on TV...it doesn't matter and it's not "woke". You were supposed to be explaining what's wrong with woke and are still just coming back to not liking Dylan's appearance.

But here are a couple of examples anyway — AmadeusD

OK, I'll give you one there; the peeping tom one. The others are just not relevant. A non-sexual assault that happened in a bathroom. What's the difference between that and a cismale assaulting a cisfemale, which is of course far more common?
But yeah, I'll stop saying there are zero examples.

We then have the multitude of problematic cases of males in female prisons, and the overwhelming concentration among those trans women who are prison, of sex crimes. IN the UK a trans women is fully four times more likely to be in prison for a sex crime than a non-trans male. — AmadeusD

I would agree that the prison service in the UK has got this wrong a couple of times; like the high-profile case of the the rapist who "transitioned" after being convicted. However, in general the data is that trans people are much, much more likely to be victims of crime than perpetrators, and are at great risk in prisons. It's extremely misleading to depict them as predators.

Sex is real, and it matters. Not sure how that became controversial. — AmadeusD

Among who? Sounds like a strawman to me.
What I would say though is I have, and will continue to push back against the claim that sex is binary, because intersex is a thing. But in general, no, no-one is saying sex isn't real.

We both know there is no line.

You want to say, in the imperfect transporter, if survival is possible at all, there must be a line between survival and death, as death is surely possible given enough imperfection. There is no such line, any such line must be arbitrary. Therefore survival isn't possible.

But this is only true if survival is binary. If we think of survival in terms of a body living or dying, it is binary. If we think in terms of a soul transmigrating or not, it is binary. But if we think in terms of psychological survival (which is the only way anyone can survive a transporter) it is not. Survival in this case is a continuum between 0-1, not a binary on-off. — hypericin

(emphasis added)

This is the critical point right here.

I am exactly talking about that line, except I am talking about persistence of the self, not "the body". Like it or not, whether I survive in any form -- whatever that might be -- versus being as dead as Napoleon, *is* a binary.

Presumably you are happy to say Napoleon is completely dead today, right?
So, to put it in your "continuum" terms, Napoleon's level of alive is 0.0. And, in the imperfect transporter, the proposition that we are interested in, that is binary, is whether the person stepping into the transporter will be 0.0 alive after the process.

And it is very problematic for the position of psychological continuity for the reasons given; the line is arbitrary, yet important, and further yet: unknowable.

Finally, let's stop with the "we both know" -- try to get through a post without asserting someone else's inner beliefs.

What do you regard as the necessary and sufficient conditions (or properties) for being you? I suggest that this is a central issue in the transporter scenario. — Relativist

If you're asking me qualitatively, sure I can list off things like my personality, my memories etc.

In the context of this discussion on continuity of the self? Nothing. What I mean is: the most defensible position on the self is that consciousness is just a momentary phenomenon that comes packaged with the illusion of continuity.

No. This is clearly bollocks. I gave you several reasons, which have nothing to do with being trans. Please stop putting words in my mouth. — AmadeusD

Your reasons all boil down to you just finding her appearance "uncanny" to use your word. Yes, that is just you not liking the appearance of a transperson, you have not rationalized it at all.

Right o, I'll tell that to the victims and the millions of females it makes unsafe. — AmadeusD

What victims? Let's see the cite for someone pretending to be trans to SA women in a public toilet. I'll wait here.

I think all 'being trans' is pretend in some sense: You cannot change your sex. It is utterly impossible. There is no version of 'transition' which means anything if gender is a construct/spectrum that means nothing to us as sexes (which is fine, I don't quite have an issue with tha tposition). — AmadeusD

I think your understanding here is a bit confused. There's gender and there's sex, and transpeople are quite aware that changing their gender does not change their sex. They don't believe that going from Robert to Roberta instantly gives them a uterus.

You are yet again talking from your implicit soul perspective, where "instance of consciousness" is your word for soul. — hypericin

It's always a desperate debating tactic to rely on telling other people what they believe. And I even pointed out in the OP that people on both sides of this debate will tend to make their argument by accusing the other side of believing in souls.

For the fourth time, no I don't believe in souls. Not only am I an atheist, not only do I think that dualism is inherently flawed, but my background is in neuroscience; I have a post-grad degree in neuroimaging. So I don't want to have to address this straw man for a fifth time.

Assuming psychological continuity is key, you survive only to the degree that the new person's psychology resembles the old. Abraham Lincolns would not resemble it at all, so you would be completely extinguished.

Great, so we agree that there is a point at which you're simply dead. But you also believe that there is a point at which you survive with brain damage. This is the line we're interested in in the imperfect transporter. Where is that line: how does the universe decide, and how can we know where it is?

Excuse me, but I don't think you understand your own question. That's not an answer. — SolarWind

It's as clear an answer as I can give: I don't know, but the best supported theory of consciousness right now is that there is no such thing as continuity of consciousness. I am (numerically) not the same consciousness as went to bed last night, or began this sentence, and I won't be the being that wakes up from cryonics later.
And it was responding to your question, what do you mean by "your own question"?

Cryonics costs many thousands of dollars. You expect to see the world in a hundred years, not a copy of yourself walking around. — SolarWind

I haven't paid for cryonics. You asked my opinion.

Why not expand the thread with cryonics? That's much more feasible than the transporter.

If I have myself frozen, will I wake up in a hundred years, or will it be my copy? — SolarWind

Sure, I can give my opinion on that: I don't claim to know; the information is insufficient right now. But, based on what *is* known right now, it seems the best answer is that there is never continuity of consciousness in any circumstances.
The person that wakes up in a hundred years' time isn't me, but nor is the person that will finish this sentence that I am typing now.

What's your opinion?

I see at least two issues:

Social responsibility:
The Relationship between the scanned data, the continuous person, and the assembled person: — Dawnstorm

You raise interesting points, Dawnstorm. I think it's worth remembering though that this isn't really a feasible technology, so we never really need to think about it from a pragmatic point of view (though it of course is a great topic for sci-fi; I enjoyed the movie Anti Matter, for example)

The reason I invoke the transporter, and the imperfect transporter, is to test our ideas of how we define personal identity and what constitutes an instance of consciousness. It's like riding on a photon, or Laplace's demon. It's unlikely to ever happen.

A slightly more feasible scenario might be qualitatively copying the personality and memories of someone into a digital format. But in that scenario we'd probably have already had several massive bombshells for society, like needing to accept the possibility of Strong AI.

"Partial" is not a dodge. I am saying that in the imperfect transporter case, the subject experiences zero bodily continuity and partial psychological continuity. Whether that constitutes (partial) survival depends on whether bodily or psychological is the relevant continuity. — hypericin

But your position seems to be that psychological continuity is key, right? So in your view, is that person still alive?

And again for clarity: I can ask two questions about getting into the imperfect transporter: "Did I survive" and, if yes, "In what form did I survive?"

In this context, "partial" could only be mapped to saying: yes, you survive, and that the nature of your consciousness depends on the nature of the damage. The problem is, this is implicitly saying that I am always transported. So, if Abraham Lincoln walks out at Destination, I'm surviving through his eyes, despite the only association between me and him being that some person claimed the transporter would send me.

if I could freeze all neural activity in your brain and restart it, is that the same instance of consciousness?
— Mijin
Are you freezing it by freezing time? — Patterner

Does it matter? What is the rule you're going by for deciding if there's continuity of consciousness?

Your continuity ends when your particles are separated, regardless of the scenario or any considerations. — Patterner

OK, so you are retracting the point about memory being the critical thing. That's fine.

I really don't know how I can state it more clearly. And I really don't think you don't understand what I'm saying. I think you just disagree. — Patterner

I understand what you're saying: it's bodily continuity. What I'm saying is that you don't seem to have much of an argument behind it; it seems an ad hoc opinion and when I ask you hypotheticals, they seem to be coming off-the-cuff. Let me ask you this: if I could freeze all neural activity in your brain and restart it, is that the same instance of consciousness?
I'm asking this to clarify whether it is an active neural connection that matters or just literally the atoms of which I am made.

Also: I wonder if I should just get out of the way at this point. Because it seems that you, @Patterner, are taking the bodily continuity position, while @hypericin is taking the psychological continuity position.
Maybe try putting your points to each other :)

Imperfect transporter
Bodily: dead
Psychological: partial — hypericin

No; you're either alive or dead, and, if you're alive, we can talk about the level of consciousness that you're enjoying.

ISTM that there are two different things you could be saying here, and I don't think either work:

1. "Bodily" and "Psychological" are attributes. This is making the claim you can by physically fully dead yet psychologically alive in some sense, which is meaningless.

2. (The more correct description IMO) That "bodily" and "Psychological" are two different theories on instances of consciousness and you are just summarizing the two positions.
In which case saying "partial" for psychological is just a dodge: are you alive or not?

Is it really binary? If you have a major stroke, does all of you survive? If you have a stroke such that you completely assume the identity of Abraham Lincoln, does any of you survive? — hypericin

Again, this is talking about the distinction that I have explicitly said is not the focus of the imperfect transporter.

Let's start from this: you accept that there is such a thing as death, right? So Aristotle, right now, is simply dead. He's gone. Agreed?

Now, the line that we are interested in, in the imperfect transporter, is whether I will simply die -- be in the same status as Aristotle -- or whether I will arrive on Mars with brain damage.

And it's binary. The proposition, P, is "In the same state as Aristotle -- dead dead". That's either true or false. It doesn't matter if someone has brain damage or not, P is still false for that person.

So it's unlike the easier, and less important, question of whether we as a third party consider the person at Destination to be characteristically the same person, whether P is true is literally life or death.

Am I not addressing the original problem? — Patterner

Somewhat addressing...I think you're still not quite there, but I've also thought of another way to cover this:

In the original, vanilla, transporter problem, I have labelled the two main positions that people tend to take as "Sent" -- a singular instance of consciousness is sent to Mars, and "Killed" -- the original instance of consciousness is destroyed, and a new instance of consciousness is made on Mars.

We could also describe the two positions a bit more precisely as "Psychological continuity" -- what matters is memories, and as long as there is continuity of memories that's the same instance of consciousness, and "Bodily continuity" -- what matters is the seamless continuation of the body itself.

Now: the "imperfect transporter", that I have proposed, is an argument against Sent / Psychological continuity. And what you just outlined in your last post is basically bodily continuity. Ergo, my argument doesn't apply to your position.

However, the couple of wrinkles here are:

1. You have previously said: "The continuity of self is due to the memories" i.e. taking the exact opposite position on the transporter hypothetical. This is a thing that I am struggling to make sense of.

2. It's easy to just assert a position on this. The critical thing is how you arrived at that position, and how you would go about answering follow-up questions e.g. "What if the transporter spits the original particles across space?" "What if I separate your particles for one nanosecond?"

Thanks. And I don't mean to be arsey, just got a bit frustrated there :)

Yep threadshitting is always an option

I don't know what to do with this thread. This thread is meant to be about a variation of the transporter problem, but I just seem to be having to explain the original problem, over and over again.

It's like I have a theory of a new allotrope of carbon, but all the responses are questioning the existence of atoms.

Consciousness A can be identical to Consciousness B. But A is not B. Identical things are not the same thing. That applies to consciousnesses as much as it applies to mass produced items that are so precisely manufactured that they are indistinguishable. It's easy to understand this. You only need to count. — Patterner

But that's what I've been saying. Note that this is what is meant by the term numerical identity versus qualitative identity. I have clarified over and over again that I am interested in numerical identity.

Furthermore, I can't square what you're saying now with your earlier statement "Inheriting memories is how the persistence of consciousness is accomplished".

If you are looking at your duplicate, with a consciousness identical to yours, then there are two consciousness. When you are disintegrated, only one will remain. You will be dead. — Patterner

Again, everyone on all three sides of this debate would agree that if there's a state of affairs where there are two people whose experiences have diverged (as they must be if entity 1 is having the experience of looking at entity 2), they are now separate, and one will not jump into the body of the other.

So...it still just seems like you aren't following the transporter problem.

No. Of course not. But there is a time and a place, and a wrong TV spot. The word “inappropriate” serves a valid purpose in life. The bud light marketing team learned that.

One of the most important messages from the anti-woke to the woke is: read the room. — Fire Ologist

But this is not addressing the point I'm making.

The point I am making is: there's a difference between a poorly-judged advert, or picking a bad figurehead or whatever -- brands do that every day -- and "woke".

Several people in this thread are complaining about the wokeness of that advert, yet can give no reason why it is woke other than having a transwoman in it. Which begs the question: can a transperson appear on TV in a way that you wouldn't label as woke? Is it instantly rendered woke simply by you noticing that the person is trans?

I had a read through the paper.

The proofs of God are of course well-known by now, and not convincing at all IMO. We can go through them each individually but I'll bet they all have past threads on the philosophy forum.

Then the proof of the trinity...it always makes me a bit sad to read these, because it's always obviously arbitrary post-hoc rationalizing (rather than anything approaching first-principles reasoning), and I don't get how some people can't see it.
If we were in the "song of fire and ice" universe (with the seven forms of God), there'd be a "proof" of how God must be made of 7 elements, because "that which is perfect must perfectly encapsulate love, justice, hope...<7 total aspects>"

It just doesn't work, and that's evident from the fact that it's only people who already believe in a trinitarian god that claim this reasoning; you never hear someone from another faith wonder why there aren't three godheads.

If we don't delete the original, there will be multiple people with psychological continuity to the original. Each with distinct experiences. "I" only ever refers to the one that is speaking. What is wrong with this state of affairs? I still don't see the issue you were referring to originally. — hypericin

By "I" we are referring to an instance of consciousness. Otherwise we could just use normal grammar e.g. there are two people. If you're saying that there are two separate people if we make a duplicate and their experiences diverge...yes, everyone on every side of this debate believes this.

And if by "psychological continuity" you mean they have memories of the person who stepped on to the source pad...again, every side of the debate agrees with this, it's part of the set up of the problem.

ilding a replica of me means it has my memories, and everything else. But it's still a replica, and I am gone — Patterner

But when I said that memories are irrelevant to determining whether something is the same instance of consciousness, you disagreed with me. And now you're making exactly the same point

I ask again. If you are the Source, and there is a 5 second delay between the duplicate materializing and you being disintegrated, would you do it? — Patterner

And I answered, so I don't know why you're asking again.

Once again: from the principled point of view, from my current best understanding of instances of consciousness, I may as well hop in, because persistence of consciousness does not seem to be a thing regardless of whether I take the trip or not.
Pragmatically, I wouldn't take the trip because I would want near certainty before doing anything life or death.

I don't think the question "What would you do in real life?" tends to be very helpful for these kinds of philosophical questions. In real life, we are cautious, and frequently default to taking no action...I'm sure that in real life most people probably wouldn't redirect a trolley towards killing fewer people, for example.
A "God's eye view" is better for drawing out our best understanding and principles.

This is so weird, I have enjoyed using AI so much and never realized a problem. For me, it is like checking with Mike. The guy who seems to know something about everything. It has not been a life-threatening experience for me, but a lot of fun — Athena

Again: I use AI tools multiple times every day. I think they're great.
They just aren't appropriate for discussion forums yet.

If they could give short, succinct answers maybe it would be ok. But right now it's a lot of bloat.

And don't get me started on the current fad of YouTube channels doing whole episodes talking to an AI. They'll have a caption like "ChatGPT accepts proof of God!" but I'll watch maybe 10 minutes of flowery, evasive bilge before I give up and watch something else.

In fairness to open AI, it's not designed for YouTube debates. And it's not designed for discussion forums either.

I appreciate your down-to-earth explanation of potential problems. Now I am thinking this argument is like the gun argument. If someone gets shot it is not the gun's fault but the misuse of the gun. — Athena

Well it's a gun that's right now configured to misfire because using the vanilla AI gives responses that don't fit well in discussion forums.

I guess a forum could endorse AI responses, but with specific rules that the prompt to the AI must include hints like "Please respond tersely, and don't be afraid to correct errors in the initial question".
But I think it's better to just wait for the tech to improve.

Also, I am not sure if I hinted it well with my previous posts, but I think it just leads to lazy behaviour. It's like when people just drop a link to a 2 hour video or something that they claim proves their point. Except, in the case of AI, it's text that bloats the thread itself until you get tired of opening the thread. It's kryptonite to good conversation.

I want to add too that I am not piling on to the OP. It was a fine point to raise.

I actually made the same point myself, on a forum oriented towards asking miscellaneous general questions on any topic. Forums like that are going to look pretty obsolete pretty soon.

I use AI tools many times a day. I also think there may well be a time where AI could usefully contribute to general discussion threads, either as a cite, or even being allowed to directly post.

But we're not there yet.

Right now LLMs give overly verbose and wishy-washy responses to open questions. I've seen several forums embrace AI responses only to later ban them. Because they just fill up threads with meaningless bloat.

They are also programmed not to contradict the prompter too forcefully. So peddlers of the most ludicrous conspiracy theories try to claim they now have a legit cite, merely because the AI was too polite to shut down their nonsense. So you would also need to firefight that stuff too.

And again, is the solution here simply that transpeople should not be allowed on TV?
Is any public appearance "woke"?

I didn't realize I was conceding anything. When the hell did I say there was a shared consciousness? — hypericin

No, I mean you conceded the words before that: that "I" refers to the individual subject of conscious experiences, in conflict with when you earlier claimed that both me and a duplicate would be two "I"s.

I gave a model. You said, but wait, there is a problem, what about two clones, and one sticks itself with a pin? I await a demonstration of any actual problem. — hypericin

This is conflating two things. I was speaking there about how, in general, the time to handwave a problem and claim we understand it, is when we can make useful predictions and inferences about it. That's not the case here. No-one's model seems to give a direct answer about the imperfect transporter, or why it matters which atoms are used for example.

In terms of the "stick a pin" point, that is part of my answer to you when you asked "What exactly is the problem with multiple "I"s?"
The problem is that they are separate entities, as you've conceded. There's no reason to call them multiple "I"s, they are just multiple people, as separate as you and I are right now.

Inheriring memories is how the persistence of consciousness is accomplished. — Patterner

The position is the argument. Source Kirk is killed. That's what happens when someone's atoms are dispersed. — Patterner

Do you not see how those statements are in conflict? Because this conflict (and related issues) is exactly the point of the transporter problem.

"I" would mean the individual who was stuck. There are two numerically distinct individuals who claim continuity with the same individual in the past. I see nothing problematic. — hypericin

The problem is firstly, you brought up the concept of multiple "I"s and now you're conceding that "I" refers to an individual because there is not a shared consciousness.
But secondly, this whole thing has deflected us from talking about the problems. Call whoever you want, whatever you want. Call it the Ship of Theseus or Boaty McBoatface. The critical thing is if we have a model for understanding what happens to instances of consciousness.

That's not something you experience when you get into the transporter. — SolarWind

No-one said it was. I don't follow the point you're making.

If person X has the memories of person Y implanted, are they then the continuation of person X or person Y? — SolarWind

If you're asking my opinion specifically on memories, no, I don't consider memories to be the critical factor in determining instances of consciousness.

I already did, in my second to last post.

But I'll try a rephrasing specifically within the "calculating what I'll do" framing:

The three positions are:
1. My consciousness will persist even if I take the transporter; I may as well enjoy a nice holiday on Mars
2. My consciousness will only persist if I *don't* take the transporter. It's a murder box.
3. Nothing I do could possibly make my consciousness persist. Even if I don't take the transporter, consciousness doesn't have persistence, only the illusion of it, because it inherits memories.
I may as well let the next guy holiday on Mars.

B: Killed -- The Kirk at Source is one and the same with the Kirk that was born 30 years prior, but he is simply killed by this process. The Kirk that emerges at Destination is a new human, with a new consciousness, that just happens to be qualitatively the same as the Kirk that died.
— Mijin
This is the one. Except Destination Kirk doesn't "just happen" to be the same. He's a copy. Of course he's the same. But Source Kirk was disintegrated. — Patterner

It's meaningless just taking a position. What's the argument?

I thought I already said what the issue is: there might be two entities that could call themselves Mijin, but stick a pin in one, and the other doesn't feel pain. There are two instances of consciousness.
— Mijin

And what is the problem with that? — hypericin

Because the pronoun "I" refers to this instance of consciousness. In the stick a pin example, I might say "I am in pain". What would two "I"s mean?

Whether or not people explicitly believe in souls, my position is that there is an implicit presumption of souls in the abstract, that is, the mental model whereby we are non-physical entities that inhabit bodies. It is this mental model which gives rise to all the confusion of the teleporter thought experiment. Even the idea that continuity is an illusion, that we really live only in the instant, relies on this, as it fails to imagine continuity in the absence of something like a soul. — hypericin

Not really; it just takes the null position. If you wish to claim there is continuity, then it's on you to say continuity of what, and then, of course, I will come back with hypotheticals about moving atoms around or boltzmann brains or whatever. Because simple intuitions about bodily continuity only work in our world where we don't yet have tech for doing things like splicing brains; at the very least bodily continuity needs to be defined much more concretely / formally to make clear claims about such situations.

From the perspective of the beaming person, there are two possibilities: either (version plus) they see the destination after beaming, or (version minus) they are dead. — SolarWind

I was describing the three positions on continuity of consciousness and I don't see what is gained by
pre-emptively taking one off the table.

If you want to say it's important that we reduce it just to the thoughts of the person going into the transporter then sure: the person going into the transporter is me, and I think there are three scenarios to consider.