Sorry about that ridiculous watermark.

  • usualsuspect191@lemmy.ca
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    5 months ago

    Because it’s still a copy, so you still die. Imagine if there was a delay between the copy being produced and the original being destroyed, long enough for them to see each other if transported within the same room.

    To Be

    • Steve@communick.news
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      5 months ago

      You are a different person than you were yesterday.
      You have all sorts of new and different experiences from that person.
      You’re even a different person reading the last word in this sentence, than you were when reading the first.

      But you’re no less you, are you?

        • Steve@communick.news
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          5 months ago

          Yes! Great movie!

          spoiler

          That machine was much more than a transporter. It didn’t have to destroy the matter to duplicate it.

          Angier was stupid to keep killing the other versions of himself. He could have created a much better trick, being in several places at once.

          And they each would have felt they were the original Angier. Who could say they were wrong? They all were, and are still, the original. Just different versions of him, with different experiences. No different than you, being the same person who was different yesterday than you are today.

      • starman2112@sh.itjust.works
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        5 months ago

        You are a different person than you were yesterday.

        In some senses, yes. In other senses, no. Since my birth, there has been an uninterrupted set of reactions between neurons in my brain. Individual neurons may be added or removed, various inputs and chemicals may change this reaction, but this ongoing reaction between them has never stopped. If you show me another person with the exact same pattern of neurons in their brain, with the exact same pattern of reactions happening within it, then they are for all intents and purposes a perfect copy of my mind. But if you shoot the me that’s typing right now in the head, then the me that’s typing right now doesn’t get to see what happens tomorrow, even though for all intents and purposes there is still a starman2112 in the world.

        • Steve@communick.news
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          5 months ago

          But the Starman typing today, doesn’t get to see tomorrow any way. They get replaced by the next Starman.

          • starman2112@sh.itjust.works
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            5 months ago

            I fundamentally disagree. As I said, my mind is a continuous ongoing process of reactions between neurons in my brain. Even while I’m asleep, this process continues. Even as neurons die and are replaced, this process continues. I am the same starman that I was yesterday, and that I will be tomorrow.

      • usualsuspect191@lemmy.ca
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        5 months ago

        That’s getting into ship of Theseus territory which is similar, but slightly different than the transporter paradox. It gets closer when you do the whole build another ship out of the replaced parts thing, but with the transporter there’s something that gets destroyed and that something is where your consciousness is.

        Even a “perfect” copy is still a copy, and the fact that the second consciousness doesn’t rely on the first to exist (they could simultaneously exist ala William Riker) it’s a separate instance so a separate person.

      • snooggums@midwest.social
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        5 months ago

        No, we replace our external skin cells and blood a bunch of times but our major organs and muscles stick aroubd.