Would it make a difference if the laws of physics prevent or allow a machine from operating in ‘duplicate’ mode?

  • Lemmywinks@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    4
    ·
    1 day ago

    You have absolutely no reason to believe that.

    What happens if there’s a malfunction in the machine and the copy is made at the other end without the original version being destroyed? Do you think you would experience both perspectives simultaneously?

      • Lemmywinks@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        2
        ·
        1 day ago

        Right, but even if everything did work as intended there is still the possibility that it might not have done, and that possibility helps us understand what is actually happening, which is that you are killed and a copy of you is created somewhere else. There is absolutely no reason to believe that your experience would magically transfer over to that copy.

        • Lumidaub@feddit.org
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          1
          ·
          edit-2
          24 hours ago

          What do you mean by “your experience”?

          There is nothing magic about this. I am what my brain does. My physical brain and its physical contents are cut and pasted.

          Edit: “cut and pasted” is used here like with digital files, to avoid saying “copypasted” because I’m actively avoiding that can of worms of creating concurrently existing copies.

              • Lemmywinks@lemmy.world
                link
                fedilink
                arrow-up
                1
                ·
                22 hours ago

                For claiming that you are what your brain does, and the (implied) correlation that another identical brain would therefore continue to manifest an identical experience. All of this is entirely conjectural, we have no evidence one way or another.

                Your caveat that you must be cut and pasted and not copied doesn’t help your argument, in fact it does the opposite, because it is not theoretically impossible that two identical versions of “you” could exist concurrently.

                • Lumidaub@feddit.org
                  link
                  fedilink
                  arrow-up
                  2
                  ·
                  21 hours ago

                  That is afaik our current best guess at what consciousness is. If you don’t accept that model as true at least for the moment, I don’t know what we’re talking about.

                  • Lemmywinks@lemmy.world
                    link
                    fedilink
                    arrow-up
                    1
                    ·
                    19 hours ago

                    We don’t know what consciousness is, that’s my point. It’s called ‘the hard problem of consciousness’ for a reason, there is no consensus.