The Gaming Den

Back to this old thing, huh?

Ok, here is a thought experiment: you have a twin who has all of your memories. Is he you?

Since the answer to that is "no," then we don't have continuity of consciousness because of memory.

This means that any new collection of atoms that have the same memories as you are not you. It's just something that resembles you.

Now, I understand the the idea of being dead forever is fucking terrifying. Sometimes, I can't even get to sleep because that shit haunts me at 3 am in the morning, but unless we learn some fundamental new truths to the universe, this is our fate.

Now, I'd love to die and wake up in some afterlife with a smug god/goddess/devil/alien/programmer who can tell me that existence is eternal and my immortal soul/anima/data is the seat of consciousness, but the available knowledge we have about the universe tells us that this is just not the hand we've been dealt.

I think that if we dealt with this single fact more honestly, we'd spend a lot more money on research and a lot less on war.

Personally, I've tried to make my life as meaningful and enjoyable as possible. It doesn't cure existential angst, but it does make it easier to bear.

Memory is not continuity of consciousness for the reasons that K has pointed out. My question is...What, then, is continuity of consciousness? The existence of continuity of consciousness appears self-evident, in that I am, by all available evidence, the same person now as I was when I was typing up a response to the skill challenges thread. Lacking any strong evidence to contradict this perception, I'm not willing to believe that I don't have continuity of consciousness. So what, then, gives me continuity? Simply the fact that my brain persists and continues functioning?

Then as I said. Fuck you, no one cares.

Do you have MAGIC CONNNECTIONSLKJ{ THAT MTOTALLY TRANSCEND :L: THE UNIVERSE with a you that is for whatever reason identical later?

I don't give a shit. Also no.

Chamomile wrote:Memory is not continuity of consciousness for the reasons that K has pointed out. My question is...What, then, is continuity of consciousness? The existence of continuity of consciousness appears self-evident, in that I am, by all available evidence, the same person now as I was when I was typing up a response to the skill challenges thread. Lacking any strong evidence to contradict this perception, I'm not willing to believe that I don't have continuity of consciousness. So what, then, gives me continuity? Simply the fact that my brain persists and continues functioning?

Continuity of consciousness is how your mind combines all of your experiences into a functioning whole. If you were always worried about whether you were the same person that you were moments prior, you'd be wasting a huge amount of thought on something completely useless and irrelevant to your continued existence. And your chromosomes really do have continuity of existence.

Chamomile wrote:The existence of continuity of consciousness appears self-evident

So far, that's the only evidence for its existence. Being self-evident according to some dudes who think so (admittably, 'some dudes' is 'most people').

Chamomile wrote:in that I am, ..., the same person now as I was when...

Whoa, let's not be hasty. The molecules in your brain have totally rearranged themself since then. Just how 'same' are you?

Chamomile wrote:Simply the fact that my brain persists and continues functioning?

Why would that matter? Your brain is a complex rock. That is, like a rock, it's nothing more than an arrangement of molecules in a specific pattern. Not even a specific pattern, really, because your brain is pulling a Ship of Theseus on you all the time and constantly changing. And that ever-changing pattern isn't even what you call your continuity of consciousness, because things that duplicate that pattern are not you.

Even worse, people die and are resuscitated and experience the same sensation of 'continuity of consciousness' that you do, with the only difference being their brain had a noticeable gap in there somewhere where it didn't function. If we made an exact duplicate of you, it would have the sensation of continuity of consciousness with a version of itself from ten minutes ago, except that ten minutes ago version literally would never have existed.

The sensation/intuition you call 'continuity of consciousness' corresponds to exactly nothing in the physical world. Continuity of consciousness is nothing more than an illusion in your own head that exists as a byproduct of being a physical entity with self-awareness and memories.

K wrote:Back to this old thing, huh?

Ok, here is a thought experiment: you have a twin who has all of your memories. Is he you?

Since the answer to that is "no,"

Why is the answer "no"?

K wrote: I think that if we dealt with this single fact more honestly, we'd spend a lot more money on research and a lot less on war.

Without diving too far into that argument, the timing device for the recent neutrino speed experiment was a multi-billion dollar military system, and there was basically no possible alternative timer.

fectin wrote:Why is the answer "no"?

Because you are coexisting at the same time in different bodies and have absolutely no perception of continuity with eachother. And there's really nothing else to base continuity of consciousness on than perception, since people's flawed internal perception/intuition is the only thing that indicates it exists, anyway.

Or let's put it this way: you go have a cup of coffee. You still have continuity of consciousness with yourself. Now, second case: there is a duplicate of you. You go have a cup of coffee. You would still have continuity of consciousness with yourself, but the clone would clearly now not even be similar to you, and you could not have continuity of consciousness with it.

Essentially, you are not capable of diverging from yourself, but you are totally capable of diverging from a copy of you. Ergo, you cannot be 'continuous' with eachother.

I think a better question is this:

Mr. Adams is given a seditive and then put into a machine which nondestructively scans him and then makes an exact copy, down to the atom, complete with all of his memories, then places both the copy and the original Mr. Adams into beds to sleep off the rest of the seditive. Both wake up and meet eachother. How can they tell which of them is the original?

The answer is that they can't. Both have the exact same perception of continuity with the original Mr. Adams who entered the machine, and neither feels like they were created just hours before. As far as anyone should care, they are both the original person. They are not eachother obviously, but equally obviously they are both Mr. Adams.

If I was about to die, and someone made a copy of me who wasn't about to die, I the person who is still dying would see little comfort in that. But the new person who was copied and thereby saved would have no trouble accepting that it was me and, as far as they're concerned and as far as anyone who isn't the me who just died is concerned, that "new" person really is me.

Grek wrote:As far as anyone should care, they are both the original person.

No, the one that was actually scanned is definitely the original.

There's a meaningful original, it's just that being the original doesn't really mean anything, other than the practical limitation of only having one life and set of possessions for two people who now think it's their's (the original should probably gets dibs in nearly all cases, which is why cloning yourself deliberately is a dickmove and should be banned; then again, having cloned yourself, you can make the compelling case "that guy's a dick, he would have done the same to me!").

K wrote:Ok, here is a thought experiment: you have a twin who has all of your memories. Is he you?

He is slightly less me than I am, but significantly more me than any other human than us.

All this "is it you" stuff is reminiscent of the Sorites Paradox more than anything. And all the *other* problems where people try to find the exact point where something changes when that thing is inherently a continuum.

So how about this: Thingspace is the space of things, that is, all possible configurations of "stuff", both real and hypothetical. A configuration's degree of meness is a value between 0 and 1 (inclusive) that is a monotonically decreasing function of the Thingspace distance between it and the center of the meness-cluster. So both I am entirely me (f(distance) = 1), me a few hours ago is very me (f(distance) ~= 1), me on Ritalin is significantly less me than either of them, the cute girl next door is significantly less me than any of the above, and a rock is not me at all.

There. Done. Easy. You just have to abandon the idea that "me" and "not me" are strict binary values.

DSMatticus wrote:So far, that's the only evidence for its existence.

That literally every person I can communicate confirms it according to their own perceptions? Why, yes. That seems like pretty hefty evidence to me. Do you perceive yourself as being the same creature now as you were before? Do you know anyone who doesn't? Do you have any reason I shouldn't believe the combined perceptions of every or very nearly every human being on the planet?

Whoa, let's not be hasty. The molecules in your brain have totally rearranged themself since then. Just how 'same' are you?

It depends on how you define "same." The so-called "dilemma" of Theseus' Ship is one of semantics. Regardless, for purposes of this discussion, I am the same as I was yesterday because, though the molecules in my brain have shifted, the overall structure is very nearly identical. While it's true that I'm a completely different being from who I was seven years ago should you zoom in sufficiently, it's also true that my brain has a consciousness independent of its individual parts and that this consciousness has persisted from as far back as I can remember until now. I don't have any reason to doubt this perception. Yes, if I perceive a phenomenon I can't explain, like a pair of rocks floating through the air in defiance of gravity, and everyone else perceives the same thing, then it is theoretically still possible that we're all crazy and what we perceive isn't real. But to assume that our perceptions must be false because we have no immediate explanation for them is the opposite of science.

Why would that matter? Your brain is a complex rock. That is, like a rock, it's nothing more than an arrangement of molecules in a specific pattern. Not even a specific pattern, really, because your brain is pulling a Ship of Theseus on you all the time and constantly changing. And that ever-changing pattern isn't even what you call your continuity of consciousness, because things that duplicate that pattern are not you.

Congratulations. You have discovered the problem. You've also found out that both rocks and my brain are matter. Truly, you enlighten us all.

Even worse, people die and are resuscitated and experience the same sensation of 'continuity of consciousness' that you do, with the only difference being their brain had a noticeable gap in there somewhere where it didn't function. If we made an exact duplicate of you, it would have the sensation of continuity of consciousness with a version of itself from ten minutes ago, except that ten minutes ago version literally would never have existed.

And in this case we can be certain that the clone's perceptions are false. We could presumably have just as easily created an opposite-sex clone who would perceive themselves as having gone through my entire life as a male, then woken up after the cloning procedure as a female. Her perceptions would be false, however. She is a clone, she was created female and all her perceptions of having been a male prior to waking up, or of having been at all, are false. You can tell I'm the original because the machine creates opposite-sex clones, and does not create a clone and then reverse the sex of the original, even though that is what the clone will have perceived to have happened.

The sensation/intuition you call 'continuity of consciousness' corresponds to exactly nothing in the physical world. Continuity of consciousness is nothing more than an illusion in your own head that exists as a byproduct of being a physical entity with self-awareness and memories.

We can't find any gravitons. Clearly, gravity is a myth.

Chamomile wrote:That literally every person I can communicate confirms it according to their own perceptions? Why, yes. That seems like pretty hefty evidence to me. Do you perceive yourself as being the same creature now as you were before? Do you know anyone who doesn't? Do you have any reason I shouldn't believe the combined perceptions of every or very nearly every human being on the planet?

Why should you be surprised that a number of genetically-hardcoded computing machines happen to be genetically-hardcoded to make the same error in the same edge cases? If something is just as likely to be perceived when your model is right as when it is wrong, that isn't evidence for your model. Not even weak evidence, it isn't evidence at all.

It depends on how you define "same." The so-called "dilemma" of Theseus' Ship is one of semantics.

The use of a semantic dilemma in a semantic discussion which relates directly to the core of the semantic dilemma is legitimate. Calling something an issue "of semantics" isn't universally an effective dismissal.

While it's true that I'm a completely different being from who I was seven years ago should you zoom in sufficiently, it's also true that my brain has a consciousness independent of its individual parts and that this consciousness has persisted from as far back as I can remember until now. I don't have any reason to doubt this perception.

And in this case we can be certain that the clone's perceptions are false.

You're saying that you have no reason to doubt the perception you have - which I suspect is because you have it. But because the viewpoint existed prior to and is observing the clone from the outside, you don't give the exact same perception any regard - dismissing it almost out of hand.

If the exact same perception is trustworthy in your own brain but not trustworthy in another instance of the same configuration, you're probably under a brain-induced illusion that is flawed and thus untrustworthy.

If your body is disintegrated and then reconstructed down to the quarks at a later date from raw matter, that is mathematically identical to you being summoned from the future and having an equivalent amount of mass displaced to the past to compensate. You can't pull Ship of Theseus bullshit in that situation even, since the component particles don't exist as individual "things". If that isn't you, then the you that is pulled to the future by the normal progression of time still being you is incoherent at best. Especially since you're constantly being re-formed by propagation of the various quantum fields through time. They're the same thing.

Yes, if I perceive a phenomenon I can't explain, like a pair of rocks floating through the air in defiance of gravity, and everyone else perceives the same thing, then it is theoretically still possible that we're all crazy and what we perceive isn't real. But to assume that our perceptions must be false because we have no immediate explanation for them is the opposite of science.

We have an explanation for this one, though. It's computationally useful - a naturally selectable advantage, you might say - for a manipulating brain to associate itself and its stored information (the "inside") separately from the things it is attempting to model (the "outside"). Otherwise you'd have it wasting resources trying to model itself when there's a lion right there and you need to throw a rock at it or you'll die, and the brains that don't try to model themselves in any detail survive and have offspring with similar hardwired computations.

There. The phenomenon is explained. It is explained in full without actually involving a "self" - only more-efficient brain patterns in biological replicators that create similar replicators with the same types of brain patterns. That those patterns *happen* to behave as though they *think* they have a specific, inviolate "self" is wholly irrelevant to whether that "self" actually exists in any manner.

Once you have an explanation for something which describes the evidence fully, adding philosophical claptrap on top of it - like adding in the additional entity of a "self" - is the part that's antiscientific. It's the exact opposite of Occam's Razor, like saying "and the Flying Spaghetti Monster was there too".

The sensation/intuition you call 'continuity of consciousness' corresponds to exactly nothing in the physical world. Continuity of consciousness is nothing more than an illusion in your own head that exists as a byproduct of being a physical entity with self-awareness and memories.

We can't find any gravitons. Clearly, gravity is a myth.

Gravity is something in the physical world. Its non-mythical status is established by the observations of Kepler, Newton, Einstein, and everyone who's expanded on their work. It has real measurable effects on real measurable objects.

The "sensation/intuition you call 'continuity of consciousness'" has exactly one observed, concrete physical correspondence - it's a configuration in your neural substrate. Your belief in your "self" exists, but the "self" itself hasn't shown itself to have real measurable effects on real measurable objects, so in a real sense it doesn't exist - even moreso than the purely abstract constructs of Computer Science and Mathematics.

Since the "self" has no effect separate from the belief you have in it, or the already explained non-self-implying effects of biology, neurology, and physics, it probably doesn't exist and we can dismiss it in the same way we dismiss the Flying Spaghetti Monster.

Quantumboost wrote:We have an explanation for this one, though. It's computationally useful - a naturally selectable advantage, you might say - for a manipulating brain to associate itself and its stored information (the "inside") separately from the things it is attempting to model (the "outside"). Otherwise you'd have it wasting resources trying to model itself when there's a lion right there and you need to throw a rock at it or you'll die, and the brains that don't try to model themselves in any detail survive and have offspring with similar hardwired computations.

The bolding is mine. You just said that a self exists in your explanation as to why the self does not exist.

Chamomile wrote:That literally every person I can communicate confirms it according to their own perceptions? Why, yes. That seems like pretty hefty evidence to me. Do you perceive yourself as being the same creature now as you were before? Do you know anyone who doesn't? Do you have any reason I shouldn't believe the combined perceptions of every or very nearly every human being on the planet?

In addition to Quantum's complete massacre of this point: Counterexample:

Literally every person you can communicate with confirms according to their own perceptions that time is a different thing than space. If this evidence convinces you, you are a fucking idiot.

Having established a specific instance in which the collective perceptions of all human beings are wrong, why would you trust the collective perceptions of all human beings on something else that based on the exact same information, is unlikely to be true.

Continuity of consciousness is an illusion created by your memory, there is no compelling reason to believe otherwise, and a number of compelling reasons to realize this.

Chamomile wrote:Do you have any reason I shouldn't believe the combined perceptions of every or very nearly every human being on the planet?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cognitive_biases
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illusion

The human brain is demonstrably flawed with a majority of individuals reliably committing a few common mistakes. Perceptions are not useless, but most of them really need to be validated in some way externally to such extent that they can be validated.

Chamomile wrote:The so-called "dilemma" of Theseus' Ship is one of semantics.

That depends how you prefer to resolve it. The actual message I like to take away from it is that Theseus' Ship is a conceptual approximation we use to rationalize something that we perceive as persistent but is actually very fluid. The physical entity is different from moment to moment, but we don't see it that way, so we assume persistence despite change. The 'dilemma' forces us to acknowledge that change happens, and conflicts with our idea of persistence.

This is kind of getting borderline irrelevant, though.

Chamomile wrote:the overall structure is very nearly identical

And this is strange. Because what it supposes is that there's a empirical, measurable limit based on either amount of change or rate of change before you stop being X and start being Y. And that's really super-fucking weird. It's in the land of "I know it when I'll see it," and at that point you're probably not actually talking about anything, you're just being confused.

Chamomile wrote:my brain has a consciousness independent of its individual parts and that this consciousness has persisted from as far back as I can remember until now

I'm not sure what you're saying here. Are you saying your consciousness is independent of the structure of your brain? Because that sounds a lot like "SOOOOOOOOUUUUUUL," and I'm not willing to indulge that theory.

More seriously, your consciousness is definitely not independent from your brain. If you and a rock are both matter, and nothing but matter (this part is important), then your consciousness is necessarily a result of some property of your matter or its arrangement. And it's possible that you can find some way to define that such that minor, gradual changes don't matter, buuut... Well. That's weird, and it has the problems already pointed out, in that no specific matter or arrangement is necessarily you.

Chamomile wrote:And in this case we can be certain that the clone's perceptions are false.

This is the entire point, in fact. The perception is trivially easy to fool, which leads us to call the perception into suspect. If you would fail to accurately distinguish between red and green, we call you colorblind and we don't trust your assessment of those colors. If you would fail to accurately distinguish between having continuity of consciousness for 30 years and 3 seconds, we say you probably don't have a reliable perception that enables you to do that and don't trust your assessment of it.

Chamomile wrote:The bolding is mine. You just said that a self exists in your explanation as to why the self does not exist.

Now that's actually semantical misinterpretation. Don't confuse continuity of physical existence with continuity of consciousness/conceptual self. You totally exist as a collection of molecules bound by physical behavior, but so are rocks, so if we're going to ask questions like "what is continuity of consciousness?" you need to be able to answer above and beyond "a physical entity that exists," which is what your brain definitely is, whether it has continuity of consciousness or not.

DSMatticus wrote:The human brain is demonstrably flawed with a majority of individuals reliably committing a few common mistakes. Perceptions are not useless, but most of them really need to be validated in some way externally to such extent that they can be validated.

It is literally and by definition impossible for you to provide me with any falsehood which all of humanity universally perceives as true, unless you are not yourself human. It is possible that we observe something which contradicts previous observations and thus discover that the original observation was an illusion, but you're asking me to ignore the observations of myself and everyone else on the planet because shut up. Because it's deep, man!

My consciousness exists independent of other creatures. My consciousness can cease to be. My consciousness has not ceased to be. My consciousness continues. There is continuity. There are also retcons, but we pretend those never happened and sometimes we retcon them back to the way they were before.

Chamomile wrote:the overall structure is very nearly identical

And this is strange. Because what it supposes is that there's a empirical, measurable limit based on either amount of change or rate of change before you stop being X and start being Y. And that's really super-fucking weird. It's in the land of "I know it when I'll see it," and at that point you're probably not actually talking about anything, you're just being confused.

If you put a slug through my head, I will not be anymore. My body will just be a corpse and my consciousness will cease. Similarly, if you tear my physical being apart at a sub-atomic level and use it to create an orangutan, that orangutan will not be me.

I'm not sure what you're saying here. Are you saying your consciousness is independent of the structure of your brain? Because that sounds a lot like "SOOOOOOOOUUUUUUL," and I'm not willing to indulge that theory.

No, I'm saying my brain has a consciousness but the individual molecules that make it up do not.

This is the entire point, in fact. The perception is trivially easy to fool, which leads us to call the perception into suspect.

Fooling the perception involved a hypothetical scenario wherein an exact duplicate of myself is created by a magical cloning machine. That's not trivial.

If you would fail to accurately distinguish between red and green, we call you colorblind and we don't trust your assessment of those colors. If you would fail to accurately distinguish between having continuity of consciousness for 30 years and 3 seconds, we say you probably don't have a reliable perception that enables you to do that and don't trust your assessment of it.

Are you arguing that we have, in fact, existed for only three seconds? Are you arguing that it is not only theoretically possible for our perceptions to have been deceived but plausible enough that we should take the possibility seriously on a pragmatic level? If not, then you have not proven that the perception of continuity is trivially easy to fool, only that it is conceivably possible to fool.

Now that's actually semantical misinterpretation. Don't confuse continuity of physical existence with continuity of consciousness/conceptual self. You totally exist as a collection of molecules bound by physical behavior, but so are rocks, so if we're going to ask questions like "what is continuity of consciousness?" you need to be able to answer above and beyond "a physical entity that exists," which is what your brain definitely is, whether it has continuity of consciousness or not.

Yes, but the brain is still conscious. If you create an exact duplicate of someone, complete with memories, the two of them both still perceive things differently and are thus different people, despite having literally everything in common at the point of creation except physical location. If one of them puts on sunglasses, the other doesn't see the lights get dimmer. Even if they are otherwise completely identical, they perceive things independently from one another. This is what makes one of them a different being from the other. And if you kill one of them, then by definition you have caused their perceptions to cease. If you then use the magical cloning machine to make another, you have not brought them back to life. Even if you use the same matter they were originally made from, you could have done the exact same thing with a bag of leaves because our cloning machine is magic and works like that. The new clone is a new clone, he would've had distinct perceptions from the original if he'd been made before the original died and he has distinct perceptions from the original now, only difference is the original has no perception at all.

Chamomile wrote:The bolding is mine. You just said that a self exists in your explanation as to why the self does not exist.

Don't confuse continuity of physical existence with continuity of consciousness/conceptual self.

It's not even "continuity" of physical existence, which I don't actually consider to be fundamentally true. The brain's "self" in this case holds under the strictest equality relation you can make because equality has to be reflexive - A has to be equal to A. The English use of "itself" I'm using is just shorthand for "the exact same configuration of particle fields in the exact same spacetime position".

Chamomile wrote:It is literally and by definition impossible for you to provide me with any falsehood which all of humanity universally perceives as true, unless you are not yourself human. It is possible that we observe something which contradicts previous observations and thus discover that the original observation was an illusion, but you're asking me to ignore the observations of myself and everyone else on the planet because shut up. Because it's deep, man!

My consciousness exists independent of other creatures. My consciousness can cease to be. My consciousness has not ceased to be. My consciousness continues. There is continuity. There are also retcons, but we pretend those never happened and sometimes we retcon them back to the way they were before.

We're asking you to ignore the introspective observations and models of everyone else on the planet because introspective models are flawed on a consistent and reliable basis, and because the phenomenon that the introspective models attempt to describe is already described by all the *other* observations about the external, physical universe (including other people). Occam's Razor, if your model includes everything that another does and something else, and both explain every observation with equal accuracy - you get rid of the something else.

Unless you have evidence that the "self" has some effect that is measurable beyond the configuration of particles and the belief in self, it's an added bit you're tacking on because it feels true in your known-flawed computational engine.

If you put a slug through my head, I will not be anymore. My body will just be a corpse and my consciousness will cease. Similarly, if you tear my physical being apart at a sub-atomic level and use it to create an orangutan, that orangutan will not be me.

Good, now point out where *between* those two and the actual you who is reading this thread you stop being you and start being not-you.

You can't, because there is no fundamental self, only configurations that are more or less similar to the one you currently have.

[...]If you create an exact duplicate of someone, complete with memories, the two of them both still perceive things differently and are thus different people, despite having literally everything in common at the point of creation except physical location.[...]This is what makes one of them a different being from the other.

So, if you quantum-tunneled three meters to the left, you would cease to be you? Good to know.

Physics is currently believed to be spacetime-invariant (displacing the universe three meters to the left does nothing). Fundamental particles are currently known to lack individual identity. If your sense of self is not time-invariant and not independent of the "individual" particles you're made of, it is a lie you tell yourself.