AI, Cybernetics, Philosophy.

[wolven7]

I found my laptop charger.

Tuesday, in the course of teaching about Philosophy of Mind, I talked to my students about AI, & Star Trek: The Next Generation, and made them listen to The Android Sisters, "Treasury Wizards."

Today I got to teach about Functionalism, Autonomous Created Intelligence, AND Cybernetics.

AND IT WAS ALL RELEVANT TO CLASS!

Yesterday, in Critical Thinking, I actually had a student tell me how glad they were that I was teaching them. Today, I had a student tell me how much he loved the class and the material.

This is what they call "Livin' The Dream," y'all.

Yesterday, I posed this Philosophical Quandary, various places: Does Identity Necessitate Determinism?

That is, if we say that two things are Exactly Identical-- even going so far as minds-- then that means that they have precisely the same properties, reactions, interactions. Memories, ranges of choice, thoughts w/in a given situation.

Is the formulation of Identity-- in this formulation, of SELF--possible in a non-deterministic context? How so or why not?

Another example: teleportation. Using quantum entanglement, we figure out how to teleport matter, even human beings. Using quantum information theory, we break things down into the smallest measurable units;we break the into bits (technical bits) and then we transmit their information. We do this do people.

Is the person who walks out of the teleporter the same person who walked in? Why or why not?

Personally, I'm inclined to say that they are. That, if a mind with memories exists, and continues after the teleportation, then that mind is the SAME MIND. It is equivalent to the mind which went into the teleporter.

But. Why would it be? Is it down to physical states? And if so, does that mean a deterministic universe?

I can paint a compatibalist picture of this, but I wanted to see what your intuitions and thoughts were.

The past two days, my guiding principle for style has been "If I were to be described in a novel, it should be as 'A Very Stylish Bruise.'"

I need more suits.

Comments

[opalblack.livejournal.com]

I disagree. It can't possibly be the *same* mind, because it will have acquired, in the process, the memory and experience of teleportation; even if all else prior remained unchanged, it would still be a minutely different mind.

Necessarily this assumes a view of a mind as a process through time, rather than as a discrete event. This is to say, a mind constantly changing with the unbroken acquisition of information and experience is not the same from moment to moment, as with each moment new data is collected, processed, and stored. Sometimes stored. The capacity for interpretation and reflection and the style thereof don't even remain fixed, though the changes are usually incremental and cumulative, seldom abrupt.

It would be the same cognitive continuity, but it couldn't be exactly the same mind, in a fixed state, after as before.

Unless the mind was placed into temporal, physical and cognitive stasis prior to teleportation, somehow.

[wolven.livejournal.com]

Arguably, we ourselves are never the "same" mind. Waking up in the morning changes us irrevocably from the person who was just asleep.

[raoin.livejournal.com]

you should read the national geographic article on identitcal twins in last month's issue... i'll give it to you when i get home.

[wolven.livejournal.com]

Okay,

[raidingparty.livejournal.com]

Only if you can develop a quantum link between all the old and new states of matter, and the transfer is instantaneous (and/or you can push the quantum link to exist through time as well). Otherwise, an exact replica is still a replica, and the relationship the universe has with the model (which includes position within) will be different.

In short, I'm in the Argo-not camp.

[raidingparty.livejournal.com]

Dammit, shoulda said boat.

[wolven.livejournal.com]

Yeah you really missed your... Opportunity.

[wolven.livejournal.com]

Well, hence the Entanglement. With that, we can know that whatever happens to one immediately happens to the other. What say you?

[raidingparty.livejournal.com]

Bother, responding too fast... missed that consideration. Pardon.

It would be the same person.
To further confuse things, in the below example of multiples, all of them would be the same person so long as the quantum entanglement persisted. Which, I think, would be hell on the body, experiencing all the gravitational and radioactive stresses and sensory stimuli simultaneously. ... oh hey, Dr. Manhattan!

[wolven.livejournal.com]

Precisely.

[halafax.livejournal.com]

Check some of the places on howell mill road for suits. K & G have some nice suits for cheap. Like 2 for 100 or something.

Also if the person that leaves the teleporter is in all effects the same person except that they have the experience of the teleportation. In that case the person is not the same. However if you are going to take this in a different direction of if you have two people, the exact same person, and the two have similar or the same life what is the chances that the person will be the same? If you are asking that, then this falls to the choices that we all make. If you have seen the movie The One with Jet Li, then you get an idea of where I am going. They also go into this in some degree in Doctor Who. The parallel dimension where the Cybermen have taken over, and Rose was never born because her dad was a success. Where Mickey ends up being a bit of a Clint Eastwood kind of character, though is called Rickey instead of Mickey. If you take two people who are the same in every aspect, there is a great chance that they will not always choose the same path. Not because they have different instincts or intuitions, but it might be something as simple as well this appeals more than that. Taking the first choice versus taking the best choice, or taking the easiest choice versus the one that will give the best returns. Mood and state of mind also affect choices we make. This goes into a huge ball of wax, where things get timey wimey, and wibbly wobbly.

[wolven.livejournal.com]

Most of my Suits have come from K&G.

But what if we get two people from the teleporter, at the same time? What if we get ten? Are they the same person as that previous person? As each other?

And yeah, the latter example I'm pretty set with. Many worlds theory. I don't count anyone who's made different choices than I have as being "The Same As" me, simply because they aren't. While we share a morphic resonance, and possibly even more elements of quantum signature in common than with anyone or anything else, we aren't the same person.

In my opinion.

[nausved.livejournal.com]

Identity is kind of an arbitrary concept. If I am defined by the exact atoms that make my body, then I am constantly changing into someone else as those atoms are replaced with new atoms. If I am defined by the organization of my molecules (e.g., by my mind), then I am also constantly changing into someone else. So what exactly is me?

I don't think we have a good working definition; the idea of concrete units (e.g., differentiating a rock from the soil it degrades into, or differentiating one body of water from another, or differentiating one species from another) is not a law of the universe. It is a concept borne of the animal mind. It is useful to think of the world in certain concepts, even though those concepts may be misleading. We did not evolve to learn the truth; we only evolved to survive (even that definition is iffy!), and some illusions and designations are very useful tools toward that purpose.

Along similar lines, when I look in front of me, I "see" a computer—but I don't actually see it. Rather, my retina is activated by different wavelengths of light, and my brain later constructs an image I've associated with the concept of "computer" from these nerve impulses. It is why I can look at a photo of a computer and still have that activate my "computer" association, even though it's actually just ink blots on a piece of paper. The brain is a master illusionist—not just with visual imagery, but with all concepts that it generates from scant external stimuli.

In light of that, I think it's fair to say that a teleported or perfectly cloned person is still the same person from their own point of view, but they may be a different person from certain other points of view. There is no clear answer because it's all ill-defined anyway—perhaps in part because we did not evolve under conditions where teleportation is a human feat, and thus we have no universal instinct for this particular wing of our concept of identity/category.

[wolven.livejournal.com]

In fact, all of our concepts of self and systems are created to try to make sense of the experiences we have.

What if the person thinks THEMSELVES somehow false? If they think that the "previous" "them" died?