If the copy were perfect you would not be able to tell the difference. In essence there would be no "original" and "copy", just two instances of the same information. This is basic particle physics or information theory. Particles do not come tagged with UUIDs. Once you duplicated all properties the original and the copy become interchangeable. At the macro level we only care about the difference because analog copying processes tend to be lossy.
> I only have my own set of conscious experiences. My set is not the same as the clones.
It is at the moment of "cloning" (assuming that includes memory duplication). They may diverge afterwards, but at the moment the copy is made the sense of self is the same for both.
> When people seriously argue this, I start to wonder if they are bots or NPC's that somehow have no conscious experiences.
Perhaps some people overrate this near-magical concept of consciousness? It temporarily ceases when you sleep or are comatose anyway while your biochemical processes keep shuffling around atoms all the time and that's not the end of the world either. The body ship-of-theseuses itself all the time.
They do though. Particles have a unique path through time and space that cannot be replicated.
I don't care who "thinks" they are me--that has no effect on their me-ness.
> Perhaps some people overrate this near-magical concept of consciousness?
This is the point I should assume I'm actually debating with GPT-3 or an NPC.
Hypothetically, if a gunman has you, and a clone of you in a room and is going to kill one of you, are you saying you have no preference which dies? If these things are the same, how is it he could kill the clone in a different room and you wouldn't know? Doesn't that mean they aren't "the same" and really you are an instance of an object, not a class.
I think if you consider the Ship of Theseus from the point of view of a passenger, it becomes clear that it is the "same" ship in a more meaningful sense even though it changed while you were on it. Similarly, I still arrive if ships identical to the original state sank while I am en route.
> Hypothetically, if a gunman has you, and a clone of you in a room and is going to kill one of you, are you saying you have no preference which dies?
“Of course I have a preference!” I said at the same moment my completely perfect identical duplicate said exactly the same thing.
“I want to live!” I shouted, pointing at myself. My completely-absolutely-100%-identical-at-the-quantum-level duplicate shouted the same words and pointed at himself instead of at me.
The entire reason that I care and I’m upset by the comparison with plastic forks, is because I think most people think less of the copies, even though the copies will be just as much a living breathing human capable of suffering and joy as the actual original.
You’re not the first person I’ve encountered to use this sort of example to try and prove their point. I’m still not sure I even understand the worldview that you’re espousing well enough to try and actually engage with it properly.
It isn't a matter of thinking less of the clones--they'd probably be my best buds, probably closer than family. They'd understand that we are not the same person also.
My clones would understand the example is rhetorical to prove the point we absolutely do not share consciousness. That, all things being equal if I die, the movie in my head stops playing, and the one in their head keeps going, but does nothing for me. And since all that is the case, it proves we cannot be the same because our location in space and time is different, and there is no sharing of thoughts, and they can exist entirely independent of whether I exist or not, or even whether the clones have clones.
> They do though. Particles have a unique path through time and space that cannot be replicated.
That path is not encoded in the particle state. If you brought me two samples of isotopically pure carbon, one sourced from the earth, presumably there since the planet formed and another bunch synthesized in a fusion reactor and I put them into a black box that shakes, whirrs, spits out two equally sized boxes of carbon and then destroys itself you will not be able to tell whether it mixed them or passed through the original samples.
This kind of information can only be inferred from ensembles of particles and even then only under some assumptions about the underlying processes.
We only recognize fossils by radio-dating, the rock layers they're in, their mineralogy and so on. Never by things encoded in individual particles. So if you can assemble things atom by atom then with enough effort you could make a perfect forgery. And assembling things atom by atom, well, that's what this supposed teletransportation "paradox" is about.
> Hypothetically, if a gunman has you, and a clone of you in a room and is going to kill one of you, are you saying you have no preference which dies?
Assuming the copy was made moments ago and I am 100% confident that this is indeed a perfect copy (and that kind of confidence is rather hard to come by) and the outcome is that exactly one of me will die is entirely inevitable then it does not really matter which one it is. Intuition does not work in these cases because such scenarios do not occur all that often in real life. Alter the situation slightly and my preferences would start to shift.
> If these things are the same, how is it he could kill the clone in a different room and you wouldn't know?
You seem to be ignoring the point of copies diverging over time (I explicitly mentioned that in my previous post). If I were copied and then immediately thrown into a cell and then one of the copies get killed I would not be able to tell which one was the original and which one the copy. Thus the distinction is irrelevant at that moment. I would be more concerned with my redundancy getting reduced further, hitting zero means irrecoverable loss.
> Similarly, I still arrive if ships identical to the original state sank while I am en route.
Let's assume you're actually traveling inside a hotel container on a container ship. Assuming some gentle crane action while you had the container doors closed you wouldn't be sure whether they just moved around your container within the same ship or moved you onto another ship that looks identical.
The paradox only exists if you assume that location and path through space-time is not a property. Since this property cannot be copied, no "identical copy" is possible.
This isn't a divergence--this is an uncopyable property.
re: gentle crane action, it doesn't change the fundamental truth--it isn't my belief that gives me identity. I don't claim to know whether I'm a clone, or be better than the clone. Only that a clone and the original are not the same.
If the copy were perfect you would not be able to tell the difference. In essence there would be no "original" and "copy", just two instances of the same information. This is basic particle physics or information theory. Particles do not come tagged with UUIDs. Once you duplicated all properties the original and the copy become interchangeable. At the macro level we only care about the difference because analog copying processes tend to be lossy.
> I only have my own set of conscious experiences. My set is not the same as the clones.
It is at the moment of "cloning" (assuming that includes memory duplication). They may diverge afterwards, but at the moment the copy is made the sense of self is the same for both.
> When people seriously argue this, I start to wonder if they are bots or NPC's that somehow have no conscious experiences.
Perhaps some people overrate this near-magical concept of consciousness? It temporarily ceases when you sleep or are comatose anyway while your biochemical processes keep shuffling around atoms all the time and that's not the end of the world either. The body ship-of-theseuses itself all the time.