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Lately I've been thinking a lot about the method of copying consciousness in an effort to avoid dying, such as in cloning or mind/consciousness uploading.
Here I want to demonstrate why I don't think either can succeed in dodging death, along with an odd consequence of that line of thought.
Scenario 1: You sign up to climb a perilous mountain. The cultivators of the trail have developed a fail-safe method to ensure that no harm befalls you as you climb: they used advanced technology to make a perfect clone of you before you ascend. That way, should something happen to you, all they have to do is wake the clone up and you can continue with your life unperturbed and uninjured.
Conclusion: A lot of people who haven't put a great deal of thought into this will respond that though they still have some hesitation about the climb, the backup clone does provide reassurance that they can continue living even if they die doing the trek.
Scenario 2: You take part in the climb described above, and there's a horrible accident that results in you falling from a cliff. Fortunately some branches and fresh snow break your fall, and you survive without serious injury. You make your way back to camp, and find that since you were presumed dead, your clone has been awakened to continue your life. Now you are both alive simultaneously.
Conclusion: Despite the common intuition about Scenario 1, it can't be the case that a clone would mean the continuation of your own life/consciousness if it can be alive at the same time as you. You alone are home to your own continuous psychology. And in fact this phenomenon is called psychological continuity.
Psychological continuity is a key concept for mind uploading. If you can successfully copy or upload someone's mind, you still don't get the result you want if you aren't actually maintaining the continuity of their consciousness. Similar to considerations about the teleportation machines from Star Trek, what may actually be happening is that you're killing one consciousness and generating a brand new one. Of course from the perspective of the new mind, and everyone else around it, the same life has continued. It's only the first person-perspective that's been wiped out - but the whole point of the exercise to begin with was to keep that going, not to merely replace it.
This brings us to the final point about sleep. Somehow, probably through some kind of identification with the body or brain, consciousness experiences continuity despite shutting off during sleep. This seems to indicate that there must be some mechanism that enables continuity in the brain. However there's also another possibility, which is that waking consciousness automatically assumes continuity even when it should be in question.
When you wake up and someone has drawn a giant penis on your face in permanent marker, you don't assume that you're a flawed penis-face copy of the old you that's just recently been generated, you assume that you're the same thing you fell asleep as but someone has tampered with you in the night. But what if you woke up missing limbs, or as another sex, or in a different body altogether? What reason do you have to believe you're still you, and not something new?
The arguments that apply to the Star Trek transporter or the mountain clone seem also to apply to sleep. You die when you fall asleep. The person who wakes up again is just very stubbornly convinced that this isn't the case.
Rest in peace Sherdoggers.
~FIN
TL;DR: you're an impostor who refuses to acknowledge the death of the person you think you woke up as. Should you now be afraid to sleep?
Here I want to demonstrate why I don't think either can succeed in dodging death, along with an odd consequence of that line of thought.
Scenario 1: You sign up to climb a perilous mountain. The cultivators of the trail have developed a fail-safe method to ensure that no harm befalls you as you climb: they used advanced technology to make a perfect clone of you before you ascend. That way, should something happen to you, all they have to do is wake the clone up and you can continue with your life unperturbed and uninjured.
Conclusion: A lot of people who haven't put a great deal of thought into this will respond that though they still have some hesitation about the climb, the backup clone does provide reassurance that they can continue living even if they die doing the trek.
Scenario 2: You take part in the climb described above, and there's a horrible accident that results in you falling from a cliff. Fortunately some branches and fresh snow break your fall, and you survive without serious injury. You make your way back to camp, and find that since you were presumed dead, your clone has been awakened to continue your life. Now you are both alive simultaneously.
Conclusion: Despite the common intuition about Scenario 1, it can't be the case that a clone would mean the continuation of your own life/consciousness if it can be alive at the same time as you. You alone are home to your own continuous psychology. And in fact this phenomenon is called psychological continuity.
Psychological continuity is a key concept for mind uploading. If you can successfully copy or upload someone's mind, you still don't get the result you want if you aren't actually maintaining the continuity of their consciousness. Similar to considerations about the teleportation machines from Star Trek, what may actually be happening is that you're killing one consciousness and generating a brand new one. Of course from the perspective of the new mind, and everyone else around it, the same life has continued. It's only the first person-perspective that's been wiped out - but the whole point of the exercise to begin with was to keep that going, not to merely replace it.
This brings us to the final point about sleep. Somehow, probably through some kind of identification with the body or brain, consciousness experiences continuity despite shutting off during sleep. This seems to indicate that there must be some mechanism that enables continuity in the brain. However there's also another possibility, which is that waking consciousness automatically assumes continuity even when it should be in question.
When you wake up and someone has drawn a giant penis on your face in permanent marker, you don't assume that you're a flawed penis-face copy of the old you that's just recently been generated, you assume that you're the same thing you fell asleep as but someone has tampered with you in the night. But what if you woke up missing limbs, or as another sex, or in a different body altogether? What reason do you have to believe you're still you, and not something new?
The arguments that apply to the Star Trek transporter or the mountain clone seem also to apply to sleep. You die when you fall asleep. The person who wakes up again is just very stubbornly convinced that this isn't the case.
Rest in peace Sherdoggers.
~FIN
TL;DR: you're an impostor who refuses to acknowledge the death of the person you think you woke up as. Should you now be afraid to sleep?
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