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The Cloned-Consciousness-as-Continuous-Consciousness Fallacy

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Re: The Cloned-Consciousness-as-Continuous-Consciousness Fallacy

#21

Post by chongli »

EGreg wrote: post #10
aappleby wrote: post #3

Imagine that I visit a cloning facility that can flawlessly duplicate a human, memories and all. The techs there put me in a medical gown and sedate me, and a while later I wake up in an empty room. Without any additional information, I have no way to determine if I am the clone or not. I know only that there is another me in the building somewhere, having the exact same thoughts as I am having right now. In fact, I…

This is all basic stuff. Think deeper. You go to sleep every night. When you wake up the next day, how do you know you're the same person as yesterday? What does that mean? Now consider if you didn't have memories of the past. What would make you "you"? The body would be the same but your amnesia would change things, eh? Now what if you knew next week you would lose your memories for sure, but this week you can go on…

You know you're the same person as yesterday because without you, there is no knowing. A clone is no more you than an identical twin is you. What makes you you is the ability to ask the question in the first place. If you were dead, there would be no question.

Re: The Cloned-Consciousness-as-Continuous-Consciousness Fallacy

#22

Post by maxerickson »

EGreg wrote: post #10
aappleby wrote: post #3

Imagine that I visit a cloning facility that can flawlessly duplicate a human, memories and all. The techs there put me in a medical gown and sedate me, and a while later I wake up in an empty room. Without any additional information, I have no way to determine if I am the clone or not. I know only that there is another me in the building somewhere, having the exact same thoughts as I am having right now. In fact, I…

This is all basic stuff. Think deeper. You go to sleep every night. When you wake up the next day, how do you know you're the same person as yesterday? What does that mean? Now consider if you didn't have memories of the past. What would make you "you"? The body would be the same but your amnesia would change things, eh? Now what if you knew next week you would lose your memories for sure, but this week you can go on…

The classic question, if a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, do the air molecules still vibrate?

Re: The Cloned-Consciousness-as-Continuous-Consciousness Fallacy

#23

Post by enoch_r »

Imagine waking up in a strange facility. There's a tray in front of you with a pill and a label that says "eat me."

In World A, the drug causes amnesia--after 12 hours, you'll fall asleep, and completely forget the preceding 12 hours.

In World B, the drug is a suicide pill--after 12 hours, you will fall asleep and die painlessly. However, just before you woke up, a "backup" was uploaded. And upon your death, this backup will be restored.

It seems to me that the subjective experience(s) in both cases would be the same. But we consider the latter "death" and the former "too much to drink."

(http://www.overcomingbias.com/2016/04/is-forgotten-party-dea... got me thinking in these terms--it's by Robin Hanson, who is one of the examples from the article.)

Re: The Cloned-Consciousness-as-Continuous-Consciousness Fallacy

#25

Post by [deleted] »

AgentME wrote: post #17

It's an interesting problem, but I don't feel like this page accomplished much besides calling a position he disagreed with a fallacy and using unexplained appeals to emotion. >To refute this, let’s conduct a thought experiment. Pretend that you can copy a human brain. There are ten copies of me. They are all individually conscious — perfect replicas that only diverge after the point when replication happened. Is it…

[deleted]

Re: The Cloned-Consciousness-as-Continuous-Consciousness Fallacy

#26

Post by goldenkey »

There is no fallacy. Everyone's here who is intrigued by this question but dissapointed with the rather simple and unresolving reply in this blog post, should watch Moon directed by Duncan Jones (David Bowie's son who recently directed Warcraft.) Questions like these don't have simple answers. I'm rather dissapointed with the hand wave of emotion the post author ascribes to. But it is bringing the topic up, so I am happy for that.

Re: The Cloned-Consciousness-as-Continuous-Consciousness Fallacy

#27

Post by Artlav »

I wonder, what does quantum physics have to do with human experience and brain operation?

It's a very persistent idea floating around, despite contradicting everything we know about how a brain operates.

More on topic, what he misses is that "consciousness" is a null word. It does not connect to any real phenomenon, and merely a result of a human being unable to imagine it's own non-existence, thus producing the long list of things like anima, spirit soul, consciousness and so on.

Re: The Cloned-Consciousness-as-Continuous-Consciousness Fallacy

#28

Post by TheCoelacanth »

chongli wrote: post #21
EGreg wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is all basic stuff. Think deeper. You go to sleep every night. When you wake up the next day, how do you know you're the same person as yesterday? What does that mean? Now consider if you didn't have memories of the past. What would make you "you"? The body would be the same but your amnesia would change things, eh? Now what if you knew next week you would lose your memories for sure, but this week you can go on…

You know you're the same person as yesterday because without you, there is no knowing . A clone is no more you than an identical twin is you. What makes you you is the ability to ask the question in the first place. If you were dead, there would be no question.

I don't follow.

You know based on your ability to ask the question that you currently are you and not a clone of yourself, but you don't know that the person yesterday was you and not some other person that you were cloned from.

Re: The Cloned-Consciousness-as-Continuous-Consciousness Fallacy

#29

Post by pjungwir »

Just to throw out a few references, since they seem unmentioned so far:

The Ship of Theseus is an ancient recognition of a similar problem.

Greg Egan has written two stories that deal with copy-vs-continuity of consciousness: Diaspora and Permutation City. Both start with the premise "what if we could digitize our mind?" but go in different directions.

Re: The Cloned-Consciousness-as-Continuous-Consciousness Fallacy

#30

Post by mickeypi »

Consider another version: An exactly similar human being to you is discovered to exist on another planet. They have your memories, your aspirations, your habits, etc. They were not created as a copy of you. This person was born to parents, just like you, and lived the same life that you did. They are reading this post on HN right now.

Surely in this scenario the answer to "is it OK to kill one of you now?" is "no".

So why is this different to some people than a synthetically-created clone?

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