Author Topic: Let me............... Tel-e-port you!  (Read 85068 times)

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Offline The E

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Re: Mods feel free to fork this post
1) How do you decide who gets to fork?  Obviously if everyone can fork indefinitely you'll run out of resources sooner or later (assuming new people continue to be created), so that's not really an option. 
In most fictional implementations, running multiple versions of you is actually frowned upon or prohibited. The social and legal implications are just too messy.

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Maybe you can transfer your pattern into another, more efficient container like a super cool man-made computer that everyone and their Dad can inhabit but good luck getting people to give up sex.  I mean what's the point if it's just you and your immortal life partner going "0010101110 mmmmmm UUUUuuuuuuh" on a bit of RAM somewhere?

Non-issue, actually. Provided that that machine can give the brain all the stimuli it needs, it shouldn't make that much of a difference. (Not to mention the weirder things that are possible in such an environment; again, read Accelerando or Glasshouse)

Besides that, I have trouble seeing your point here. Are you saying that sex wouldn't be fun anymore, just because you don't get to use actual bodies?

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2) Think about all the crap that goes down presently because people think they can go on to everlasting life.  Imagine if it actually worked!  Revolving door suicide bombers, man.  Also isn't it a relief knowing that Dick Cheney will one day cease to exist?  You know he'd be second in line to fork it up indefinitely.

Again, that's why there would be severe restrictions on things like that. And there is no reason to believe that just because someone was powerful once, he will stay powerful forever (or "evil"). Besides, I don't think Cheney et al would really be capable of adapting to a new environment like that.

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3) When you do have the inevitable duplication errors, what do you do when Riker1 and Riker2 both want to go back to their quarters and fork Troi (assuming Rikers and Troi wouldn't be totally into this)?

Umm. Could you elaborate on this? What does one thing (replication errors) have to do with the other?
Besides, I believe if this technology ever becomes available, it would have to be proven to work correctly each time, every time before even the cutting edge people would seriously consider it.
If I'm just aching this can't go on
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Offline castor

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Re: The Earth is uninhabitable
Okay, one more..

Assume a person dies, plain and simple. Billion years passes... Then one random day, some random person, somewhere, by a freak chance of nature, develops to be exactly the same mind that died billion years ago. Do you consider that the person who died billion years ago now actually continues his/her life?

 

Offline General Battuta

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Re: The Earth is uninhabitable
Do they have precisely the same memories, neural structures, implicit skills, and characteristics, down to a resolution that is not distinguishable from the moment-to-moment procession of consciousness in the brain? Is their brainstate at time = T identical to that which would have proceeded from one of the original's brainstates, and does it proceed to develop in the same way, thereby rendering it causally connected?

Then yeah, miraculously, you've been resurrected. It seems crazy, but it's exactly the same as if you rot for a billion years and then some kind of crazy Anti-Entropic Field pulls you back together exactly as you were. Or if you're dead for a year, and your body is partially reconstructed by nanomachines - same principle. It's different matter but the same pattern. Basically, you've been teleported.

Bear in mind that the probability of this event occurring is staggeringly low. You're presuming that this duplicate has received precisely the same sensory input and physical stimuli. This means that everyone around them, all the weather, all the politics, all the everything has to be the same - the same stars in the sky, the same cosmic background radiation sleeting random particles into the brain. In fact, the only way for it to have happened is for them to have lived exactly the same life you did in exactly the same environment.

Of course, in a spatially infinite universe with regular matter density, the occurrence of such an event is actually inevitable, and you can actually calculate the average distance to an identical copy of you in existence right now.

tl;dr version: if you were teleported, and all the cast-off atoms of your existence formed a dead duplicate of you in the ground, you'd still consider yourself alive and the same person. It's the same scenario.
« Last Edit: November 04, 2009, 02:09:09 pm by General Battuta »

 

Offline Topgun

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Re: The Earth is uninhabitable
okay, so, lets say you do make a copy of yourself, and your thoughts are duplicated. are you in two places at the same time? I get how you can be the same person even though your body is different. different cells but same process. BUT, what happens when there are two of you?
like this, you go to the brain scanner thingy, you get your brain scanned and at the same time another *you* is created. great, now there are two of you walking around. cool. but which one gets to live in your house?

 

Offline The E

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Re: The Earth is uninhabitable
And now you see why it can become problematic, from a legal and social POV, to permit several instances of the same person to be active parallel to each other.
If I'm just aching this can't go on
I came from chasing dreams to feel alone
There must be changes, miss to feel strong
I really need lifе to touch me
--Evergrey, Where August Mourns

 

Offline General Battuta

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Re: The Earth is uninhabitable
okay, so, lets say you do make a copy of yourself, and your thoughts are duplicated. are you in two places at the same time? I get how you can be the same person even though your body is different. different cells but same process. BUT, what happens when there are two of you?

Well, as TrashMan has repeatedly and partially pointed out, now there are two of you.

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like this, you go to the brain scanner thingy, you get your brain scanned and at the same time another *you* is created. great, now there are two of you walking around. cool. but which one gets to live in your house?

Well, as The_E said, that's kind of the problem, isn't it? Philosophically and physically it's a fairly straightforward (if non-intuitive) process, but legally...sheesh!

 

Offline karajorma

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Re: The Earth is uninhabitable
Undermined how? I wouldn't use a transporter, no.

*files this away for later*

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Please don't tell me you're trying to use the behaviour/belief on characters in a fictional universe as proof of anything.

I'm using the fact that virtually everyone on this board would use a transporter as proof you are wrong. I suspect that you are one of the only people here who wouldn't use one. Hell. I'd use one to avoid walking down the stairs in my building in the morning. :p


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Irrelevant. They can both be real. Doesn't change the fact that each is a separete entity.

Basic logic. If it's two, then it can't be one. 1+1=2, not 1.

I never said they weren't separate. I was challenging your claim that one of them always knows they are a copy. Battuta gives another example where you are drugged and copied and neither version knows which one is the "real" version.
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Offline General Battuta

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Re: The Earth is uninhabitable
I'm using the fact that virtually everyone on this board would use a transporter as proof you are wrong. I suspect that you are one of the only people here who wouldn't use one. Hell. I'd use one to avoid walking down the stairs in my building. :p

Yeah. You can't say the transporter kills you without simultaneously admitting that the person you were a while back is dead.

 

Offline swashmebuckle

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Re: The Earth is uninhabitable
1) How do you decide who gets to fork?  Obviously if everyone can fork indefinitely you'll run out of resources sooner or later (assuming new people continue to be created), so that's not really an option.
In most fictional implementations, running multiple versions of you is actually frowned upon or prohibited. The social and legal implications are just too messy.
Here I was thinking not of running parallel copies (that's what I was trying to say in #3) but of extending yourself indefinitely by means of forking off near or at the point of death like the Cylon resurrection thing.  The problem I'm getting at is who would be allowed to do this, given that people will still desire to create new people in the traditional way, and you can't just have your population expanding forever.  Some solutions I thought might be suggested were:

A) DEATH PANELS (lol) that would decide based on a person's value to society who would get to resurrect.
B) Everyone gets a certain number of resurrections like in a video game.  Maybe you can get extra lives for doing community service or blowing up a lot of space invaders.
C) You get free bodies up to a certain age and then you're on your own (for me this is the least unpalatable option).
D) Only people who can afford it can resurrect (for me this is the most likely option).
E) The disembodied option described below:
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Maybe you can transfer your pattern into another, more efficient container like a super cool man-made computer that everyone and their Dad can inhabit but good luck getting people to give up sex.  I mean what's the point if it's just you and your immortal life partner going "0010101110 mmmmmm UUUUuuuuuuh" on a bit of RAM somewhere?

Non-issue, actually. Provided that that machine can give the brain all the stimuli it needs, it shouldn't make that much of a difference. (Not to mention the weirder things that are possible in such an environment; again, read Accelerando or Glasshouse)

Besides that, I have trouble seeing your point here. Are you saying that sex wouldn't be fun anymore, just because you don't get to use actual bodies?
Yes :D.  Maybe more to the point, I think everything would suck more without the urgency of having a finite span in which to do whatever it is you want.  The less limited I am, the less adversity I face, the less motivation I have.
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2) Think about all the crap that goes down presently because people think they can go on to everlasting life.  Imagine if it actually worked!  Revolving door suicide bombers, man.  Also isn't it a relief knowing that Dick Cheney will one day cease to exist?  You know he'd be second in line to fork it up indefinitely.

Again, that's why there would be severe restrictions on things like that. And there is no reason to believe that just because someone was powerful once, he will stay powerful forever (or "evil"). Besides, I don't think Cheney et al would really be capable of adapting to a new environment like that.
Hmm, I thought that of all the crazy crap that had been proposed, the notion that power tends to accumulate in the hands of the already powerful was the least far-fetched.  Looking around the world today, the people in charge all seem to be those coming from a base of wealth and power in an age group where they have accumulated a lot of experience and connections but their faculties have not yet critically declined.  This seems to be exactly the type of group we are proposing expanding and further empowering here.
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3) When you do have the inevitable duplication errors, what do you do when Riker1 and Riker2 both want to go back to their quarters and fork Troi (assuming Rikers and Troi wouldn't be totally into this)?

Umm. Could you elaborate on this? What does one thing (replication errors) have to do with the other?
Besides, I believe if this technology ever becomes available, it would have to be proven to work correctly each time, every time before even the cutting edge people would seriously consider it.
This was the issue Topgun just posted about, I guess I wasn't very clear.  In my scenario, Riker is duplicated on the transporter pad, and both Rikers head back to their quarters expecting to fulfill their husbandly duties with Troi.  Sexy hilarity ensues.

 
Re: The Earth is uninhabitable
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Humans are the most adaptive creatures known. We've colonised all four corners of the world and live for periods of time outside in orbit above the planet. There's no reason that humans won't spread across the known galaxy if it becomes both technologically possible and economically viable.

Ah, but the point is that we're very narrowly adapted to a very rare set of environmental conditions and we've only been around for a very, very, very, very, very small period of time. We're talking a blink here.

If you just measure success by 'how long you stick around', the dinosaurs are still outplaying us tremendously.

Yeah so how is that important? Reality is reality. So the Dinosaurs were around for a long time, and at the end they were still just dinosaurs. Humans on the other hand have been around for a compartively short amount of time and we've advanced a tremendous amount. In fact, I would suggest that an animal which is naturally adaptive is a poor choice compared to a human because humans are forced to adapt with technology. If a human can't survive in the artic he builds a house out of ice and wears some caribou hides for clothes. Whereas if we have another creature that can more easily adapt then where's the need for innovation? The animal goes on being an animal and doesn't improve itself because it's already suited to wherever it goes. It doesn't build a house it doesn't learn fire it doesn't learn to eat new types of prey through cooking it doesn't do anything other than eating, sleeping and crapping.

What doesn't kill you, makes you stronger and any environment which poses a challenge to an individual has the capacity to make them stronger. A creature which can adapt naturally has no challenge and therefore no need to improve itself.

  

Offline The E

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Re: The Earth is uninhabitable
Here I was thinking not of running parallel copies (that's what I was trying to say in #3) but of extending yourself indefinitely by means of forking off near or at the point of death like the Cylon resurrection thing.  The problem I'm getting at is who would be allowed to do this, given that people will still desire to create new people in the traditional way, and you can't just have your population expanding forever.  Some solutions I thought might be suggested were:

A) DEATH PANELS (lol) that would decide based on a person's value to society who would get to resurrect.
B) Everyone gets a certain number of resurrections like in a video game.  Maybe you can get extra lives for doing community service or blowing up a lot of space invaders.
C) You get free bodies up to a certain age and then you're on your own (for me this is the least unpalatable option).
D) Only people who can afford it can resurrect (for me this is the most likely option).
E) The disembodied option described below:

Depends on circumstances beyond the scope of the original thought experiment. In this case, the availability (or scarcity) of resources. Suffice it to say that those are interesting points, and they are explored in the relevant literature.

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Yes :D.  Maybe more to the point, I think everything would suck more without the urgency of having a finite span in which to do whatever it is you want.  The less limited I am, the less adversity I face, the less motivation I have.

This sounds like a lot of the points NGTM-1R raised earlier. I don't believe a word of it, really. Again, read the relevant literature. It explains and explores the issues far more eloquently than I ever could.

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Hmm, I thought that of all the crazy crap that had been proposed, the notion that power tends to accumulate in the hands of the already powerful was the least far-fetched.  Looking around the world today, the people in charge all seem to be those coming from a base of wealth and power in an age group where they have accumulated a lot of experience and connections but their faculties have not yet critically declined.  This seems to be exactly the type of group we are proposing expanding and further empowering here.

And? This has to stay that way forever? I am a bright-eyed idealist here, but most singularity stories describe a massive social upheaval once the big S gets started. "Talk you of Tradition in Singularity!" indeed. (Bonus points for any non-Battuta who can source that quote)

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This was the issue Topgun just posted about, I guess I wasn't very clear.  In my scenario, Riker is duplicated on the transporter pad, and both Rikers head back to their quarters expecting to fulfill their husbandly duties with Troi.  Sexy hilarity ensues.

Again, these are the points where it gets interesting. I don't presume to have an answer to that dilemma; society (and the individuals involved) need to work that out.
If I'm just aching this can't go on
I came from chasing dreams to feel alone
There must be changes, miss to feel strong
I really need lifе to touch me
--Evergrey, Where August Mourns

 

Offline übermetroid

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Re: The Earth is uninhabitable

I don't get it.  There is no problem here with multiple forks.  The only resource that is being used up is matter, energy (for getting everything to work), bandwidth (for communicating), and processing cycles (the computer power).

If you can copy minds, you can upload them into the matrix if you want.  As many minds in as many matrixs are you have the (see above) to make.

Matter of fact, lets turn earth into a giant computer running a massive sim so we can support a billion billion billion billion ect lives.  Then when we run out of space we can turn the rest of the planets into computer systems to support more and more people.
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Offline General Battuta

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Re: The Earth is uninhabitable
Works for me (though it has the potential to turn into a living hell if there are, for instance, lag issues, or if the system is exploited...)

If it's possible to build such a sim, then odds are we're living in one.

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Humans are the most adaptive creatures known. We've colonised all four corners of the world and live for periods of time outside in orbit above the planet. There's no reason that humans won't spread across the known galaxy if it becomes both technologically possible and economically viable.

Ah, but the point is that we're very narrowly adapted to a very rare set of environmental conditions and we've only been around for a very, very, very, very, very small period of time. We're talking a blink here.

If you just measure success by 'how long you stick around', the dinosaurs are still outplaying us tremendously.

Yeah so how is that important? Reality is reality. So the Dinosaurs were around for a long time, and at the end they were still just dinosaurs. Humans on the other hand have been around for a compartively short amount of time and we've advanced a tremendous amount. In fact, I would suggest that an animal which is naturally adaptive is a poor choice compared to a human because humans are forced to adapt with technology. If a human can't survive in the artic he builds a house out of ice and wears some caribou hides for clothes. Whereas if we have another creature that can more easily adapt then where's the need for innovation? The animal goes on being an animal and doesn't improve itself because it's already suited to wherever it goes. It doesn't build a house it doesn't learn fire it doesn't learn to eat new types of prey through cooking it doesn't do anything other than eating, sleeping and crapping.

What doesn't kill you, makes you stronger and any environment which poses a challenge to an individual has the capacity to make them stronger. A creature which can adapt naturally has no challenge and therefore no need to improve itself.

Wow, you missed a lot.

Anyway, the human being's inherent cognitive abilities are part of their adaptive abilities. Which fulfills the definition of "a creature which can adapt naturally has no challenge and therefore no need to improve itself", and makes your argument a bit circular.

 

Offline swashmebuckle

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Re: The Earth is uninhabitable
The E: Yeah it's going beyond the original thought experiment--that's what I was trying to do by saying let's play good idea/bad idea.  The original argument seemed to have petered out, with the non-replicators having fallen back on religion, so I was looking for some opinions and fun speculation.  And I'm still waiting for someone to say good idea or bad idea (keeping in mind that inevitable, impossible, etc are unacceptably boring answers).

übermetroid: Well that's certainly one possibility, but a matrix type of thing seems to operate on the assumption that having your intellect tied inextricably to a body is a crippling design flaw rather than a key feature, which I'm not so sure about.

 

Offline General Battuta

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Re: The Earth is uninhabitable
übermetroid: Well that's certainly one possibility, but a matrix type of thing seems to operate on the assumption that having your intellect tied inextricably to a body is a crippling design flaw rather than a key feature, which I'm not so sure about.

Right, but it could still be tied to a body (and probably would have to be) - just a simulated body that you could do weird stuff to.

I think that such a matrix would probably be a 'bad idea', at least at first. Imagine if you were uploaded into Second Life...what a way to go.

 

Offline Topgun

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Re: The Earth is uninhabitable
personally, I would like to be uploaded into the elder scrolls universe, with infinite health and a 0.000000000000000000000001x pain modifier.

and sex, the games don't have sex.
;)

 

Offline NGTM-1R

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Re: The Earth is uninhabitable
This sounds like a lot of the points NGTM-1R raised earlier. I don't believe a word of it, really. Again, read the relevant literature. It explains and explores the issues far more eloquently than I ever could.

Not really. I'm arguing against the existence of naturally superadaptive spacemen, as such a species would have no reason to develop the technology underlying space travel, or indeed intelligence. A species that simply came able to easily adapt to any environment will have no selection pressure on it, that's basic, but once you have technological ability that's also somewhat moot (although keeping selection pressure is probably good anyways). Any intelligent species will most likely either be like or have been like us; not well-fitted to their enviroment, so they developed intelligence, the means to make the environment bend to them.
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Offline swashmebuckle

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Re: The Earth is uninhabitable
Right, but it could still be tied to a body (and probably would have to be) - just a simulated body that you could do weird stuff to.

I think that such a matrix would probably be a 'bad idea', at least at first. Imagine if you were uploaded into Second Life...what a way to go.
Heh, talk about a fate worse than death.  What I was thinking in regards to the physical limitations being an important part of our design has something to do with this simulated body thing too.  Would it be a good thing to be able to do weird stuff to yourself like radically altering your programming?  Would being able to erase unwanted memories (a la Eternal Sunshine) or inhabit other peoples' simulations (Being John Malkovich) or any number of other nutty operations that would be possible in this scenario raise or lower your quality of life?  How about the nature of the simulation itself (assuming we're talking about using avatars or whatever like in the Matrix movies where everything you directly observe is a video game type fabrication)?  The sim can never be as complex as the "real" universe, no matter how much energy you accumulate--is it a good idea to sacrifice that quality for the greater quantity of intelligences you could fit on a matrix planet?

 

Offline General Battuta

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Re: The Earth is uninhabitable
Selection pressure is not the only means to evolve.

The sim can never be as complex as the "real" universe, no matter how much energy you accumulate--is it a good idea to sacrifice that quality for the greater quantity of intelligences you could fit on a matrix planet?

Actually, I believe there are certain end-states to the universe where you can create an arbitrarily faithful simulation...I gotta look up the paper.

I don't think I'd want to spend the rest of my life in simulation. Of course, if such a simulation is possible, then the odds that we're already living in one are pretty high.

 

Offline TrashMan

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Re: The Earth is uninhabitable
I'm using the fact that virtually everyone on this board would use a transporter as proof you are wrong. I suspect that you are one of the only people here who wouldn't use one. Hell. I'd use one to avoid walking down the stairs in my building in the morning. :p

Virtually everyone on this board? Eh? Was there some poll made when I wasn't looking? Or do you jsut assume virtualy everyone is backing you up?

And even if we assume they do, what of it? How does a buch of people willing to use transporters prove anything discussed in their thread?


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I never said they weren't separate. I was challenging your claim that one of them always knows they are a copy. Battuta gives another example where you are drugged and copied and neither version knows which one is the "real" version.

I never said one would always know. I said that in most cases, the copy would be abelt to find out if it is a copy.

And correct me if I'm wrong, but wasn't thir thread originalyl about human expansion and colonization?

But regardless. This discussion is becoming tedious. I've said my piece and and now taking my leafve. Hugs and kisses
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