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Ask Slashdot: Is Beaming Down In Star Trek a Death Sentence?
Artem Tashkinov writes: Some time ago, Ars Technica ran a monumental article on beaming of consciousness in Star Trek and its implications, and more importantly, whether it's plausible to achieve that without killing a person in the process.
It seems possible in the Star Trek universe. However, currently physicists find the idea absurd and unreal because there's no way you can transport matter and its quantum state without first destroying it and then recreating it perfectly, due to Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle. The biggest conundrum of all is the fact that pretty much everyone understands that consciousness is a physical state of the brain, which features continuity as its primary principle; yet it surely seems like copying the said state produces a new person altogether, which brings up the problem of consciousness becoming local to one's skull and inseparable from gray matter. This idea sounds a bit unscientific because it introduces the notion that there's something about our brain which cannot be described in terms of physics, almost like soul.
This also brings another very difficult question: how do we know if we are the same person when we wake up in the morning or after we were put under during general anesthesia? What are your thoughts on the topic?
It seems possible in the Star Trek universe. However, currently physicists find the idea absurd and unreal because there's no way you can transport matter and its quantum state without first destroying it and then recreating it perfectly, due to Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle. The biggest conundrum of all is the fact that pretty much everyone understands that consciousness is a physical state of the brain, which features continuity as its primary principle; yet it surely seems like copying the said state produces a new person altogether, which brings up the problem of consciousness becoming local to one's skull and inseparable from gray matter. This idea sounds a bit unscientific because it introduces the notion that there's something about our brain which cannot be described in terms of physics, almost like soul.
This also brings another very difficult question: how do we know if we are the same person when we wake up in the morning or after we were put under during general anesthesia? What are your thoughts on the topic?
There's a great animated short by John Weldon that explores this topic. It's called To Be and can be found at this URL: http://www.nfb.ca/film/to_be/
Is the transporter killing people by ripping them apart atom by atom, and then creating a new person?
One of our competitors trademarked the term "hypothesis". From now on, we will call them "boneheaded ideas".
. . . beaming down while wearing a red shirt does NOT seem to be a good idea.
Folks dressed like that never seem to last too long.
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
Come again?
"... which brings up the problem of consciousness becoming local to one's skull and inseparable from gray matter. This idea sounds a bit unscientific because it introduces the notion that there's something about our brain which cannot be described in terms of physics, almost like soul."
No, all it says is that a copy of a brain is not the original brain.
If you make a perfect copy of an orange, all the way down to the subatomic level, then that copy is still not the original orange. It's the copy.
If you make a perfect copy of me, down to the sub-atomic level and that copy walks into my room, then I will not suddenly confuse that copy with myself.
Matter converted to energy and re-converted and re-assembled at the other end as matter. It's all you, end to end.
Buffering
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Buffering
I never knew why they didn't just use the transporter memory to restore all the red shirts...
... physicists find the idea absurd and unreal because there's no way you can transport matter and its quantum state without first destroying it and then recreating it perfectly, due to Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle.
It's been established that ST transporters have Heisenberg compensators, so checkmate actual physicists.
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
How about after a good night's sleep. And what the heck is up with that someone is sitting on you or holding you down as you transition from sleep to being awake. Happened again last night and it freaks me out!
I raised this very question (Star Trek, transporter experiment) to my daughter when she was a teenager. Her response was, what's the difference? Our atoms have already largely completely changed over many times by now anyway. I recall reading years ago, I think it was a Time Life book or perhaps an educational movie, that we're all breathing, and thus by implication incorporating, some fraction of the actual atoms that Leonardo da Vinci breathed; a matter of statistics. Of course, that still leaves the question of whether your consciousness this very instant is already a different "thing" that it was a second ago, and only your current state of your memory leads you to believe that it is the same.
Hasn't "BeauHD" ever heard of Heisenberg Compensators?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
No sig today...
The universe is entirely static, a four dimensional object where everything that has or will happen exists simultaneously in an eternally unchanging state.
Our perception of it dynamically changing over time is an illusion of senses only perceiving a single "slice" of that object.
Furthermore, our consciousness is not continuous, but rather a disconnected multitude, each trapped forever in a specific moment of our lives. Each convinced it has a history because of the illusion of memory. Each convinced it has free will because of the illusion of action.
Since we are talking Star Trek, this has all ready been directly answered. Riker beams up, but leaves a copy. Years later, he is rediscovered by the enterprise crew. Dr. Crusher and Jordi agree they are identical and equally "Riker" so it must be true. Eventually the duplicate wanders off to lead a life of his own. Glad I could wrap that up for everyone scientifically, once and for all.
"shared out-of-body experience" is also a new-age farce.
Conversations like this are being had all over the Internet by amateurs who don't know nearly enough about the relevant subjects to speak intelligently on them, and of course consider themselves experts nonetheless.
"Soul" is a religious concept, zero actual evidence of the existence of any such thing, and it is not a concept that should be included in such discussions.
"Consciousness" is only meaningful when people don't abuse it by using it as a modern synonym for "soul." Consciousness is NOT a magical floaty part of yourself that is really you but isn't made out of matter. It's a high-level abstraction of everything necessary for a complex nervous system to be responsive. The word loses all usefulness when it is polluted with superstitious tripe!
The philosophical problem of personal identity is important and relevant, but it is also technical, has a long history, and there is a lot more to know about it than what you can infer from its name and common sense! If you are not educated you cannot participate in the debate!
"Identity" is an abstract concept, not a concrete thing, and the brain arrives it by a very fuzzy cognitive process. All of our "oh its is so mysterious" responses just come from a simple, and ignorant, expectation that this abstract concept should behave more like a physical object. It is why people try to bend your brain with questions like:
if you chop a person's arm of, and attach a different arm, is it still the same person? What if you pull three neurons out of that person's brain, and replace them with three new neurons? What if you pull 300 nerouns out and replace them? 3 million? What if you just swap the whole brain out with a totally different brain that has the same memories? Where is the specific line at which it becomes a different person?
These questions don't point out a problem of reality, nor do they point out a problem of "the mystery of consciousness" or anything stupid like that. They demonstrate that the concept of self that we are using is not clearly defined. That's ALL they demonstrate!
I realize I am ranting. So I will stop. Have fun remaining blind while being led by the blind, on this one.
The Outer Limits did an interesting episode on this topic: s07 e08 Think Like a Dinosaur.
The ship of Theseus, also known as Theseus's paradox, is a thought experiment that raises the question of whether an object that has had all of its components replaced remains fundamentally the same object. The paradox is most notably recorded by Plutarch in Life of Theseus from the late first century.
Their were a lot of transporter malfunctions on ST. The duplicate Ryker proves that it was possible to make two people, which means that at least one of them was not the original, which means that neither of them were the original.
Star Trek transporters were cloning machines that some moron put a suicide option into them and then pretended they were a transportation method. For no obvious reason, too. Leave the original alive back on earth and let the clones take all the risk.
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
That's what the Heisenberg compensator are for: http://memory-alpha.wikia.com/...
Try it! Library of Babel
A scientific view of consciousness would state that if you could find a way to duplicate a physical body, then you could build a transporter as our consciousness is just the chemical and atomic state of our brain.
If we really have a metaphysical "soul", then just how would that re-attach to the physical form you transport elsewhere?
I liked how Dark Matter handled this better, where they created a clone at the destination while you were cryogenically stored at the origin, then if the clone made it back to the transmitter without dying you would get all of the memories of what happened.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
"Get in, get out again, and no one gets hurt."
Cloudiot: A person who does not see offsite storage as a way to lose control over access to his or her own data.
No Q was not god, he is just an alien that to us seams to have god like powers.
The you would have no problem collecting that 1 Million USD from James Randi?
The Star Trek Transporter is a device invented to facilitate telling a story. There was 50 minutes. Obviously they could get in their space shuttle and land on the planet, get from the clear place they chose to the town, and then start the story. Or they could beam in.
There is also the fact that the way the communicators work is elided in the story. Obviously the channel can't be open until you say the name of the person you're calling, and even with some speeding up of the original audio it's going to take a second or two for them to catch up and respond. But nobody waits for the phone to ring on Star Trek.
And of course the data transfer method of the future is to give someone your tablet :-)
These are story devices. We can speculate about matter transmission being applied to conscious entities and copying people, but we should be clear that the reason these are used in Star Trek is not because they think that is how things will be in the future. It's because they made telling the story in the present easier to do.
Bruce Perens.
It's a death sentence, but also a rebirth, so it cancels out.
The biggest conundrum of all is the fact that pretty much everyone understands that consciousness is a physical state of the brain, which features continuity as its primary principle; yet it surely seems like copying the said state produces a new person altogether, which brings up the problem of consciousness becoming local to one's skull and inseparable from gray matter. This idea sounds a bit unscientific because it introduces the notion that there's something about our brain which cannot be described in terms of physics, almost like soul.
Consciousness is a physical state of the brain. It is a section of the brain which is 'reading' what's happening in other areas of the brain (more like the 2nd informational hub of the brain, similar to a large rest stop on a superhighway.) You can damage/turn off those other areas without losing consciousness. Continuity is not a primary principle. There are many ways to break continuity. Your unconscious mind don't break continuity during most of those instances. You can watch that on brain scanners.
Sleeping doesn't break continuity. It blocks short-term memory storage of the events happening during sleep. You can slowly train your brain to not do that. When you do so you become a lucid dreamer.
Exactly copying something means you have a second copy. So the second brain has its own consciousness exactly identical to the first until they start experiencing different inputs. In what way does any of that imply a soul? It doesn't, You just made up that statement because you've confused yourself. The summary makes an invalid argument so this shouldn't have been approved to Slashdot.
My thoughts on this topic are meaningless and so are yours. God is a human invention. You can see it time and time again by studying history, how humans react, and the areas of your brain which turn off during meditation/prayer (the section which lets you know where all yours parts are when you're not looking at them, so turning it off gives you an out-of-body experience). It doesn't matter if you're a new person when you have a gap in memory or not. Since it's trivial to demonstrate you don't go under any abnormal physical changes during such periods, the answer to such a question is meaningless no matter the answer.
The "problem of consciousness becoming local to one's skull and inseparable from gray matter" is no problem at all. That's the fact of the matter. What "you" perceive as "your consciousness" is purely a function of your brain.
When you make an exact copy of a brain, that doesn't complicate anything really. That brain will perceive its own consciousness similarly. And it will very likely function very similarly to the original.
Where's the confusion?
This also brings another very difficult question: how do we know if we are the same person when we wake up in the morning or after we were put under during general anesthesia?
The simple answer is there's no way to know that your memories are real. There's also no way to know that other people really exist. All that you can know for sure is that you exist, "I think therefore I am". Go read "Meditations on First Philosophy" by Rene Descartes.
Maybe this is the wrong question to ask...
Obviously, given the transporter doesn't exist yet, this is all hypothetical. However, assuming that a transporter had been developer for inanimate objects and your question preceded a decision to use it to attempt to transfer a living organism, then a different question becomes relevant:-
What is the mechanism by which the human brain achieves consciousness?
Because, I would argue, you can only answer the second question ("Is Beaming Down In Star Trek a Death Sentence?") when you know (1) How the Beaming Down process works; and (2) How the brain acts as the "container" for the mind [assuming it does].
Digging a little bit deeper... If it can be shown that consciousness is achieved merely from the result of a truly massive scale of parallel chemical processes that are taking place in the cells of the brain, then well, it might be possible. It would require technology that could scan the body not to a cellular resolution, but to an *atomic*, or possibly even sub-atomic resolution, instantaneously... then transmit that information to a remote location and reconstitute all that organic matter, with all those chemical "transactions", all synchronised to exactly the same point in time...
On the other hand, if consciousness exists through other means [I'm making this up, but, say quantum super-positioning] then the act of scanning the subject at the point of origin might in fact destroy the "data" before it could be "beamed" anywhere.
This is why my answer is that the OP asks the wrong question. It's not the beaming you need to consider first, it's to understand how consciousness functions at a materials science level. Only then can you start to understand the functional design requirements of the transporter.
There was a video done a couple of years ago about this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nQHBAdShgYI&feature=youtu.be
because Star Trek and Star Trek transporters are fantasy. Something that fewer and fewer people seem to be able to distinguish from reality.
The research supporting your assertion that consciousness is local is pretty thin, and common phenomenon like corroborated veridical OBEs (out of body experiences) suggests that consciousness may be a lot more complex than you pretend. You might want to look at the work of Dr Kenneth Ring, Professor Emeritus of psychology at the University of Connecticut. His two major studies (and publications) on the matter raise a lot of questions about the local consciousness hypothesis.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Also "Moon" with Sam Rockwell. It's really nice and depressing.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moon_(film)
If you ever wondered how it might feel to meet an identical clone, with each copy certain they are the "Real One"
It's a high-level abstraction of everything necessary for a complex nervous system to be responsive.
Please describe an objective repeatable test that a "conscious" entity would pass, but an entity without "consciousness" would fail.
"I know it when I see it" is not an objective test.
The word loses all usefulness when it is polluted with superstitious tripe!
"Consciousness" is superstitious tripe.
It would mean eternal life.
Since it would first record the data of the person to beam, it would analyze it and obviously NOT beam any cancer cells and pathogens down, but delete those from the data first.
Second, it could be used to send the body of a 25 year old in perfect health but with the conscience of the real person, no matter the age.
In case of a fatal accident, the last backup from the last beam could be used to recreate the dead person.
Obviously all esthetic surgeons would go jobless as well.
"All that you can know for sure is that you exist"
That depends on what exactly you mean by "you exist." I agree that what humans consider thinking certainly implies something fairly complex is happening (e.g. - self contemplation).
Astral travel is nothing more than a lucid dream with self imposed limits on the experience. You see yourself as travelling around on the astral plane because that's what you want to see. You can also have sex with a supermodel or captain a star ship if that's what you want. It's all in your head. There is just as much evidence of shared OOBEs as there is of telekinesis and telepathy...that is: none.
> "Soul" is a religious concept,
Nonsense. It has fuck all to do with religion. The fact that _some_ religions _hijack_ the term is orthogonal to the discussion.
> zero actual evidence of the existence of any such thing, and it is not a concept that should be included in such discussions.
You don't know what the fuck you are talking about.
It is obvious you've never had an OBE, a shared OBE, an NDE, and don't know how to meditate.
I became a mystic when I dwelt in the presence of my Soul a couple decades back. Experience IS the evidence.
You will have _your_ evidence when you are dead and realize that
a) "Holy shit! I'm conscious!"
b) "Whoa! I no longer have a physical body"
But keep telling others what they have or have not experience -- because you don't have a frame of reference to even understand the question.
--
Atheist: A blind man arguing with those that see that there is no such thing as color.
This idea sounds a bit unscientific because it introduces the notion that there's something about our brain which cannot be described in terms of physics, almost like soul.
No, it *CAN* be explained by physics, we just don't know what the explanation is, yet,
But why is the copy in the Mirror Universe ALWAYS Evil and has a Beard?
Being an red shit is more or less an Death Sentence
I could care less about some pseudo-skeptic.
Even when he is dead he will still deny the fact that The Source exists.
Come again?
Don't mind if I do.
The other day somebody stole everything in my apartment and replaced it with an exact replica... When my roommate came home I said, "Roommate, someone stole everything in our apartment and replaced it with an exact replica." He looked at me and said, "Do I know you?"
- Steven Wright
Ceci n'est pas une signature.
We might as well be ripped apart and reconstructed every nanosecond right where we stand. I'm not the same persion I was a nanosecond ago. If I start fretting about it I'd never get anything done ever again.
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
Experiments performed on subjects who had the corpus callosum (the connection between hemispheres of the brain) severed, sometimes to treat chronic epilepsy, suggest that once the human brain is effectively divided in two, consciousness is also divided between the left & right hemispheres. The result is two distinct perspectives and sets of understanding observable within one body, each controlling their respective side of the body, the two sides sometimes disagreeing or fighting each other. This challenges the idea that consciousness exists as an indivisible 'soul', a supernatural phenomenon existing outside of and independent from the matter that makes up the brain. https://www.psychologytoday.co...
install it in a new sleeve a la "altered carbon"
Die every day and live forever... if you are rich enough.
NO DOUBLE SLEEVING!
Because it is a TV show.
I'm a good cook. I'm a fantastic eater. - Steven Brust
> I could care less
So, you care a lot, but you have the capacity to care less to some degree.
I actually listen to some of those youtube astral projection hypnosis videos when going to bed sometimes because I find them relaxing and they help me get to sleep but yeah, actually believing in it is a load of bollocks.
You can also have sex with a supermodel or captain a star ship
In my dreams I am a supermodel starship captain.
Ok now I know you are trolling.
But if not, I want whatever drugs you are on.
I'm a good cook. I'm a fantastic eater. - Steven Brust
The core issue is that we don't know exactly what consciousness is. A sense of "self" resulting from a skillful architecture of atoms? What even is life? What is the minimum requirement that separates a non-living replicator (is there such a thing - prions maybe?) from a living replicator?
Until we can define these things explicitly, questions such as those posed in the summary can only be speculated upon.
"how do we know if we are the same person when we wake up in the morning or after we were put under during general anesthesia?"
We're not the same person, we're recreated from our memories each time we wake up.
Why Star Trek transporters won't work in real life has nothing to do with Heisenberg. A living being cannot survive the process of having all their atoms ripped apart, due to the large among to energy required.
I just ripped some atoms off my body and survived... if I could save a map of where they all belong and reassemble them somehow, I could probably rip them all off. I didn't rip apart the atoms themselves, but presumably I can do that after they've been moved away from my body.
If I remember correctly the best way to overcome this is to compensate for it just like in Star Trek. The idea is sound: compensate for Heisenberg with Heisenberg compensators. This is just a simple engineering problem, working out the most practical method of implementation.
I really don't understand why this hasn't been done yet. It's probably due to lobbying from the airlines.
There are no stupid questions, just stupid people.
I’d suggest that you’re destroyed and recreated by transporting. The transporters use Heisenberg uncertainty compensators for one, implying a need to compensate for the destruction and re-creation. Transporters also have pattern buffers where they have been used to recreate adults from children and reform aged / damaged adults into their stored patterns. The information used during transport is very redundant. In one incident Riker was transported and the beam split. The result was two Rikers. So, pretty conclusively not transporting your atoms across a distance but rather transmitting a very accurate description of the being reduced to a corpse. Then recreated if no issues crop up.
- Tjp
I am in wallow with my inner money grubbing capitalistic pig. ... Oink!
There are no cooberated out of body experiences in science, you are believing mystical nonsense as silly as any other religion.
.. is a Stupid Question!"
I actually think it's pretty simple. Consciencesness = software. During the teleportation, the body and mind exist in both places. Ergo, continuity (statefulness) is maintained, and the single consciencesness exists in both places simultaneously. Think VM on a live migration. As long as the two copies are forced into exactly the same state (entangled?) It is really just one linked mind. My opinion is that the thing we call a soul, or self awareness, is something that lives entirely in the software of the mind; it's not a tethered spark of ether in an intangible universe. Understanding that our souls are really just the software of an electrochemical network doesn't deaden the experience of self awareness; accepting an understanding of how the mind works shouldn't make your self awareness any less poignant. I do think, however, that the software is less continuous than we may want to admit. Sleeping may be analagous to a computer low power states, but accepting that the soul is effectively a form of software running on a form of a network also accepts that it is likely there are instances where it can be wiped, altered, rebooted, or replaced. There is a lot of interesting reading that dances around this premise, such as, "The Man Who Mistook His Wife For a Hat." I think it is likely that if we withstand significant trauma or injury the person that wakes up is potentially an altered iteration. However, studies of injuries and neurological issues suggests that there are many levels of how we are encoded in the brain, some of which persist on a durable, low level. Stretching the computer analogy to it's breaking point, short term memory is kind of "Cache", while mid term memory is "RAM". Long term memory is some kind of storage, while behavior, personality and manner are probably closer to System Code. One wonders if the analogy fits well because we build computers to match the ways we think. If the mind works like this, there is a big upside: it makes the path to uploading of the mind straight forward. All we need is the capability to completely simulate a human brain, and to synchronize the two versions completely. One would experience both sets of inputs simultaneously, and the self would be in both places simultaneously. Gracefully shutdown the meat version (cryopreserve?) and you will have moved the mind/soul. Details of the technical implementation are left as an exercise for the reader.
WhiteWolf666 an exBush supporter. All you new-school,compassionate,save the children Republicans can rot in hell
I am not aware of any scientifically verified detection of any component or emission of the human brain that is outside physics and chemistry. Only animal tissue, biological processes and electrochemical activity have ever been detected aside from invading pathogens. And we even know what neurons do. The brain is an organ, nothing more.
Specifically there are three "places" you are simultaneously; or maybe two and two. In ST you have a thing called the buffer which is not a computer simulation. It's more a pocket universe. The beaming process involves duplicating you such that you identically exist in two places at once. You more than quantum entangled (you get misreads with quantum entanglement) but rather totally entangled. Almost like a mathematical transformation. You continue to exist alive somewhat constricted by a force field. You exist in real universe and the buffer universe simultaneously while particles in each are synchronized. There is one you in two places then possibly three once once you start to beam to your destination. The magic part is this is happening without measurement but rather magical entanglement on a three dimensional scale. You are one person (information down to the quantum level) existing in multiple places at once to varying degrees in the process in a quasi time.
Can this be done? Probably not. Let us not forget it was a plot device to speed up the stories rather than spending so much time in shuttles. What can definitely be done is in the relatively new sci-fi drama "Dark Matter". Where your consciousness and memories can be transferred to another body over distance; either a clone of you or possibly a generic body. Then your prime body goes into a deep coma. When the trip is done the new memories are copied back. Now this is really more of the metaphysical conundrum than Star Trek is. One could download to other bodies quite easily which could be a form of immortality as well as take backup of our minds. Traveling to other planets we could download to bodies developed for the environment (like avatar but actually downloaded rather than piloting). At what point could we become so comfortable having multiple bodies that we have no issues destroying the original rather than bear the cost of storage considering we could re-clone if we wanted our original forms?
I know you are joking, but there are 4 different paths to enlightenment:
* The Fakir
* The Monk
* The Yogi
* Spiritual Marriage / Gnosis
You _don't_ need me as a sensei, you already have everything within you to learn. Practice any hobby that helps you to connect to the Divine. Music, Painting, Dancing, Gardening, Sports, etc. You'll know what works for you when your sense of time is slowed down -- what athletes call "Being in the Zone."
Lastly, stay away from drugs -- they are a mental crutch.
This reaction is expected here. You have a bunch of empiricists who can't fathom anything other than the physical and will go to great lengths to explain away such things as NDE's, etc. Science as practiced today is one of the most intolerant religions ever. My favorite Tesla quote is:"The day science begins to study non-physical phenomena, it will make more progress in one decade than in all the previous centuries of its existence." Slashdot, as a whole, is not there yet. Most of them will have to wait until they are dead, and when they wake up with their consciousness intact, will be forced to face the fact that they were wrong. Meanwhile, we will have to bear their intolerance awhile longer. Note that no references to religious fables such as Jesus or 72 virgins was necessary in this post. Science has simply replaced one intolerant dogma with another one. Sadly, it is not necessary. Science COULD figure out Reality if it wanted to.
How about a moderation of -1 pedantic.
As I regular Slashdot reader one would expect me to know the answer to this, but...nope, it's gone!
I don't do drugs. Sorry to disappoint you.
(Hallucinogenic) Drugs are a mental crutch for people too lazy to put the *years* into learning how to meditate for themselves.
It would be best to stay away from all of them.
I became a mystic when I dwelt in the presence of my Soul a couple decades back.
I guess if you're not dwelling in the presence of your soul.. you're dead.
I don't have much time for mystics who throw out lines like "dwelt in the presence of". What does that mean? You shared an apartment with it? Did it ever stiff you on the rent? Did it ever float into the room and casually announce "... Akashic shitter's clogged"?
I think it's safe, in fact, I'm thinking of doing some trials using myself in the test.
Just need to put on a clean shirt.... ah, my lucky red one! That means it's going to work.
See, I didn't think so either, until I checked the scientific literature. There most certainly are examples of corroborated out of body experience. It's most often found in studies of near-death experience cases, especially of blind subjects.
Let me remind you that skeptics base their opinions on evidence, not on what some TV magician tells them is true.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Perhaps part of the problem is thinking in exact and precise. Requiring some absolute boundary between what is and is not life, between what is and is not consciousness.
Perhaps these things should be thought of more like temperatures. Similarly, don't know what hot is, and we don't know what cold is, unless we define cold as absolute zero. However, we know when things are cold to us, and we know when things are hot to us. Temperatures are relative. 78 degrees is hot to some people, and cold to others, and for many there is an abigious quality which we call lukewarm.
Likewise consciousness is relative, with humanity being of the strongest known degree of consciousness. Rocks being the least known degree, and therefore is whatever is the opposite of consciousness.
Why don't they just rematerialize themselves every day and never get any older? This might not work for some jobs, for example a Star Fleet officer's morning briefing that would have to explain everything that's changed since they were originally scanned in would get excessively long. But you could age one day per week and not have anything get too out of hand. When something really important happens then you get rescanned that day. Of course, what's the point of living if you don't actually get to remember having lived? But not really living but not dying is pretty much the default state of most people anyway.
In critical situations people could work 24/7 for extended periods. Simply replace yourself with the version of you that isn't tired.
Also you can't tell me there's never been a transporter operator that has made a copy of someone they want to have sex with and beamed them off somewhere to rape them. Takes #MeToo to a whole different place.
Not only are Energy and Matter interchangeable but aso Information. Imagine a brain region prosthetic were placed onto the brain to replace a region expected to die from alzheimer's. Interconnected to the same brain regions as that which it replaces, it learns to imitation the same output patterns as per the same input patterns to that when the replaced region dies, the prosthetic takes over (such things are under development today). Now let's suppose the disease spreads and you eventually replace every part of your brain, one region at a time. At what point did you become no longer you?
So the Soul is: one's sense of unique and continued existence.
They say every cell in the body is replaced every seven years. To my knowledge this is true with the exception of neurons. However, would it matter if it included neurons? So long as you copy one's personality and one's memories, I think most of us would consider that to be pretty much what defines us. Perhaps some would include also one's innate drives or perhaps emotional/chemical balance, if not considering those part of the personality already.
If a person walks through a quantum replicator (assume such a thing existed) and two of him or her walked out the other side. They would be the same person until that moment from which time they would start being separate Souls. The reason being, uniqueness split at that point.
It is the information that defines us, not the matter.. The concept "1+1=2" works the same no matter where you write it. It exists outside of the world of matter and energy but it does exist because it remains the same. The matter and energy in which information is implemented brings it into the world the same regardless so long as the information is the same. The same with a person.
Also, is it not accurate to say that we are a slightly different person with each moment that passes? And over time, we come to be more different. Are you the same person at 45 as you were at 25, or at 15, or at 5 years old? The Soul is a concept inclusive of one's life's narrative. It is your story.
Picard has a red shirt. So did Ricker IIRC.
I always thought of the possibility of existing as a soul equivelant. The possibility of each human that ever lived was a real solution to the laws of physics and a finite nonzero probability since time began (if began is even the right word). The possibility cannot be destroyed any more than you can destroy an electron from being a real possibility, and it is as eternal as the physical reality we live in. Each person has a large number of collective states that describe them, from conception, through birth, childhood, adulthood, and near the end of life. Each breath you take, each skin cell you shed, each molecule you incorporate into your body, each movement inside your body, transitions you from one state to another but they were all baked into the universe as real solutions to the laws of physics. It is the sequential progression of these states, since without them you would not even experience time or really be conscious, that defines who we are as people. What makes us special is the emergent behavior that those states create from the simple laws and plethora of particles that is reality. No religion or even untestable assumptions are needed.
to answer the question using this idea, it would be taking a base state and forking it. You wind up with two unique individuals, however it really is not much different from the state to state progression we experience each second of our lives.
The fact that _some_ religions _hijack_ the term
Considering that religious references to the concept of soul essentially go back to the beginning of recorded history and the first non-religious reference I can find is Plato, I think it would be rather hard to support the idea that religion hijacked the term rather than the other way around.
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
It's actually done using special effects. Probably all digital editing in the newer shows.
Log in or piss off.
I mean, let's assume you take the position that guy down there's not you. Well how is he not you? He thinks he's you. He has a continuous sense of being you. A DNA scan will match your DNA. A brain scan will be identical to the one of the guy who got into the transporter at the far end. These things would have to be true for transporters to be considered an acceptable form of transportation, I think. So is it not you just because you happened to not exist somewhere for the duration you were being transported? That somehow that guy down there didn't get your "Soul"? When for all provable scientific criteria he did? How much not-you is too much not-you? Does an alcohol binge on Friday night kill enough brain cells that you're no longer you? Are you no longer you because a ten-year-old you would not recognize the person you became 20 or 30 years later? We can stay in Plato's cave all night, but at the end of the day, that guy IS you... enough. So stop being a whiny bitch and get in the transporter, McCoy!
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
This is a minor plot point in the incredably good "new wierd" novel Kraken by China Miéville. There is a teleporting thief haunted by the thousnds of dead selves from every time he teleported. He is obsessed with Star Trek, natch. Brilliant.
Already provided (see above)
You are welcome on my lawn.
In my dreams I am a supermodel starship captain.
Well then. I'll see you tonight ...
Well it isn't as though we know what dreaming even is in the first place, so not really, no.
Scientists are discovering that Consciousness Affects Matter. (The fact that the Placebo Effect even _exists_ at all is partial proof of this.)
Dean Radin is a scientist the way Richard Simmonds is a basketball superstar.
The rest of your comment is equally nonsensical. Just one absurd claim after another, supported by bullshit.
Let me remind you that skeptics base their opinions on evidence, not on what some TV magician tells them is true.
You wouldn't know skepticism if it bit your ass. NDEs are some of the most blatant billshit out there, completely unsupported by anything other than anecdotes and post-facto rationalisation.
Said the guy who just consciously posted a comment.
Bots can post comments. That doesn't make them "conscious".
How does "consciousness" differ from mere intelligence?
That’s some pretty extraordinary claim, I’m going to need extraordinary evidence.
"Soul" is a religious concept...
And not even common to all religions.
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
Quoting Tesla is the hallmark of cranks. When you can't say anything intelligent or meaningful, you can always rely on nebulous quotes from a long dead idol.
Better yet, just go for a walk.
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
No. In Star Trek they literally beamed your molecules down and reassembled them in-place.
Reassembly of local atoms using just transferred info is later BS from the same unthinking goobers who tried to reduce V-ger's cloud size to only 2 AU from the proper and awesome 82. (If you were going to change 2 words to "fix it", you ignorami changed the wrong 2.)
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
This let them get away with all the joys of including Greek-style Gods into Star Trek without having to touch on religion.
TOS covered that territory twenty years earlier in "Who Mourns For Adonais?"
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
Why am I even 'the same' person that I was as a five year old? I barely remember that 5yo self. Wouldn't there be some other 5yo around now that actually has more in common with my 5yo self that I do with that person?
Consciousness isn't continuous anyhow, a sharp blow to the head will soon sort that out. A harder blow that causes large scale permanent destruction of brain matter will sort that out even more so, is the person that wakes up from that really the same person?
The conception of a persisting personal identity is shaky at it's core.
Obviously, twins have different souls, so you kill the person you beam down, and the copy created has it's own Evil soul that only appears to be Good until your back is turned.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
In quantum mechanics, fundamental particles are indistinguishable from particles of the same type. An electron is an electron, whether it belongs to me or you. The concept of indistinguishability goes much farther than simply stating that we don't have any way of telling them apart. Fundamentally, it is flawed to think of them as separate entities. If you swap two of my electrons with two of your electrons, physically, you have done nothing at all. It's a no-op. The indistinguishability is responsible for some strange behaviors in quantum objects known as Bose-Einstein condensates, not to mention keeping everything from collapsing into a black hole.
This is because the fundamental object is not a particle, but rather, the field. There is one electron field of which the electrons are just excited states. If you know about semiconductors, then you know about holes, which are quasiparticles. They aren't fundamental objects. A hole moves when an electron moves to fill the hole, opening up a "new" hole where the electron used to be. It is a completely meaningless question whether this is the "same" hole.
The point is that your body is made up of a bunch of these electrons and protons and neutrons. If a Star Trek transporter could exist, it doesn't matter if your body is recreated out of "new" particles, since all particles are the same. Likewise, it is a completely meaningless question whether you are the same person as before. "You" are a particular pattern of excitations in the fields.
A lot of philosophical questions were asked before humans had any understanding of modern physics, and are meaningless. The problem is that people don't have an intuitive grasp of quantum mechanics, and therefore make assumptions on reality which are incorrect.
Well, as far as we know...
Despite all talks of duplicate TNG/DS9 "rikers", it will be very difficult to destroy and replicate exactly someone using a "transporter" like device because of the No cloning theorm.
However, physics doesn't appear to preclude teleportation of some sort where the replication is dependent on the destruction. In fact people have been able to teleport quantum states of photons as far as a satellite in earth's orbit... Since photons are nominally the same except for their quantum state, that's basically teleportation.
Of course teleportation (in this quantum sense) requires pre-entangled objects to exist on both sides and merely theoretically allows...
1. an ingress device to destructively make classical measurements of quantum state of an original object in proximity of one of the pre-tangled objects,
2. take those classical measurements and communicate them to an egress device near the other pre-entangled object
3. an egress device is not longer prohibited from using the communicated measurements and the pre-entangled object to reconstruct the original quantum state in target object (which the act of which destroys the quantum state of the pre-entangled objects and overwrites the target object with the quantum state of the original object).
As you might imagine, this a whole lot easier, if the object to be teleported is a photon because we have relatively simple ways of generating pre-entangled photons, reasonably simply ingress devices to make measurements of quantum states of photons and actual egress devices to modify the quantum state of photons.
Beyond a photon, well, all this telportation stuff is currently very hard, but not yet proved theoretically impossible. ;^)
Pretty much everyone, except all those that see that this statement is completely baseless and does not actually make much sense at this time. The actual state of the art here is that nobody has any idea what consciousness is. Those that claim it being a physical state in the brain is a scientific fact are hacks. Physicalism is a religious stance, not a scientific one and it has no place in Science.
In actual reality, the closer we look, the more mysterious consciousness and intelligence become. They seen to actually not be physically possible. That is a rather major hint that Physics is grossly incomplete here or that things work quite a bit differently (i.e. consciousness is not something the brain creates).
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
Indeed. "pretty much everyone" except those that actually understand how Science works and do not mistake a physicalist (i.e. religious) stance for a scientific fact. The claim is pretty much on the same level as claiming that "the earth is flat", because that is "obvious". The actual scientific state-of-the-art is that we have absolutely no clue what consciousness is (or intelligence, or life for that matter). Stop spreading your anti-science, anti-rationality propaganda.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
Absolutely, it can be deadly. Especially if your shirt is red.
But remember that the transporter is a fantastically complex device that manipulates more data than all the computers on earth today, and does it in about one second. So, we have to ask ourselves: was it designed by Microsoft or by Apple? Is Intel inside? Do any components come from untrusted sources such as China or the Klingon home world? We are not informed of the state of hacking in the Star Trek universe, so there's that; every crewmember on the Enterprise has access to the transporter room.
For a conclusive answer to this Star Trek question, we really have to step outside that reality and ask the HAL 9000.
...omphaloskepsis often...
Why don't you just admit that there is no evidence you would believe, and that until Penn & Teller tell you it's OK, there is no amount of peer-reviewed research you will ever accept? It would save us a lot of time with me providing citations and you not looking at them and deciding they're BS.
https://bioethics.georgetown.e...
http://www.resuscitationjourna...
There's lots more where that came from. I just picked this off the top.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Nobody knows shit about consciousness, and no physical model has ever explained it, despite some 150-200 years of scientific work on the problem – years which yielded countless discoveries in dozens of other fields, many presumably directly related.
How matter produces "awareness" is a question, not understood any better now, than in the time of Aristotle, or the dark ages.
Nor shall it ever be, I expect. Not as long as assumptions about the physical nature of the universe continue to remain as they have, from those ancient days, through the era of quantum mechanics. I'd wager consciousness is still a problem, unresolved, 150 years hence.
I do think that the work by Dr Donald Hoffman at UC Irvine is very interesting, at least in explaining how we are fundamentally wrong about consciousness and perception, because a real understanding of our environment can be demonstrated as evolutionary unfitness.
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
What is an OBE, shared OBE, or NDE?
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
was a ball and you would die walking off of it.
by TheSpoom (715771) Uncaring Linux user here. I have nothing to add to this but please continue. *munches popcorn*
Does it really work though, the ability to script your own dreams? That seems amazing enough without any witchcraft.
Also, which method is best for um, being captain of a star ship?
Its amazing how Random Capitalization of Words almost always indicates a crank or conspiracy theorist. Suddenly Everything That Matters becomes worthy of Capitalization for Emphasis. A friend of mine who's gone of the deep end started doing this, and now I know she's Truly Lost.
Oh, you're fun at parties.
-- I have a private email server in my basement.
A Near Death Experience (NDE) is fundamentally different from an Actual Death Experience (ADE). There are no reliable accounts of people returning from an ADE.
Again, see, it's the capital "R" in "Reality". Crank crank crank. I'm sure there was a really good justification for the Emphasis.
There is an alternative to the problem matter producing awareness: awareness might be an inherent property of matter. I don't imagine an atom or electron has a particularly sophisticated awareness, but if it has even the smallest fleck of "I am!" to build upon, then it fundamantally changes the nature of the questions we should be asking.
In that case the awareness of an organism need not be a is not a fundamentally new feature, but an emergent structure from the interactions of more primitive consciousnesses. Much as the life of an organism emerges from the structured functioning of the life of its cells. Or the wisdom of crowds (and insanity of mobs) emerges from the interaction of large groups of people.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
Or maybe it's entirely contained in the intensely personal network of interconnection between our neurons, and possibly to some extent in the internal state of the neurons themselves (RNA, etc). Certainly we have managed to revive people whose brains have been almost totally inert.
The mechanism underlying awareness is still completely unresolved.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
There's plenty of new-age nutters out there, but would you honestly expect someone describing something completely outside your realm of experience or understanding to sound like anything other than nonsense?
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
Greek Gods or Mariachi Bands? I think we know which one was the true intent.
Two Chrichtons: Farscape explored this. We don't have consensus on the "hard problem", and are quite a far way from understanding such a thing, the experience of being as something quantifiable or scientifically describable.
You know its a terrible idea, but all your friends are doing it, because they don't understand how it works. And then your mom starts doing it, and then she lays a huge guilt trip on you because you never visit.
Why don't you just admit that there is no evidence you would believe, and that until Penn & Teller tell you it's OK, there is no amount of peer-reviewed research you will ever accept? It would save us a lot of time with me providing citations and you not looking at them and deciding they're BS.
https://bioethics.georgetown.e...
http://www.resuscitationjourna...
There's lots more where that came from. I just picked this off the top.
Did you read your own link? Because neither link support the idea of OBE or consciousness existing outside the brain.
Let me summarize them for you since you took the assertion that I wouldn’t read it: there’s evidence of consciousness after clinical death. The brain does things we don’t fully understand yet. But it’s a huge leap to say that our consciousness exist outside your brain. Here’s a movie analogy, you believe consciousness is like “Dr. Strange” while existing evidence says it’s more like “Jacob’s Ladder.”
... currently physicists find the idea absurd and unreal because there's no way you can transport matter and its quantum state without first destroying it and then recreating it perfectly, due to Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle.
Actually, current physics says you CAN, in principle, sidestep the Uncertainty Principle and transport the COMPLETE quantum state of an object - using quantum entanglement plus information transmission. BUT you can only get EXACTLY ONE copy at the receiving end and EXACTLY NO instances at the transmitting end.
So if full quantum state is necessary for individuality you can STILL have teleportation - at no more than the speed of light and no copies allowed.
Now this is a pretty violent operation: You have to have two sets of quantum-entangled matter that each have at least as many subatomic particles as you want to teleport, which have been previously transported (sublight) from the entanglement-creating site to the transmitting and receiving sites (while keeping that factory-fresh schrodinger smell intact). Then you have to use one set to interact with every particle of the thing you want to send (changing its state and thus destroying the original), collect a large amount of information that is generated as each particle is blasted, send it (no more than lightspeed) error-free to the receiving end, and use the info and the other set of entangled particles to beat a corresponding mass into exactly the shape and quantum states of the original.
But then you DO get (no more than one) exact to the quantum level version of the original at a new location.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
Actually, scientists would say they don't yet know why the big bang and cosmic inflation happened.
Also, matter still winks into and out of existence all the time. Look up virtual particles and Hawking radiation.
Wearing a red shirt, and not being named ensures you die shortly after teleport, does that count?
For all the BS going on in this thread, and as far off topic as it's gotten, the idea that it cannot work period! is just wrong. Give me a Scottish engineer, a spanner, and 4 hou...er...20 hours, and it'll be up and running. I know, i know... you don't have 20 hours.... so it'll be done in 4.
Fascism: An authoritarian and nationalistic right-wing system of government and social organization. See also: NAZI's
So your a captain that gives blowjobs in Limos, ugh, your dreams suck, heh, heh.
Teleporting the fantasy, straight off the bat, converting matter into energy. All energy is a state of matter, no free flying energy nothings. So not converting matter into energy, actually you would need to convert matter from many different kinds of matter, into one kind of matter and then later the energy state of those particles, as a means of storing data in the particles. Then blast that particle beam through all intervening matter and at a target location, have the matter automatically, use the encoded data in those particles, to convert those particles into many varied particles, in the correct sequence, yeah, nahh.
Now you can do some fiddly bits, like working with the idea, that a photon, a single photon is not a single particle but a temporary cluster of quantum photonic particles, that express itself as a result of that cluster of particles being of sufficient to mass to breach the quantum barrier, this cluster created in molecular bonds and then broken down when impacting with those bonds. Those bonds not just being fields, but actual flows of quantum particles, which the quantum photonic cluster collides and interacts with.
On that basis it would be possible to code information into a single photon as long as when you break down that quatum photonic particle cluster, you can decipher the actual arrangement of the quantum photonic cluster.
Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
Good, you're making progress. Now that you accept the existence of NDEs, let's look at how they relate to OBEs:
https://link.springer.com/arti...
https://link.springer.com/jour...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
You are welcome on my lawn.
Citation needed.
You are welcome on my lawn.
It absolutely does, but requires practice and training to do it regularly (which I cannot). I would have thought it was total bullshit if it hadn't happened to me a few times completely unintentionally. Usually something so crazy happens that your logical mind wakes up for a second and is like "wtf is this nonsense" followed by "ah, this is a dream!"
Also, according to "experts" in the field, teleporting in a dream (which came completely naturally to me) is apparently one of the hardest skills to master, because your brain has to instantly discard and rebuild the world it's created. After I learned that, I turned that on its head by using teleporting to completely change the dream. So some bullshit where I'm in France being chased by mimes (I have never been to France and trying to figure out how I got there is what triggered my realization that it was a dream) became a nice relaxing warm beach after I "teleported" out of there as a shortcut to destroying/rebuilding the dream world.
Good, you're making progress. Now that you accept the existence of NDEs, let's look at how they relate to OBEs:
https://link.springer.com/arti...
https://link.springer.com/jour...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Hahahaha
That was very insulting of me to be so quick to be dismissive. My aura needs cleansing and my chankra isn’t aligned.
Lets remind ourselves what matter is before we trail off. Electromagnetic forces. Indeed then it would seem that conciousness is inherent to matter. Perhaps what we know already is evidence....and we know because we are concious. Next up....is thier life beyond our solar system? Look in the mirror for proof.
I object to power without constructive purpose. --Spock
Given that we "move" electrons or rather shift them by transferring state of ajoining atoms could it be possible to quantum shift our body to another location? Observing the particle changes it.
I object to power without constructive purpose. --Spock
Are you a taurus?
I object to power without constructive purpose. --Spock
We are just talking through this. Some make conclusions, but they are their own, while others wish to contemplate ideas while considering different viewpoints. You are just an asshole.
I object to power without constructive purpose. --Spock
We dont know how beaming down works, so how the heck can we assume that it would destroy conciousness? I mean, walking might destroy conciousness in that case .. but we know it doesnâ(TM)t. I think. Donâ(TM)t F with my head.
That is if transporters do have that behavior. An alternative is to establish a wormhole between the places you want to transport anything and then move the ends of the wormhole at both ends in a synchronized pattern and then close it. Just don't close it halfway.
If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker would destroy civilization.
There are seven different vaginas that lead to enlightenment. You must find these 7 evil vaginas, and fight them.
-a guy who has just as much evidence as the OP
From the perspective of the rest of the universe ? No it does not matter. From the perspective of the teleported person ? It sure do. You die. Point. You do not continue. A clone of you with your memory do continue. If you don't care to die and let a clone continue, you take the perspective of the rest of the universe, fine for you. But I take the perspective of me, myself and I, and I would certainly care not to die. As for your ship of theseus explanation : yes we sleep , we replace part of ourselves. But it is a process which do not replace whole neuron (neuron in brain stop reproducing at what , 12 ?) or touch the network that much. Yes there is not a continuity of consciousness, and yes the "persona" itself change , grow or degenerate, but it still continue to be the same identical individual. It does not die and have a clone replace it. That is why your comparison fail.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
I've heard consciousness described as the experience of being that isn't radio silence, so a bat probably would have it, a rock likely not. At what point an algorithm has experience seems like there only useful question so we don't torture AI.
Millions long for immortality who do not know what to do with themselves on a rainy Sunday afternoon. -- Susan Ertz
. Have you ever been put under with anesthetics? What was your soul up to then?
Millions long for immortality who do not know what to do with themselves on a rainy Sunday afternoon. -- Susan Ertz
We are constantly ceasing to be exactly what we were a moment ago and becoming something completely different. We exist in a different place in the universe, our molecules have all changed in relation to one another...but for tax purposes, we get to keep the same social security number. The important note is, we're constantly changing and being hurled through the universe while still maintaining our identity. So if we cease to exist at one coordinate, and are lucky enough to continue to exist elsewhere...that's nothing new. It's really just a matter of degree.
It's a TV series, not reality. And in this series it works. So no, it's not a death sentence, it's a means of transportation.
Captain Obvious was glad to help.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
... your 'soul' and consciousness is not an entity on itself, it's a chemical configuration. And as configuration it will transported. That configuration is send separately and is checked against it's original upon receiving by sending it back again. Also patterns are kept on file to check against for alterations and anomalies, thus you can be reset to an older configuration. Still it will be you.
Bach says it all.
I teleported home one night
With Ron and Sid and Meg
Ron stole Meggie's heart away
And I got Sidney's leg.
Assume three things. 1) there exists a soul. 2) The soul lingers after death. 3) A person "dies" after being transported, and a new person, with a new soul is born. That would mean that for every living thing there would be hundreds if not thousands of souls that used the body around. They would have mostly the same memory. Where would all the souls be kept? Would they hang around with each other? Of course there is the solution that Niven proposed in a short story, that God would kill a race before it learned to transport. So that just as a scientist learns to transport, God rains down all sorts of destruction.
I don't imagine an atom or electron has a particularly sophisticated awareness, but if it has even the smallest fleck of "I am!" to build upon, then it fundamantally changes the nature of the questions we should be asking.
He references Donald Hoffman who, amongst other rather goofy ideas, suggests something along those lines; the idea that "consciousness" is infinitely subdivisible, right down to the subatomic particles.
The thing is, once you start defining concussions or "awareness" in those terms, it loses all useful meaning and becomes indistinguishable from just saying "there's magic stuff everywhere". It's not science, it's barely philosophy, and it's certainly not useful. That doesn't mean that it's wrong, per say, but it's not even wrong. It's unfalsifiable, and so meaningless that it provides nothing of value to consider or discuss. It's essentially religion dressed up as philosophy, which is why Donald Huffman sounds a lot like a more eloquent Deepak Chopra.
Consciousness depends on the physical state of the brain, but not on "continuity". Atoms don't have hairs. A C or H atom is identical to any other C or H atom, so if you recreate a body atom-by-atom, it doesn't matter whether those are the same atoms as before.
Did some just take a beginners' philosophy class ?
Physics as we know it says this type of transfer isn't even possible. Whilst the OP mentioned Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle it seemed to miss that it means you fundamentally can't do this. You canNOT measure perfectly (enough even) the position *and* momentum (energy) of anything at sufficient level to re-create it elsewhere (even assuming you could). Star Trek techno-babbled "Heisenberg Compensators" to address this, but that's completely fiction.
If it *was* possible, well, then you given it's fantasy you can argue as to if the scanning/reading in *would* be destructive or not (Quantum Mechanics says the measurement will also change the state, but we're in fantasy land here...). If it's not then you have what's been covered by some SF stories, e.g. something goes wrong during transmission, and as you're not sure if a new copy is active at the destination you don't yet destroy the original. If communication issues persist then you may later find the new copy is perfectly fine. Now what do you do to the original ? If the original is destroyed in the process then you'd better hope the copying process works else you've just committed definite murder.
As for waking after sleep... are we even the same person we were before our last conscious thought process? Unconscious one ? Anyone who's ever had their mind changed about something,or experienced anything new has this happen whilst awake.
For proper emphasis you have to capitalise The Truth.
Yep. And in the last 30 years we've made more progress on explaining consciousness than in the last 3,000 combined.
Lets remind ourselves what matter is before we trail off. Electromagnetic forces.
The baryons held together by the strong force, and which make up 99.97% of the mass of matter has something to do with it too.
Starships were meant to fly, Hands up and touch the sky - Nicky Minaj
So at the end we use a word for something we do not really understand. It can be soul of consciousness. The discussion about its localness is based on fear of death mostly and hope it can be avoided and fails so far on this little thing that we know all these soules and consciousnesses need i.e. HW on which they run.
Sure. After all, when people are struck by lightning which utterly shreds the then-current state carried in their nervous system, they wake up afterwards as entirely different people.
Moderating "-1, Disagree" is simple censorship. Have the guts to post your opinion.
It's not currently testable, but considering it's damn near impossible to test whether a fellow human is actually aware of anything that's not surprising. It's not a symptom of magical thinking, but rather of trying to find the source of something we have no reliable method of detecting in the first place. We're putting the cart miles in front of the horse.
And it's not at all a meaningless concept - it's a completely objective and deeply relevant one: either fundamental particles are conscious, or they're not. If they are, then that changes they way we should look for the source of our awareness - not for a mechanism that creates it, but for a path that allows it to emerge from lower levels. (presumably in a more sophisticated form)
Heck, you don't even need to assume it originates from fundamental particles for that to be a useful perspective - anyone who has watched an amoeba hunt will get the impression that it has some spark of awareness in it's single-celled body, and it's no great leap to assume our individual cells may possess such awareness as well. So how is it that the awareness of your neurons combines to form the gestalt awareness of "you"? It should be clear that starting from that assumption suggests an entire realm of research avenues that are overlooked by the assumption that awareness is something somehow produced by mechanistic "bio-transistors"
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
Not to mention a serious weapon, never really understood why they didn't just transport people out into space.
So I take it that you have no use for 1 million USD or the impact you would have on the world if you managed to prove your woo to the world.
Most of them will have to wait until they are dead, and when they wake up with their consciousness intact, will be forced to face the fact that they were wrong.
Could you back up that assertion in any way?
Every end has half a stick.
Oh?
Now it's new age pseudo-science vs. known facts of brain damaged persons changing personalities is it?
I'll vote with reality, thank you.
Its ALWAYS the bit-part actor in the red shirt that doesn't come back from the away missions.
That's correct.
There are more important things then money or fame.
So your a captain that gives blowjobs in Limos, ugh, your dreams suck, heh, heh.
Don't be crass, in my dreams I give blowjobs in the Captain's Chair.
I've heard the experiences are comparable.
What I'm doing is nothing new nor unique. When you listen to Terence McKenna, Allan Watts, Ram Dass, and other modern mystics and distill their teachings down to the raw essentials you find everyone teaches pretty much the same basic spiritual principles: Unconditional Love and Forgiveness for All. Based on my personal experiences I agree with that 100%.
What made my experience memorable for me is that a friend of my brother gave me one of Raymond's Moody's book Life after Life. That got me to curious to try meditation. One my very first try I met my Soul. That was proof enough: "OK, maybe there just is something to this whole meditation thing after all." Over the years, both solo meditation, and meditation with the wife, you quickly find out "We're not in Kansas anymore, Toto." We're mapping whole new territory.
These experiences are the reason I say "Mind, not space, is the final frontier -- because there is nothing, or no thing, but Mind." The _real_ interesting question becomes: Whose mind? :-) It dovetails with the quintessential questions: Who am I? Who was I? Who will I become?
It's great to see other people reach the same conclusions about Consciousness: The Primacy of Consciousness - Peter Russell
There are a couple of other important points I've learnt along the way:
* It never ceases to amaze me how an armchair critic is now magically "an expert" on an experience they have never even had.
* Religion is about taking one man's Spiritual experience and adding all sorts of bullshit dogma and tradition around the "correct way."
But I digress ...
What is really cool is that we have just barely scratched the surface with the entire "Mind over Matter" thing as a species.
Modern science is stuck in a myopic reductionist POV: "If it isn't physical then it does't exist." -- which is the epitome of ignorance because Time and Numbers themselves are non-physical. *facepalm*
Princeton for 28 years has evidence that (human) consciousness CAN effect a random number generator -- but important clues like this, sadly, are marginalized or ignored.
http://www.princeton.edu/~pear...
Thankfully First Contact ~2024 - 2034 will (help) put an end to our primitive thinking and widen our perspective to the next level of understanding.
Great ready for an interesting ride these next few decades. We're about to learn some really cool stuff about reality.
--
Atheist: A blind man arguing with those that can see that color doesn't exist.
And your evidence for this is?
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
Continuity is important. Even if you could recreate an exact atom for atom copy, you would be missing the - I'm not quite sure of the word - the driving force? All the chemical and electrical processes that were interrupted, would they just resume as before? I'm not sure you can stop and restart reactions that way and expect them to give the same end result as if they were never interrupted at all. Besides the matter, you would also have to recreate all the states of energy said matter was in.
It's not currently testable, but considering it's damn near impossible to test whether a fellow human is actually aware of anything that's not surprising.
It's entirely testable. I assume you're referring to the old "how do we know if he's aware or just emulating awareness" conundrum, which is another bit of meaningless handwaving. If an entity demonstrates perception of it's environment, the ability to process that information, and the ability to store and recall that information, then it is aware. Whether this is "true awareness" or "emulation of awareness" is a meaningless question. You might classify different entities as having different levels of awareness, much like we can classify them by other abilities, but to deny that it is aware in the first place is absurd.
It's not a symptom of magical thinking, but rather of trying to find the source of something we have no reliable method of detecting in the first place. We're putting the cart miles in front of the horse.
If you assume that you can't detect it, then yes, you certainly are doing that. Which makes me wonder why you're doing it. If you truly believe that awareness cannot even be tested for, it seems absurd to start looking for a source.
And it's not at all a meaningless concept - it's a completely objective and deeply relevant one: either fundamental particles are conscious, or they're not.
It's not the concept that's meaningless; it's the word "conciseness" itself which becomes meaningless if you redefine it in such a way that quantum particles and atoms could actually possess it. Particles cannot perceive. They cannot process. They cannot store, or retrieve. All they can do is interact with each other. In order for you to give them "consciousness" you have to either redefine the word in such a way that it becomes meaningless, or you have to invoke magic. And even if you do invoke magic, so that particles can now magically perceive, process, store, and recall information, you're then left with a near infinite number of entities which have consciousness yet do absolutely nothing with it.
If they are, then that changes they way we should look for the source of our awareness - not for a mechanism that creates it, but for a path that allows it to emerge from lower levels. (presumably in a more sophisticated form)
Which lower levels? You've already invoked magic to give it to the lowest levels. There's nowhere "lower" for it to emerge from.
Heck, you don't even need to assume it originates from fundamental particles for that to be a useful perspective - anyone who has watched an amoeba hunt will get the impression that it has some spark of awareness in it's single-celled body, and it's no great leap to assume our individual cells may possess such awareness as well. So how is it that the awareness of your neurons combines to form the gestalt awareness of "you"?
Whatever level of "awareness" you want to assign to a neuron is probably not much different than the level of awareness you could assign to a silicon logic gate. You may as well be asking "how does the awareness of logic gates combine to form the gestalt awareness of an AI". Well, I could explain to you how it works, but I suspect you already know the answer, so what is it you're really looking for? Some magical "something more" which somehow makes the higher level consciousness more than the sum of it's parts?
It should be clear that starting from that assumption suggests an entire realm of research avenues that are overlooked by the assumption that awareness is something somehow produced by mechanistic "bio-transistors"
I don't see how. Other than the fact that, if you insist on invoking magic, it pretty much puts an end to any serious inquiry. If we leave out magic and just start assigning limited awareness at the level of multicellular organisms, then you're back to the same "realm of research avenues" as the rest of us; figuring out how exactly many simple parts can organize to form a more capable whole.
Also anesthesia; coma; knockouts (fights, accidents); some instances of fugue.
It's very clear that the brain, given that it's reasonably healthy, is very good at warm restarts.
I find the assertions that consciousness is something "outside" the brain to be without notable merit. The handwaving about quantum this-and-that being a dynamic, active part of the actual thought process or consciousness is also, at present, entirely speculative — there's no evidence for this at all. If some arises, that would of course be fascinating. So far, though, nothing.
Get a CPAP mask. Soon. Sleep apnea can have extremely serious consequences. I know. It almost destroyed me. My CPAP mask saved my life. No exaggeration.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
Energy, yes - electromagnetic, not so much. Electrostatics is largely responsible for making atoms behave as though they're solid, but below that level you get into more exotic forces.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
"Soul" is a religious concept, zero actual evidence of the existence of any such thing, and it is not a concept that should be included in such discussions.
Thus proving yourself to be an amateur who doesn't know nearly enough about the relevant subject to speak intelligently on it.
We can thus dispense with the rest of your rant as just the ravings about religion from somebody who doesn't know enough about the immaterial to have a reasonable opinion on the subject.
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
Depends on your definition of science. If a science is defined as a collected study of observed phenomena, there are plenty of examples in the field of theology.
If your definition of a science is limited to Occam's razor, you are correct, but are needlessly throwing away evidence like every other idiot skeptic who doesn't know enough about the subject matter to have a rational opinion.
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
Dr Kenneth Ring, Professor Emeritus of psychology at the University of Connecticut.
So now not only have you proven yourself to be ignorant on the subject, but you've proven yourself incapable of reading.
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
All evidence points to a materialistic, adequately deterministic universe.
MASSIVE citation needed, as I strongly doubt you have examined any non-scientific evidence.
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
>If an entity demonstrates perception of it's environment, the ability to process that information, and the ability to store and recall that information, then it is aware
So I assume by your definition you consider a self-driving car, or even a pick-and-place machine to be meaningfully aware? I can work with that if so. But, that definition breaks down completely when we get into judging the realm of things that exist in fundamentally different environments. An amoeba appears aware because it acts in ways we can readily perceive. A plant on the other hand mostly acts far more subtly, though time-lapse photography can reveal apparently intentional activity. But what about an electron? It exists in a fundamentally different realm that we can only dimly perceive the rough boundaries of - how could we begin to determine if quantum non-determinism is a manifestation of random chance, or intentional choice?
It's not that I don't believe awareness can't be tested for, just that we don't know how to do so in any manner that's not more far indicative of our own perceptual biases than any objective reality.
>Particles cannot perceive. They cannot process. They cannot store, or retrieve. All they can do is interact with each other.
Of course particles can "perceive" - they respond to outside forces all the time, just as our eyes, ears, etc. do. And we know for a fact that past interactions can influence future ones, so they clearly store and retrieve at least a limited amount of information. As for processing - I can't imagine how we'd even recognize the results of that, so you can hardly say it doesn't do so - just that you can't imagine *how* it would do so. But the universe is famously unrestrained by the limits of our imaginations.
And no, it doesn't render the term meaningless, it just fundamentally alters how you consider it's relevance. For example, there's no reason to assume that a rock possesses its own awareness just because its constituent atoms might be - just as there's no reason to assume an ant colony or human society possesses awareness just because the individuals within them do. Awareness then might refers to the levels at which a general component awareness is structured into something that is aware in its own right.
Is it truly any less magical to imagine that awareness somehow spontaneously arises from wholly inanimate mechanical interactions?
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
Please describe an objective repeatable test that a "conscious" entity would pass, but an entity without "consciousness" would fail.
They write and talk about it.
Who ordered that?
Oh look, an armchair critic who is an "expert" on something he has never even experienced.
In physics, the no-cloning theorem states that it is impossible to create an identical copy of an arbitrary unknown quantum state.
So my thoughts are that teleportation is possible without the death sentence, due to the no-cloning theorem. So if you step into the teleporter, it's you that steps out the other end.
The problem with Star Trek is that the Heisenberg compensators guarantee that you die, because they enable copies to be made. Why? Well image a teleporter that can potentially make a copy. In the first case, someone steps into pod A, disappears, and someone steps out of pod B. In the second case, someone steps into pod A, doesn't disappear, and someone steps out of pod B (along with the guy still in pod A). There is no difference to the guy that steps out of pod B. He must be a copy. Which implies the original only survives in the second example.
And as pure speculation: I think if you asked the guy that stepped out of pod B if he was the original, then I think he'd tell you that he was actually a copy. Mostly because I think the alternative would be a lot stranger.
Who ordered that?
In those 30 years our revelations often sound like the words of sages, mystics, philosophers and others who have had only thier own mind and the rest of nature as input.
I object to power without constructive purpose. --Spock
The poster posits a very materialistic view as being self-evident. In reality, it's very restrictive.
Postulating that there is no soul but only a physical state of gray matter is a bit like postulating that there is no software but only bit states in the transistors of a computer. It seems self-evident, and it's true in a very restricted sense. But at the same time, it's clearly the best way to completely misunderstand what software or soul are.
-- Did you try Tao3D? http://tao3d.sourceforge.net
They write and talk about it.
So illiterate people are not conscious?
Niven covered this in his essay "The Theory and Practice of Teleportation" which includes a history of its use in fiction.
This also brings another very difficult question: how do we know if we are the same person when we wake up in the morning or after we were put under during general anesthesia? What are your thoughts on the topic?
What about after we sleep? This is too easy; we only know for a very specific definition of "know". My own take on it is that free will is an illusion and so is this.
If I make an exact copy of the Mona Lisa, which is the real Mona LIsa? Is it the one which has a continuous space-time line? What about after both have been taken out of your sight and returned?
Star Trek's transporter is sort of a combination cloning machine and suicide booth, unless you believe that a person's consciousness is some incorporeal thing that will link to any brain with a certain configuration of neurons - in which case, what happens in a transporter malfunction that fails to destroy the body that went into it and produces a copy?
I explained my personal theory of what defines a human consciousness in this hackaday post.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
Consciousness is a *feeling*. See Damasio's "The Feeling of What Happens". Consciousness is something neurons do -- it's definitional in fact: every known instance of consciousness is biological and requires collections of neurons. Nothing lacking neurons can be conscious. You'd need another word.
The problem is , at least in the star trek universe, transporter are KNOWN to dysfunction and create copies instead. And that alone is, at least in the star trek universe, a definitive answer. Consciousness is the chemical process of a *specific* brain. Copy that brain and destroy the original, you copied the content, but you lost the original. And in fact if you don't destroy the original, you know got two copies which have an identical memory and soon start to diverge. And that is the evidence (from the perspective again of the star trek universe) that transporter kills and only clone the original.
Anyway all that transporter stuff is silly as there is no framework where this could happen in reality.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
The primary problem right now is that we don't know a whole lot about the brain or quantum physics. However there is nothing 'magical' about humans or the brain, there is no such thing as a disconnected soul, the problem is the measurement (which is what the Heisenberg Principle is about) and the fact that the Universe obeys the No Cloning Theorem.
So a Star Trek-style cloning where you measure the state of every particle in your body, convert into energy and back into mass is impossible (as far as we believe our mathematics are correct right now)
However, that doesn't mean replicating a human/brain isn't possible, we can 3D print biological matter already. We should be able to copy the state of the brain and cells down to their individual electrical states, especially if we can bring the original to a complete 'stop' (near 0K). Memories are simply a set of neurons that are wired to fire together, you can "cut the power" to most of the brain, muscles (eg. heart), cells and restart them, if you can restore a 'state' by exciting specific neurons and cells (which we can already do to an extent) on a 3D printed biological mass, you can technically "transport" any animal.
So if you can replicate someone's brain wiring and restart a brain, even in another body, you will have according to most psychologists replicated the person. From that instant however, if both sides continue to exist, these persons will start to diverge and become different persons.
Custom electronics and digital signage for your business: www.evcircuits.com
Corroborated means it would have provided evidence for it. There is alas no evidence for such out of body experience, there is plenty of evidence for FEELING of OOB, there is also plenty of anecdote of people pretending they were truly out of their body, but so do LSD people too. Even the red shoe story is very dubious as information had time to leak 100 ways.
That is why we have had this experience with a screen showing random images above a lamp of operation table, and people which get routinely cardiac operation are put in a clinical death sometimes have OOB. So far nobody has been able to describe the picture, beside some vaguish BS which could apply to any image. Soooo. No. No corroboration.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
Clinical death only means blood circulation stopped because heart stopped (or beat frequency is so low as to be considered unable to maintain higher brain function). That's just it. You are not dead, you are just in a state of cardiac arrest. Death is only defined by brain death. Usually the brain death follow cardiac death soon after, but the reason we now rely on brain death is that sometime we do induce intentionally cardiac & pulmonary arrest, for heart operation for example, and sometimes even in unintentional cases we manage to restart it. I wish that instead of using the term "clinical death" they would stop that shit and use cardiac and breath dysfunction. clinical death is not really death, and the brain is certainly not dead (at least until the hypoxia continue and neuron start dying en masse). I wish the term clinical death would be dropped because it certainly seem non obvious to many folk that it only mean "heart stopped".
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
Astral travel and out of body experiences are the same thing. Maybe not if you play Dungeons and Dragons, but they are the same thing in practice.
Keeping a dream journal is usually sufficient to eventually experience the phenomenon. Start doing that (google it), and you'll probably have one within a few months. Don't be afraid of sleep paralysis or the waking up experiencing high pitched noises... those are associated phenomenon and indicators that you are lucid dreaming.
No, I wouldn't. Reality is full of randomness and the ineffable: from the unmeasurable, to decay, to classical physics interactions far beyond our ability to follow (a circumstance which we often call "chaotic.") I see no need at this point in time to postulate awareness as a causative factor for any of this, as there's both no evidence for it and no way to test for it. It'd be fascinating if there was actual evidence for this that exceeded the standard of "there are things we have not fully understood yet", but so far, nothing.
When you (anyone) says "there is an alternative to A, and that is B", B is a second-class citizen (quite often, worse than 2nd) right out of the door when (A) has falsifiable tests producing repeatable, measurable results that provide a framework for experimentation and subsequent characterization, and (B) has only "Here is an idea."
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
So just let's get this straight, you think that this line of reasoning:
UnknownSoldier: Hi I have this extreme claim.
Skeptic: Cool, but can you provide any proof of your claims?
UnknownSoldier: Proof? You are a damn pseudo-skeptic
Is sound and logical?
Imagine the shit storm that would ensue if some one would be able to win the prize and he could not deliver, that would have been you woo peddlers wet dream. For some strange reason this never happened though. But of course you keep on complaining of how things might turn out if only.
Brains are not inanimate. Brains are very much animate; they are measurably and significantly active, and it is, as near as anyone can tell at this point due to experimentation and the resulting evidence, this very activity that produces awareness (among many other things.) To suggest that the same thing can happen with (for example) a rock without some comparable active mechanism isn't in nearly the same aisle, nor should it be unless someone can come up with evidence that there is a comparable level of activity going on, or, that said activity isn't required. Neither is true at the moment.
Just because someone can think of something, doesn't mean that the universe will support that something. There is a very good reason for the scientific method being a gateway for ideas that must be passed before those same ideas are worth any more than "well, that's an interesting idea" or "can I share your drugs?"
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
So you wouldn't even collect the 1MUSD in order to feed some starving kids or give some medication to dying people?
Quite incorrect, we have about 20,000 years worth of research on the subject, more than any other form of science.
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
http://i.imgur.com/5bA92Sb.jpg
I would think that exact quantum states of the transported item need to be recreated exactly, and with exact relativity to each other, in order to work.
So, consider entanglement. Regardless of distance, entangled particles can be used to predict each other.
Except that they have an opposite characteristic - say, "spin".
So, then your transporter would then scan every particle of an item (like a person) and transmits all that complete data to the destination, where another device assembles all of those entangled particles into a replica - only with all quantum particles in reverse states. The you instantly reverse the source person's quantum particle collection, which swaps with the destination particle collection instantly. Presto. Transported.
Hey - it could happen!
Self-importance and self-indulgence is the root of ALL evil.
Yeah, some details are extremely sloppy -- I'd really wish they would clarify _everything._
My understanding is that the RNG output its value, and then the operator's meditated. What they found was that it didn't matter if the operators meditate before or after the event -- there was still a significant sigma shift in the random values.
The fact that they have 20+ years of operators meditating before caused the RNG generated its output and saw a shift IS news -- but has been conveniently ignored.
Ohlook, a delusional bastard who thinks he's an expert because he hallucinates.
Show me some.
I really would like to see it. The "Hard Problem" is just as remote as when it was labeled such.
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
Hoffman is far more radical than this.
He postulates, with credible evolutionary game theory, that our entire mental construct of the physical universe is wildly inaccurate. It bears only an intersectional relationship with objective reality.
To over simplify, speaking of "particles" and "forces" is to speak of phantoms generated by consciousness, not vice versa.
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
These arguments are all a rehash of Chalmer's Hard Problem of Consciousness.
This has been covered and argued for and against ad infinitum. The self-driving car is Searle's "Chinese Room" thought experiment, on four wheels.
A good elementary reading here, and an understanding that "soft AI" is NOT consciousness, is basic for us to advance any meaningful conversation here. This itself involves familiarity - not necessarily mastery - of thought by Wittgenstein, Einstein, Heisenberg and in a particular way, Kurt Gödel. None of these will equip one to prepare an answer, Q.E.D.!
But I will revert to aphorisms and insist that "Materialism is for armchairs".
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
The "hard problem" is just a label that people like to use so that they can invoke a god-of-the-gaps argument. What they mean by "hard problem" is "I can't possibly understand how this could happen via biological mechanisms, therefore magic".
It's indistinguishable from the "intelligent design" argument, and just as unconvincing.
A good elementary reading here, and an understanding that "soft AI" is NOT consciousness, is basic for us to advance any meaningful conversation here.
That's fine; if an AI doesn't meet your definition of consciousness, then it's certain that elementary particles do not either. I'm fine with that.
That's disingenuous and superficial.
Where is "green"? The idea of "greeness"? Is "greeness" built anew, by every individual organism?
These are simplistic questions, but they lead to important distinctions.
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
Actually it is all quite verifiable. That's why there are billions of believers, and only a few idiots who think they are atheists when what they really are, are prejudiced bigots.
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
Actually, quite a bit replicable to show for it. One of the biggest things they have to show for it is that they don't need to fake data to get a grant like most modern scientists.
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
Where is "green"? The idea of "greeness"?
In our brains, and in our written works.
Is "greeness" built anew, by every individual organism?
Nope.
These are simplistic questions
I agree.
but they lead to important distinctions.
Really? Which ones?
So I assume by your definition you consider a self-driving car, or even a pick-and-place machine to be meaningfully aware?
In a sense, sure. The problem is that every person I talk to seems to have a different definition of "aware" and "conscious", so I'm not sure how to answer that question. It all depends on what you mean by "aware".
But, that definition breaks down completely when we get into judging the realm of things that exist in fundamentally different environments. An amoeba appears aware because it acts in ways we can readily perceive. A plant on the other hand mostly acts far more subtly, though time-lapse photography can reveal apparently intentional activity. But what about an electron? It exists in a fundamentally different realm that we can only dimly perceive the rough boundaries of - how could we begin to determine if quantum non-determinism is a manifestation of random chance, or intentional choice?
Well, that's pretty simple really. Entities which make choices tend to introduce variance. You're suggesting that a nearly infinite number of quantum particles all choose to exhibit the same property - quantum non-determinism. I know it sounds weird, but quantum non-determinism is incredibly deterministic.
Given that every conscious system we're aware of has far more variance, that seems like a non-starter. But even if you assume that these entities are somehow different than all of those which we know to be conscious, it doesn't really change anything; the fact that they don't DO anything which would be indicative of a choice makes them indistinguishable from, and therefore functionally equivalent to, objects which cannot make a choice.
This is very similar to the argument for - and response to - a "Deistic god". If, by definition, he does nothing which would demonstrate his existence, then whether or not he exists is irrelevant. He's indistinguishable from a god who does not exist.
It's not that I don't believe awareness can't be tested for, just that we don't know how to do so in any manner that's not more far indicative of our own perceptual biases than any objective reality.
Given that awareness/consciousness is a concept which we dreamed up, what makes you think that it has an objective reality outside of our own perceptual biases?
*Statistically* particles are easy to predict en-mass - so are humans for that matter. But it's virtually impossible to do so with individuals of either sort.
I'm not saying that they don't do anything that would demonstrate choice - just that it would be very difficult for us to recognize it since we already KNOW that they exist in a realm that's largely invisible to us, and fundamentally alien to our experience. Hell, I can't think of anyone who has even bothered to look for hints of such a thing. And that's rather the point - when we assume we know how things work, we stop looking for alternatives.
And awareness is NOT a concept that we dreamed up, any more than "red" is. We made up the label, and set the limits on what it applies to, but the underlying property exists independent of our labels. It makes no difference if something demonstrates awareness in a way we can recognize, it's awareness exists independently of our labeling it as such.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
But he was still unlucky enough to get caught in an infinite transporter loop for 40 years or something like that (per a TNG episode I'm too lazy to look up ATM . . . but Relics maybe?)
Nonaggression works!
You have just defined a video game AI as aware, or a mobile autonomous robot. My iPhone can detect its position, process that in the Map app, and can store and recall that information. I think this definition needs refinement.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
Except that you're making this up from no experience. UnknownSoldier is referring toa reasonably established tradition which he or she has personal experience of. Moreover, what UnknownSoldier considers paths to enlightenment do not require mystical belief. I've taken meditation classes in which certain techniques were taught. There were claims of things that appear to be supernatural, but they weren't all that important to the class. Personally, I found the meditation useful in keeping me going through a difficult time, but so far I haven't verified any supernatural effects.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
There's a bunch of empiricals who've noticed that they don't need anything other than the physical* to explain their experiences and observations. (They don't know everything, but they know a lot, and haven't seen any reason to believe there's anything non-material.) Science is very tolerant, but there's one rule: you have to be able to show objectively verifiable evidence, and that's lacking. If you don't have that, you can't investigate scientifically.
People have tried to scientifically study non-physical phenomenon. Look up parapsychology, which was an attempt to study psychic phenomena scientifically. It lasted for a fair number of years, had its own journal, and went pretty much nowhere. Their experiments were typically not proof enough against cheating by subjects. So, Tesla was wrong.
*This is a bit tricky. Suppose Jim Butcher's Dresden File novels were accurate descriptions of what went on. I can argue that, in that case, Dresden is using heretofore unknown laws of physics, which we need to research. Given that Dresden was capable of producing objectively verifiable effects (my favorite opening line from the series: "The building was on fire, and it wasn't my fault."), what he and the other characters could do would be analyzable by science.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
Check out this episode on Teleportation.
Isaac discusses this question and more https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
Be warned though - this channel is highly addictive.
ALL human evidence is testimony, whether it is the testimony of a data file in a computer, or the testimony of a notebook in a laboratory, or the testimony of an eyewitness in the world. Testimony is just another word for observation, and without observation, science is worthless.
The real evidence for God is in the scientific method itself. Order is not necessary, but order exists instead of chaos. Existence is not necessary. Movement is not necessary. Time is not necessary. Answering the question WHY instead of HOW. There is a reason why Einstein had a favorite priest, maybe you should go look that one up for yourself.
Once you understand that a watch needs a watchmaker, a book needs an author, and that DNA is just a computer, all the local suspensions of entropy point to only one conclusion. A conclusion that you would rather eliminate the evidence of through prejudice and bigotry, than look at.
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
No. You're missing a step. It follows that animate can arise from the inanimate. Awareness then arises from the animate. This is what we know to be true; and it's all we have seen thus far.
The claim you are making is that awareness can arise directly from the inanimate; your suggestion that atoms (rocks, etc.) might be aware is exactly that.
The fact is that there's no evidence at all that awareness can arise from the inanimate without forming an animate system first. So your suggestion is no more than speculation, and unfounded speculation at that. For it to have any value beyond "here's an idea", you need evidence. So far, there isn't any. If you can manage to bring some, then we can talk about what you've found. But right now, it's simply baseless handwaving.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
>You'd need another word.
Why? We have no idea if "feelings" are also something that atoms have. Or rocks. Suppose for one whimsical moment that a rock possesses conscious awareness of a level similar to a human mind - how could we possibly know? It's not capable of action, and thus we would have no way to recognize its awareness, but that would not make it any less aware.
> it's definitional in fact: every known instance of consciousness is biological and requires collections of neurons
False: plants appear to demonstrate at least limited consciousness, provided you watch them in time-lapse to compensate for their much slower movement. And they possess no neurons, though they do possess networks of electrically active cells that might serve a similar purpose, especially in their root tips, where they concentrate into clusters individually comparable to a worm's brain.
And, as I alluded in my first response "every known instance of consciousness" is inherently limited by our extremely restricted realm of perception, and we cannot make sound extrapolations from a position of ignorance. If we were telepathic we might discover that we could in fact have deeply engaging conversations with trees and rocks. I rather doubt it, I suspect any such awareness would be deeply alien to the point having nothing meaningful to say to one another beyond perhaps appreciating the weather.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
We don't accept that a suspect's DNA matches the blood found at a crime seen based on a police detective's word; we accept it because it can be verified through empirical methods.
But you accept that those methods are empirical on the basis of some police laboratory's word that they are empirical.
They went and tested the theory against experimental evidence.
That just adds more testimony to the chain, it doesn't change the fact that the results of the experiment are reported by testimony.
As to the supernatural/immaterial, I am reminded of Thomas Paine's rebuttal of miraculous claims: "We have never seen, in our time, nature go out of her course. Is it more probable that nature should go out of her course, or that a man should tell a lie?"
The supernatural contains the natural, and is decidedly NOT unnatural, so why would you expect that nature needs to go out of her course to prove the supernatural? Rather, it is the fact that nature has a course at all, set by the supernatural, that proves that the supernatural exists.
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
And thus, they are not necessary. Because one might easily conceive, with only slightly different natural laws, a universe where none of the above exist. Make the big bang a little hotter, or a little colder, and you get no local entropy eddies in which to create.
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
In a documentary I saw it was even more than that. It wasn't so much to facilitate a story so much as it was to save on production costs. It costs money to build shuttle sets, and to film shuttle scenes. It was cheaper to just "beam" people into the next scene and just exclaim "technology!"
Another fun fact was the Vulcan neck pinch. Being a family show, they couldn't just run around killing people (hence stun settings), but occasionally they needed scenes without using phasors. Kirk of course would just settle it with fisticuffs. However there was a scene where Spock was supposed to hit a guy on the back of the neck with a phasor to knock him out. Apparently he improvised the Vulcan neck pinch as his unique way to disable people as he thought hitting a guy with a gun was a bit too unsubtle for a Vulcan...
Back then there were even voluntary standards for comic books, . You couldn't show a punch connecting, blood, etc. So there were lots of big flashes with words like "pow" over them.
Bruce Perens.
There is nothing to indicate existence itself is required. And yet, it's here. That is what indicates a cause.
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
Yo! Immerman! Thanks for your perspective ...
Actually, we *do* have an idea that rocks and atoms don't have feelings because they don't have neurons. Panpsychism is obviously equivocating the definition of the word "consciousness". This is scientific subject matter, not emotional. And, of course, You could know that a rock is conscious if you poke it in the eye with a sharp stick and the rock says, "Ow!" ... ;-)
Your usage of the word consciousness in extending it to plants is another equivocation, and unnecessary too, because what you are describing is already scientifically referred to as a "tropism" ... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/....
I agree that we can't make "extrapolations from a position of ignorance", so your evidence-free Panpsychism is an extrapolation too far. Try this question instead: Is Star Trek's Commander Data conscious?
Nope. Data doesn't have neurons. Another one of the definitional characteristics of consciousness is that it's internal and ineffable and so it's the presence of neuronal networks and clusters, as well as upwards of 90% DNA in common that allows us to infer that non-human animals like your dog and your pet raven are conscious. Those valid inference ingredients are not applicable to Commander Data so, no matter what Data claims (and he's not at all sentient), we can only infer that It is a sophisticated emulation of human behaviors.
Just stick Data with a sharp stick in the eye ... ;-)
"Please describe an objective repeatable test that a "conscious" entity would pass, but an entity without "consciousness" would fail":
Step 1: Sure! Stick another person in the eye with a sharp stick. Notice their response.
Step 2: Stick Commander Data in the eye with a sharp stick. Notice its response.
Does an android qualify as an "entity"?
Yes, you are with your stupid brain dead skeptical reductionism, which only serves to remove evidence, never examine it.
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
Better than inventing unnecessary nonsense and harming others because of belief in it.
Yeah, I was the annoying guy who would take home the pretty girl while you and 20 other nerds were deeply involved in discussion of this, and of which female Star Trek character was cuter.
Bruce Perens.
> don't have feelings because they don't have neurons
That is still based on the assumption that awareness must have a mechanism behind it. If it's a fundamental property, then that is not the case - there is no (known) mechanism behind the charges, masses, etc. of fundamental particles - they are simply properties inherent in the particle.
>if you poke it in the eye with a sharp stick and the rock says "Ow!"
Find me a rock with eyes and the ability to say "ow" and maybe you have the beginning of an argument. Without that, you're simply projecting your own expectations onto a scenario where they are not relevant.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
Actually, Immerman, your entire position seems very "iffy" ---> If this, if that.
"If we were telepathic ...", "If it's a fundamental property ...", "Suppose for one whimsical moment ...", "We have no idea if 'feelings' are also something that atoms have", etc. Of the rock, you correctly state, "we would have no way to recognize its awareness, but that would not make it any less aware" ...
Just what is it that allows us to recognize awareness in anything? What is it that allows us to rule it out?
You correctly said, "... we cannot make sound extrapolations from a position of ignorance," but that seems to be what you're doing and that's exactly what Panpsychists are doing. If "we can't know, we can't tell, we have no way to communicate with a rock ...", then what's the point of your argument?
No, a rock has no eyes and no vocal ability. Like I said, though, "Just stick Data with a sharp stick in the eye" ... Commander Data isn't completely deprived of android-specific sensory data like Ensign Rock is, and Data even has a computational analog of human eyes -- a place to put your sharp stick. So what happens in Data's case? Does Its response, whatever it is, inform us of Data's consciousness? Fer damn sure It won't say "Ow!". Data cannot "feel" ... the very definition of sentience! Nobody bothers to look it up.
I'm trying to understand what our science tells us. Perhaps we have a language difficulty here. Please define 'consciousness' in a way conformant with neuroscience. If it's not a science-based definition, then how can we have any discussion about consciousness at all? This is not a religious topic.
Go brave, Immerman! Email me and I'll send you "Einstein's Breadcrumbs" ...
Oh, that's easy. Karen Steele who played Eve McHuron in Mudd's Women.
-- I have a private email server in my basement.
ROTFL
Bruce Perens.
Actually, no, I am not. You are. You are the one who eliminates some eyewitness data but not others at random.
It does not matter who created God for God to exist, it's just a red herring by people who refuse to conform their personal lives to an objective morality.
As for Occam, well, he was just another stupid reductionist to me- yet another bigot ignoring evidence because of an emotional response to the evidence.
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
Sure not a problem, take a set pattern at one location, intrinsically disassemble it and let it randomly reassemble at another location. Now the real problem comes with energy balance, everyone should know what a nuclear bomb is, that is matter broken down into energy and that energy distributed to nearby matter, enormously increasing it's energy state. So convert matter into energy, means you transporter turns you into a nuclear detonation, releasing a shit bucket ton of energy, counting your total mass, more than just a little problematic and of course where do you get the energy to create new matter, this normally done inside of stars, quite the little engines that could, a giant star to create tiny atoms, because apparently you need that level of energy to create normal space matter from quantum space matter, rather than just mass expressions of quantum space matter into normal space.
An active quantum space hologram of you is more likely. You remain at your distant location and a quantum space hologram is created of you and projected to that distance location, and you interact via that expression of quantum space hologram, with inputs and outputs exchanged, obviously in a controlled way in one direction, impacting you, so destructive interactions are not replicated, although the more destructive and less replicated they are, the sooner the temporary quantum construct would degrade. The level of the expression of the temporary quantum construct would vary from translucent with limited interaction to more dense and interactive in outputs and inputs.
So they can not teleport you but they could teleport a quantum simulacrum construct of you, whilst you remain in the chamber to interact with that construct. Interestingly the simulcrum should not be able to travel faster than the speed of gravity but interactions with it should be faster than the speed of gravity. So more realistic teleportation.
Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
If eyewitness testimony is unreliable, then all of science is bunk, because it's all based on eyewitness testimony and anecdotal evidence. Every single laboratory experiment is eyewitness testimony, a carefully controlled anecdote to reach predetermined conclusions.
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
My point is simply that our science tells us basically NOTHING about this topic. All we have is conjecture and assumption - things rightfully recognized as being notoriously detached from reality.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
I have a whole shelf full of books I've read about consciousness and neuroscience. NOTHING? I've spent weeks of my life reading NOTHING?
I beg to disagree ... note that the word 'science' is embedded in the word 'neuroscience'. The "philosophers" of consciousness are by and large full of shiite, but that's to be expected from vocabulary wranglers. For some science and an evidence-based approach, google Bjorn Merker's work for instance.
And how much help have YOU gotten with testing dark matter theory? Or for that matter, global warming? Or the existence of the Higgs Boson? There is plenty in science that we basically take on the same faith as believing any other eyewitness data, because it would be hard and or expensive to set up the experiment for it.
And that doesn't even count things like the existence of the Coelacanth or the Giant Panda. Or a Northwest Low Altitude Pika.
And even if you test it yourself, all that does is make YOU the eyewitness, it does not change the nature of the eyewitness report.
All human knowledge is eyewitness reports, in the end. Even the stuff that can be replicated, or that you claim can be replicated, the replication itself is just another eyewitness testimony.
Eliminate eyewitness testimony, and you have eliminated all human knowledge that has ever existed.
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
Oh, there's a vast field of speculation, but if you have any hard experimental evidence on specific source of consciousness I'd love to hear it. Bjorn Merker perhaps? Seems he's published quite a bit, can you point me to the paper where he presents solid evidence as to the mechanism by which awareness is created?
Neuroscience has a lot to tell us about some of the cruder operations of the biomachinery in our skulls that seats our awareness - and the detail continues to improve along with our ability to observe and manipulate individual neurons. We can manipulate the psyche in all manner of fashions, though often not in quite the the ways we first assume - for example, recent evidence suggests that general anesthesia doesn't actually suspend awareness, just induces motor-nerve paralysis and prevents new memories from being formed.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
Here's a link to Merker's "Consciousness without a cerebral cortex"
http://www.summer12.isc.uqam.c...
Note the evidence cited. Try some Damasio too: "The Feeling of What Happens" is most interesting, but you should be able to locate some articles of his about brainstem consciousness. Here's one:
http://www.federaljack.com/ebo...
The Philosophers of Consciousness have decided that consciousness is created by the cortex, a completely evidence-free proposition ... (philosophy and evidence don't get along, hence Hawking's remark that, "Philosophy is dead.") Contrast that gaseous guess with the brainstem (the "reptilian brain") consciousness hypothesis that is supported by a great deal of evolutionary, experimental, and observational evidence.
Cortical consciousness hypotheses have created all sorts of confusion and nonsense "problems," like "back-dating", for instance, the fact that a cortical stimulation of a touch done prior to a physical touch is nevertheless experienced *after* the physical touch. Duh! Look at the wiring - everything that happens to and within the body reaches the brainstem first.
Merker reasonably proposes that the brainstem complex creates the relatively low bandwidth conscious experience and the cortex (which is suggestively "activated" by the brainstem), with its vast parallel processing elaborates the content of consciousness in a way specific to a particular species. In my hypothesis, resolved cortical pre-conscious "images" are transmitted to the brainstem for "display".
Of course, almost all of consciousness research and funding are focused on the cortex, which is always illustrated with numerous "blinkenlights" and is probably shiny too ... ;-) Your cited "manipulate individual neurons" is one example - those are cortical neurons. So it may be awhile before brainstem consciousness is examined with the same rigor and intensity. My own theory is that consciousness is equivalent to a pattern of activation and connectivity involving a brainstem neuronal cluster (and/or other related cells), such that a conscious feeling IS that structure. In that view, consciousness remains completely physical - there's nothing else to it - so it'll likely take a nanotechnological level of examination (and a singular lapse of ethics) to see if a feeling of the color blue might be changed to a feeling of the color red with a tiny brainstem tweak..
Just because we haven't yet achieved that level of experimental capability is no reason to turn to religious/spiritual suggestions like Panpsychism, which seems to lead to a belief in a consciousness that's some ghostly infinity. Don't give up on science so easily ... it's the best thing humanity has going for itself. Aside from empathy.
I'll have to read that once I have some time, looks interesting. But from a brief skim of the first, and your summary, it sounds like the proposition is that awareness is based in the older section of the brain, and not the newer cortex - which I would say should be self-evident, unless we assume that a large percentage of vertebrate life lacks awareness, despite observational evidence to the contrary. (Which is hardly uncommon in behavioral and related sciences)
However, at least when skimming I saw no proposal behind the physical *mechanism* of awareness, without which it is irrelevant to the conversation at hand. Arguing against baseless preconceptions is admirable, especially when widely accepted, but only brings you closer to a real answer in the sense that it rules out one place where the answer probably isn't. How much progress that translates to depends entirely on the (generally unknown) limits of the remaining search space.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
RE your remark: "... I saw no proposal behind the physical *mechanism* of awareness ..."
That's what scientific research is for. Just because the research hasn't been done, in this case largely because no one is looking in the right place and the technology doesn't exist yet, is no reason to lurch into a hypothesis like Panpsychism, that, as you'll notice, is also lacking in *mechanism* and is, additionally *completely untestable*.
My hypothesis, ".. that consciousness is equivalent to a pattern of activation and connectivity involving a brainstem neuronal cluster (and/or other related cells), such that a conscious feeling IS that structure" fits in well with the brainstem consciousness hypothesis. Contrasted with your own initial proposal, that " ... awareness might be an inherent property of matter", my physical consciousness hypothesis seems perfectly reasonable and testable, given the development of the necessary technology. Sort of like gravity waves, that had to await the development of laser technology before they could be detected.
Yes, as you noticed, "... awareness is based in the older section of the brain, and not the newer cortex ..." seems like an evolutionary no-brainer. And if consciousness developed as a brainstem function, it's extremely unlikely that evolution would favor an additional brain structure developing consciousness because, like developing a second set of lungs, it's more in keeping with the style of evolution for the brainstem to evolve viable representations of additional sensory tracks. The massively parallel processing cortex then evolved (from a bit of early cortex-like brainstem tissue) to resolve more complex, predictive representations -- as pre-conscious "images" -- that are passed back to the brainstem for integration into it's more limited "display".
Makes a lot of sense, I believe, and Merker's experimental and observational evidence is very supportive. When you've absorbed Merker and Damasio, maybe you can email me at last for "Einstein's Breadcrumbs" and we can move our conversations out of slashdot's unread bit bucket into something more useful.
I'm pretty sure none of my posts ever get read -- they're all still at '1', mostly, I suspect because I'm always late to the commenting party.
Enjoy!
How is it not obvious? Awareness can most certainly be tested for ... I prefer the "sharp stick in the eye" test. It requires minimal equipment and the results can be observed by an amateur.
What if teleportation is nothing like that at all?
What if the transporter puts an ‘containerâ€(TM) around that part of space, balances it with a similar container somewhere else, and then moves the containers with out disturbing the contents?
Or maybe something different completely.....