Forcasted Technologies in Science Fiction

[Grek]

Because in our marble example, I can change the marble in my box from white to black, and when I do I instantly know what they will find in their box, because it will have at the same time changed from black to white.

Note that this is not (currently) the case. We know of no method that sets* the spin of an entangled particle while also preserving the entangledness. Some people (myself included) think this means that no such method exists. But if there is a way to do that, then quantum communications works just like Frank says it does.

*Not just measure the particle to find out the spin or change the spin to be randomly up or randomly down, but actually set the spin to be either up or down at the user's choice.

[DSMatticus]

So, how do we know that what we're seeing isn't the equivalent of, "I have two opaque boxes, a black marble, and a white marble. I put a random marble in each without looking. If I give one box to someone and send them a lightyear away, and then they open their box and I open mine, I know instantly what they found."?

That's called local hidden variable theory/local realism, and it was disproven by experiments with bell's inequalities. The 'why' of it is kind of complicated, but basically local hidden variable theory predicts a different statistical distribution of particles than quantum mechanics without local realism. When we do the actual test using photons, we get results inconsistent with local realism. Experimental evidence suggests that the particles are genuinely undecided on their state until they are measured, and then the other instantaneously adopts the opposite regardless of distance. It is a genuine superluminal effect. But it turns out that effect can't send information without classical channels to accompany it, so the speed of the effect is useless.

Because in our marble example, I can change the marble in my box from white to black, and when I do I instantly know what they will find in their box, because it will have at the same time changed from black to white.

Note that this is not (currently) the case. We know of no method that sets* the spin of an entangled particle while also preserving the entangledness. Some people (myself included) think this means that no such method exists. But if there is a way to do that, then quantum communications works just like Frank says it does.

*Not just measure the particle to find out the spin or change the spin to be randomly up or randomly down, but actually set the spin to be either up or down at the user's choice.

Yeah, Frank has had this explained to him before. Frank seems to be operating on one of the entirely false assumptions that you can select your measurement result or you can measure an entangled particle without destroying the entanglement. Either one of those properties would be sufficient for FTL. Neither of these properties have ever been observed and neither are predicted by any model of quantum mechanics we are currently using. It's fairies in the garden. The warp drive has an actual basis in our model of physics, whether that model turns out to be wrong or right. This does not.

[Previn]

It has your ass, it has your memory of Uncle Rickie drunkenly walking up the aisle and pissing all over the priest, it has the same genes that contributed to the flower girl, who was your daughter. Except for the fact that it is standing next to you, rather than the same exact space, it is, in all ways that might matter, you.

No, it isn't you in every way that matters. It distinguishable from you from the moment of creation give the level of precision you're talking about, and even if you don't have that level of subatomic precision. It's very, very close to 'you,' but isn't 'you.'

Every moment the copy exists, it gets more different from you. If you go to Hawaii and send it to work in your place, your memories and experiences become divergent, as do your physical characteristics since you're getting sunlight fresh air and fruit and your copy is munching cheetos in a cube. If you're both in a car accident, since you don't occupy the same space, you experience that car accident differently, both mentally and physically. Your bank account doesn't double in size, you don't get an extra house, the things you own would still be yours, and not your copies, so it's also different in that way.

[DSMatticus]

There are two meaningful ways to conceptualize youhood:
1) Similarity of composition. This means that two sufficiently alike people are the same 'you.' That's weird. Given a hypothetical infinite universe with hypothetically infinite matter in a similar arrangement to our little section of the universe, there would theoretically be an entity that is exactly like you despite having no connection to you whatsoever (yay, infinitely iterated trials and the inevitability of improbability).

2) Continuity of past. This means that your teleporter clone is the dude who stepped into the teleporter, because its causal originating event is the dude stepping into the teleporter. And this means that the dude standing confused in the teleporter the same dude who stepped into the teleporter. But the dude standing confused in the teleporter and the teleporter clone are not the same person, because despite having continuity with a shared past they have absolutely no continuity with eachother.

I really like the second, because it means that if the teleport screws up and lops off an arm it's not less you than if it doesn't do that. And I don't think losing your arm is something people conceptualize as a radical identity change, even though it is a radical change to your composition. And it mirrors what youhood actually is, which is just perceived continuity with previous states of yourself.

[Username17]

No one is ever going to make a quantum communicator with two entangled particles. It isn't enough statistical density. However, with many quantum particles being entangled together, it seems likely that statistical information could be extracted. After all, the no communication theorem is based on the a priori assumption that causality is true. And that does not appear to be the case.

An actual quantum communicator is going to probably involve having multiple particles on your end which may or may not be entangled based on the choices made by a third party far away with more particles that are contingently part of the quantum entanglement or not. And then you'll measure the entangledness or not of your particles and get a result that is either "probably yes" or "probably not" based on a choice made far away was. And then you'll repeat that over and over again until the statistical power of your "probably" adds up to near certainty and then that near certainty will be a bit that has a value of zero or one. And then you'll repeat that process eight times and send a byte of information. And then you'll repeat that seven hundred million times and send a VCD full of porn to Alpha Centauri.

The question of whether or not your experiments give results that are consistent with entanglement is already not limited by the arrow of time, which in a relativistic way means that it isn't limited by the intervention of space either. But actually building something like that requires way more than the 4 contingently linked photons we did this year.

-Username17

[Kaelik]

Every moment the copy exists, it gets more different from you. If you go to Hawaii and send it to work in your place, your memories and experiences become divergent, as do your physical characteristics since you're getting sunlight fresh air and fruit and your copy is munching cheetos in a cube. If you're both in a car accident, since you don't occupy the same space, you experience that car accident differently, both mentally and physically. Your bank account doesn't double in size, you don't get an extra house, the things you own would still be yours, and not your copies, so it's also different in that way.

Well it is a good thing that we aren't talking about instantly destroying one version at the exact second the other is created, because then you would a fucking idiot.

Oh wait, that is exactly what we are talking about. No one is contending that they remain identical when they cease to be identical you dumbshit. But at the exact moment of creation they are identical except in space, and then one of them ceases to be, and the other one stays, that one is you.

And I don't think losing your arm is something people conceptualize as a radical identity change, even though it is a radical change to your composition.

Are you smoking crack? Of course losing a fucking arm is a huge identity change.

[DSMatticus]

No one is ever going to make a quantum communicator with two entangled particles. It isn't enough statistical density. However, with many quantum particles being entangled together, it seems likely that statistical information could be extracted. After all, the no communication theorem is based on the a priori assumption that causality is true. And that does not appear to be the case.

It has nothing to do with the no communication theorem. Nobody gives two shits about the no communication theorem. Well, people do, but it's not relevant right now, so I'm being hyperbolic. The problem is much more fundamental than that: there exists no action you can undertake as sender to modify the results of a receiver that anyone is aware of, hypothesizing, or predicting the existence of. It isn't a matter of approaching statistical certainty. It's that no matter how certain you get, the result distribution that the receiver experiences is never modified by any action the sender takes.

And then you'll measure the entangledness or not of your particles and get a result that is either "probably yes" or "probably not" based on a choice made far away was.

No. That doesn't make sense either. The receiver cannot measure entangledness, because an entangled particle and an unentangled particle behave the same way on the receiver's end. The only way the receiver can determine if a particle is entangled or not when he measures it is to already have the sender's results, and then compare them. As the number of matched opposites in the sender's and the receiver's data increases, the statistical likelihood of entanglement increases. But that doesn't help, because you are presupposing that the receiver has the sender's data, which implies a channel of information already exists to transmit that information, and if you already have an FTL channel to transmit your results, why are you bothering building a quantum communicator?

Are you smoking crack? Of course losing a fucking arm is a huge identity change.

If you lost an arm, I would not say, "Hey, guys, that's not Kaelik. It's a dirty fucking impostor. It's really Kaelik One-Arm." Losing your arm is a huge composition change; that's the point. But you're still that same asshole on the internet and nobody thinks your identity has undergone a radical shift.

You're defining identity as composition to note that radical composition changes are radical identity changes. It's rather circular. What if composition and identity are, you know, different things?

[Username17]

No. That doesn't make sense either. The receiver cannot measure entangledness, because an entangled particle and an unentangled particle behave the same way on the receiver's end. The only way the receiver can determine if a particle is entangled or not when he measures it is to already have the sender's results, and then compare them.

You're thinking too three dimensionally. Alice and Bob are both on Alpha Centauri. They compare their measurements with each other and decide if their particles were entangled or not. The question of whether they were entangled is, however, contingent on whether Vincent chooses to make them entangled far away and (apparently to Alice and Bob) in the future. Vincent can send information about whether quantum particles are entangles backwards in time, so he can in principle allow Alice and Bob to determine whether Vincent chooses for them to be looking at entangled particles at super luminal speeds relative to where and when Vincent makes that decision.

There is argument about whether superluminal information transfer implies time travel. But time travel sure as fuck implies superluminal information transfer and we already have the time travel (for information about quantum particles).

-Username17

[Previn]

Oh wait, that is exactly what we are talking about. No one is contending that they remain identical when they cease to be identical you dumbshit. But at the exact moment of creation they are identical except in space, and then one of them ceases to be, and the other one stays, that one is you.

Nope, that's the copy of you. It lacks the experience of being killed, and still failed to exist in time before that moment, making it measurably different, even if it was identical in all other ways. If there is even a planck time between the creation and destruction processes, there will be measurable physical differences beyond that.

It is very, very close to you, and could easily take up your place for all intensive purposes, but it would still not be you. Killing the original at the time of creation doesn't change anything in the argument.

[Kaelik]

Are you smoking crack? Of course losing a fucking arm is a huge identity change.

If you lost an arm, I would not say, "Hey, guys, that's not Kaelik. It's a dirty fucking impostor. It's really Kaelik One-Arm." Losing your arm is a huge composition change; that's the point. But you're still that same asshole on the internet and nobody thinks your identity has undergone a radical shift.

You're defining identity as composition to note that radical composition changes are radical identity changes. It's rather circular. What if composition and identity are, you know, different things?

No you dumb shit, losing an arm is the type of thing that changes who you are as a person at least as much as anything else that will happen to you. Unless your contention is that identity never changes, in which case you are just fucking wrong, losing an arm is going to make me a drastically different asshole on the internet. First of all, a much more quiet one, because typing will be harder. Secondly, it will change my personality to have one arm.

And that is the point. Any contention that "you" are the same person you were 8 years ago is fucking bullshit wrong stupid. And because 8 years of not losing an arm changes who you fucking are, and frankly, a year changes, and frankly, a second changes who you were to who you are, of course losing a fucking arm is a major fucking identity change.

Now, when we talk about "you" we are mostly talking about brains, and that is great, but you can't say "you is really your brain" and then say "so when we change something not your brain, it doesn't change you, therefore composition." If your definition of you is based solely on the brain, then a composition change in the brain is going to change you, and fuck your stupid example up the ass.

Your arbitrary arm lose example is based entirely on not defining your terms, where you think that losing an arm doesn't change who you are, because you are your brain, and then you turn around and call it a composition change in you, even though that directly contradicts your reason for declaring an arm loss to not change you.

[Kaelik]

Oh wait, that is exactly what we are talking about. No one is contending that they remain identical when they cease to be identical you dumbshit. But at the exact moment of creation they are identical except in space, and then one of them ceases to be, and the other one stays, that one is you.

Nope, that's the copy of you. It lacks the experience of being killed, and still failed to exist in time before that moment, making it measurably different, even if it was identical in all other ways. If there is even a planck time between the creation and destruction processes, there will be measurable physical differences beyond that.

It is very, very close to you, and could easily take up your place for all intensive purposes, but it would still not be you. Killing the original at the time of creation doesn't change anything in the argument.

Are you an idiot? Don't answer that, the answer is obvious. Two seconds ago I lacked the experience of being killed, but I was still me. Obviously having the experience of being killed is not an essential quality of me. It is a quality that one copy of me experienced, thus making it different from the other me. But that hardly matters, since now that me is dead, and there is only one me left.

I am not identical to myself from a second ago. That doesn't mean I stop being me under our normal definition of self. Likewise, the fact that one version dies and the other doesn't means they are no longer the same, but who the fuck cares? If we cloned me and then killed the "clone" you wouldn't say that I'm not me because I lack the experience of being killed.

You are presupposing that one of them is me and the other is not to even make your argument that one of them is me and the other is not. You don't get to question beg that way. If your Conclusion is one of your premises, your argument is a waste of everyone's time.

[Grek]

The question of whether they were entangled is, however, contingent on whether Vincent chooses to make them entangled far away and (apparently to Alice and Bob) in the future. Vincent can send information about whether quantum particles are entangles backwards in time, so he can in principle allow Alice and Bob to determine whether Vincent chooses for them to be looking at entangled particles at super luminal speeds relative to where and when Vincent makes that decision.

What exactly is Vincent doing to the particles that A] decides whether they are entangled or not and B] does so across space and time without sending or receiving any signals between him and Alpha Centauri? As far as I can tell, Vincent doesn't have access to any of the entangled pairs (at least not without them being sent across space to him in a spaceship at less than c) and doesn't have any special power to influence the entangledness of the particles without access to them or a hotline to Alpha Centauri to tell someone to do so on his behalf.

[Username17]

The question of whether they were entangled is, however, contingent on whether Vincent chooses to make them entangled far away and (apparently to Alice and Bob) in the future. Vincent can send information about whether quantum particles are entangles backwards in time, so he can in principle allow Alice and Bob to determine whether Vincent chooses for them to be looking at entangled particles at super luminal speeds relative to where and when Vincent makes that decision.

What exactly is Vincent doing to the particles that A] decides whether they are entangled or not and B] does so across space and time without sending or receiving any signals between him and Alpha Centauri? As far as I can tell, Vincent doesn't have access to any of the entangled pairs (at least not without them being sent across space to him in a spaceship at less than c) and doesn't have any special power to influence the entangledness of the particles without access to them or a hotline to Alpha Centauri to tell someone to do so on his behalf.

I already linked to this. Vincent chooses to entangle or not entangle the particles in the future. Bob and Alice check their particles for entanglement in the present, and get a positive or negative result based on what Vincent is going to do.

It's in Nature Physics from April of this year. Actualizing it may in fact require sending space mail with potentially entangled particles. But while the other end may well be people writing down messages now and then transcribing them into completed and uncompleted entanglements twenty years from now - on this end you receive the message instantly, so it's fine.

Problem: at very large distances, it seems that you could send a transcription of a message you just received that was intentionally sent from the distant future back to the present on the other end and get actual information into the past. And that is really confusing, but the universe doesn't fucking care if you're confused because causality isn't actually real.

-Username17

[rasmuswagner]

One is the original. It existed in time before the copy. The copy, barring time shenanigans has not. It is different, even if it's physically identical down to the subatomic level. The copy was not at your Aunt Julie's wedding with you 4 years before it was copied. It did not sit in the seat, it did not watch the wedding. It does not share the same physical space and so is effected by different subatomic particles and forces, rendering it different even at a subatomic level than you the instant after it's creation.

From the point that the copy was created, it will experience things from a different frame of reference, and in fact will most likely have completely different experiences from the original after that point.

It is not you, the amount of measurable time that it is actually identical to you is so small as to be not worth measuring.

Wot a load of superstitious, essentialist nonsense.

Different at "a subatomic level"? That sounds profound. Except it's total bullshit, because random subatomic bullshit is nothing but noise, and it's also only (ir)relevant post atomic cloning.

Imagine the "double-blind atomic clone". You enter the atomic cloning facility, strip down and step in the tank of blue goo. You are deeply sedated. Your clone is created in an identical goo tank. Being an atomic clone, he's exactly as sedated as you are. You both wake up in a nice recovery room. For some reason (conspiracy/ideology/drunk orderly) nobody knows which bed was filled from which goo tank. WHERE Is YOUR REAL YOU NOW? Both of you remember being the original, going to the clone facility, losing consciousness, and waking up in this room, looking at your uppity clone.

But, who cares. We don't even need atomic cloning, even at the early uploading stage, the essentialists will get fucked into irrelevance like a hunter-gatherer culture meeting a society with a full-time warrior caste.

[Foxwarrior]

I've always wanted one of these.

[Grek]

Frank: The article you linked says, and I fucking quote: "As always with entanglement, it's important to note that no information is passing between Alice, Bob, and Victor."

What happens is as follows:
We have photons in groups A1, A2, B1 and B2.
At t=0, A1 is entangled with A2 and B1 is entangled with B2. A2 and B2 are sent to Victor, A1 and B1 stay with Alice and Bob.
At t=1, Alice receives A1 and Bob receives B1.
At t=2, Alice measures A1 and Bob measures B1. Due to entanglement, the As and the Bs will each have one + and one -.
At t=3 through 13, nothing happens other than A2 and B2 still going down the tube toward Victor.
At t=14, Victor receives A2 and B2.
At t=15, Victor decides to entangle A2 with B2 or to leave them as they are.
At t=16, Victor measures A2 and B2.

At t=>9000, Victor, Alice and Bob come together in space and time to compare notes. If Victor entangled A2 and B2, then A1 and B1 will have opposite charges just like if entangling A2 and B2 somehow reached back in time to briefly entangle A1 and B1 to eachother and make their spins match up. Wowzers, that must mean time travel, right?!

No. A1 and B1 are correlated with eachother in that case because the A2 and B2 entangled pair was made by breaking the A1 to A2/B1 to B2 entanglement while preserving the spins previously measured. Alice and Bob at t=2 are not getting information from Victor's entangle-or-not choice at t=16; Victor at t=16 is getting information from the entangled particles sent ahead by Alice and Bob. Victor's choice to entangle pairs off his own particles in accordance with Alice and Bob's - not the other way around.

But what about the case where A2 and B2 aren't entangled and then magically A1 and B1 are mysteriously not correlated? Well, that's because without entangling A2 and B2, Victor doesn't sort the A2 and B2 particles into matched pairs that correlate properly - he just leaves them alone. There's no correlation because Victor never did the step that causes the correlation.

[Previn]

Wot a load of superstitious, essentialist nonsense.

You seem to be trying very hard to be offended.

Different at "a subatomic level"? That sounds profound. Except it's total bullshit, because random subatomic bullshit is nothing but noise, and it's also only (ir)relevant post atomic cloning.

I state that because it was stated before me. I'm merely being consistent in the level of detail that one of a differing view point had previously expressed to head off arguments about not being a perfect enough copy.

Imagine the "double-blind atomic clone". You enter the atomic cloning facility, strip down and step in the tank of blue goo. You are deeply sedated. Your clone is created in an identical goo tank. Being an atomic clone, he's exactly as sedated as you are. You both wake up in a nice recovery room. For some reason (conspiracy/ideology/drunk orderly) nobody knows which bed was filled from which goo tank. WHERE Is YOUR REAL YOU NOW? Both of you remember being the original, going to the clone facility, losing consciousness, and waking up in this room, looking at your uppity clone.

Bear with me for a moment…

Kaelik seems to think that because I'm stating a difference that can be measured (the experience of death), I'm defining that experience as something inimical to 'self' which is not what I'm doing. I'm pointing out a difference which shows that copy and original are separate things and that is one way to measure that. In Kaelik's example (instant creation/destruction) the difference is little more than pedantic, and I freely admit that. His also wasn't the post I started on, and I don't feel any need to have a discussion with him beyond what I already have. I think we actually agree and I'm just being a jerk about basically pointless details for his example.


Anyways, let's copy Kaelik. With our Kaeliks we see that the original and copy don't share the same space, they don't share the same point of reference, they don't exchange experiences, feelings or thoughts, and each has their own consciousness and sense of self as we understand it. They can and most likely will develop separately from the point of creation on. There is no reason for us to consider them the same 'self' short of physical and mental similarity (and that is subject to change). One is not the 'real Kaelik.' One is the 'original Kaelik' and the other is the 'copy Kaelik,' similar, but distinct.

Using your example, if I now choose to shoot the original Kaelik, the copy is unaffected. The copy doesn't become the original. We still have a Kaelik, we just had 2 Kaeliks before. I'm not saying that copy Kaelik isn't 'Kaelik' because he's the copy Kaelik. I'm saying that copy Kaelik is separate from original Kaelik. Not better, not worse. I suppose would could argue about a shared consciousness, or soul, but I don't see any reason to.

For me this is a pet peeve about uploading and how people think it's immortality, when it's really only a sort of immortality.

Also... Kaelik, Kaelik!

[Kaelik]

[T]he original and copy don't share the same space, they don't share the same point of reference, they don't exchange experiences, feelings or thoughts, and each has their own consciousness and sense of self as we understand it.

...

For me this is a pet peeve about uploading and how people think it's immortality, when it's really only a sort of immortality.

If I take 5 steps to the left and wait 13 seconds then I don't share the same space, point of reference, exchange experiences, feelings, or thoughts, and I have a different consciousness and sense of self than past me.

Your differentiation between original and copy also tells us that I am a different person than I was when I was six. And while I agree that this is true, if a magic vampire made me immortal tomorrow, I would not say that I am not immortal just because all those things change.

Perfect clone immortality is exactly as immortal as any other kind of immortality because self distinctions like the ones you describe are not any different from the ones experienced by people passing through time.

This is a line of personhood: (pretend that both lines connect to the first line, and the top one is the original)
................./B
................/
_____A_ <---------T
................\
.................\B'

Now, both of those two selves are identical at point T. Both of them experience the normal changes in selfhood that we all experience all the time. At point T, they are identical as persons. They are two identical persons who are both unconscious at some point in space, and since their brain has not yet received stimuli from that place, they are actually 100% identical.

Both of them change from point T in the normal expected ways that we all change. But if you say that one of them is not the same self as A, then you are saying neither one is the same as self A.

If differentiation only occurs because of different stimuli, then at point T they are both the same person, and they both are the same person as A.

To say that A is not immortal is a fucking farce, because by the same logic:

A------------------->B

A is not immortal. And by that logic, you are declaring immortality impossible on the grounds of personal change. And while that is a perfectly fine position to take, we are just going to punch you in the face and say that we are talking about human beings being immortal when they same person lives forever/a long time.

[Winnah]

That presents issues with the utility of this kind of technology. I mean, it is great if you have aspirations of travelling around the universe and can have a half dozen duplicates/proxies scattered around various remote colonies, but this kind of technology is not something you want intergrated into everyday mass transit. Nor do you want some psycho taking cues from Agent Smith or the Master.

It also opens up a whole heap of other quandries that are not worth going into here. I mean, discussions of individuality aside, the interaction of each instance of a person with society at large is bound to create a lot of paperwork.

[hyzmarca]

[T]he original and copy don't share the same space, they don't share the same point of reference, they don't exchange experiences, feelings or thoughts, and each has their own consciousness and sense of self as we understand it.

...

For me this is a pet peeve about uploading and how people think it's immortality, when it's really only a sort of immortality.

If I take 5 steps to the left and wait 13 seconds then I don't share the same space, point of reference, exchange experiences, feelings, or thoughts, and I have a different consciousness and sense of self than past me.

Your differentiation between original and copy also tells us that I am a different person than I was when I was six. And while I agree that this is true, if a magic vampire made me immortal tomorrow, I would not say that I am not immortal just because all those things change.

Perfect clone immortality is exactly as immortal as any other kind of immortality because self distinctions like the ones you describe are not any different from the ones experienced by people passing through time.

This is a line of personhood: (pretend that both lines connect to the first line, and the top one is the original)
................./B
................/
_____A_ <---------T
................\
.................\B'

Now, both of those two selves are identical at point T. Both of them experience the normal changes in selfhood that we all experience all the time. At point T, they are identical as persons. They are two identical persons who are both unconscious at some point in space, and since their brain has not yet received stimuli from that place, they are actually 100% identical.

Both of them change from point T in the normal expected ways that we all change. But if you say that one of them is not the same self as A, then you are saying neither one is the same as self A.

If differentiation only occurs because of different stimuli, then at point T they are both the same person, and they both are the same person as A.

To say that A is not immortal is a fucking farce, because by the same logic:

A------------------->B

A is not immortal. And by that logic, you are declaring immortality impossible on the grounds of personal change. And while that is a perfectly fine position to take, we are just going to punch you in the face and say that we are talking about human beings being immortal when they same person lives forever/a long time.

No. A human can't gain immortality through uploading because the human is the wetware, not the data. If you copy a person non-destructively then you have two different people. If you copy a person destructively, then you still have two different people, only one of them is dead.

You can get around this, but you'd need the ability to create a true hive mind, a distributed consciousness that operates on both brains simultaneously and is, in fact, one person in two bodies, so that killing one brain is merely traumatic and crippling, rather than lethal.

This is difficult to achieve. Even twins who are conjoined and literally share their their senses with each other have different personalities.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Krista_and_Tatiana_Hogan

[Kaelik]

No. A human can't gain immortality through uploading because the human is the wetware, not the data. If you copy a person non-destructively then you have two different people. If you copy a person destructively, then you still have two different people, only one of them is dead.

You are presupposing some sort of bullshit soul argument here that I am directly contradicting.

All things are merely a specific configuration of particles in a specific pattern. If you duplicate the pattern, you have duplicated the thing. Perfect clone you is you exactly like perfect clone plant is plant, because perfect clone is perfect.

Souls don't exist. Consciousness, to the extent that it is a real thing at all and not an abstract concept used to make sense of a world in which it doesn't actually exist, is merely a specific arrangement of particles that will deterministicly change in specific directions. It doesn't matter if it is the "same" consciousness any more than it matters if it is the "same" consciousness between you and you in six months. Having identical consciousness has never been an essential part of being the same "person."

[Previn]

Kaelik, can you define 'self' as 'you' as you see them?

[Zinegata]

Of course, that also runs the risk of Skynet taking over the world, but I vote to keep moving forward. Progress, people!

Much as I joke about robot armies, lolnonotforanotherthirtyyears.

It's still within our lifetimes!

[hyzmarca]

No. A human can't gain immortality through uploading because the human is the wetware, not the data. If you copy a person non-destructively then you have two different people. If you copy a person destructively, then you still have two different people, only one of them is dead.

You are presupposing some sort of bullshit soul argument here that I am directly contradicting.

No, you've got it backwards. You're the one presupposing some sort of bullshit soul argument.

You're couching it in atheistic terms, but you're essentially arguing some unique quality of youness, your particle configuration, that is separate from your meat. This is absolutely a soul argument.

My argument is pure physicalism. You're a meat computer. Producing an identical meat computer that runs the same software doesn't create a new you. It merely creates a twin. While they may be indistinguishable to an external observer, that is no comfort to the twin that's killed.
Likewise, making tweaks to the software does not fundamentally change the computer.

[Grek]

Does anyone here actually disagree with the following:

Guy walks into a cloning booth.
Cloning happens.
There are two identical clones of Guy, one inside the cloning booth entrance and one inside the cloning booth exit.
Both clones have the memories, appearance, personality, etc. etc. of Guy.
Both clones want not to die.
Both clones insist that they are real people.
Both clones will diverge mentally and physically from each other as they experience different events.
Both clones would agree that they are Guy.

Anyone at all? Because if not, I'm pretty sure you're all just talking past each other. You all agree on what happens, you're just swearing at each other and bitching about schemantics.